So for those of you who don't know what oil pulling is and are now curious, I will explain. Oil pulling is taking an oil (usually sesame, olive or coconut) and swishing it in your mouth for 20 min a day, then spitting it out. It is supposed to aid in oral hygiene and help written your teeth and prevent against cavities. Being someone who is prone to cavities, I couldn't wait to try it. The only issue I had was the whole 20 minute thing.
So I tried it out for a couple of weeks and here is what up found...my teeth were not whiter (huge bummer), my breath was not any better (even bigger bummer for my husband), but I did have less plaque on my teeth. I was still determined to keep trying it until a family member brought something important to my attention.
When you Google oil pulling, you will find a ridiculous amount of articles stating the benefits of oil pulling. What you won't find is a little side effect called lipoid pneumonia. I literally had to Google lipoid pneumonia and oil pulling a couple times before coming across a couple articles that talked about the correlation. If it was actually a real correlation then they would have more articles about it right? WRONG. Although oil pulling has been around for years, it's just now becoming really popular. Doctors are seeing more and more cases of lipoid pneumonia due to oil pulling. Since you are swishing oil in your mouth for 20 min at a time, oil particles actually get into your lungs. And if you didn't already know this, oil and water do not mix making this lipoid pneumonia very difficult to treat.
Here's the other kicker, you can use chlorhexidine (a prescription mouth wash), rinse for only one minute a day with it, and get better results than oil pulling. This prescription will kill more bacteria that cause gum disease and cavities than oil pulling.
So should you oil pull? Well that's up to you. Before you do, just do yourself a favor and look up lipoid pneumonia and oil pulling.
No comments:
Post a Comment