Does Oil Pulling Work?
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Oil pulling probably doesn’t do the miracles it often is associated with, but it may just be able to help you achieve better oral health.
What Is Oil Pulling?
A few weeks ago one of my readers dropped me a link on Facebook and asked me if I had heard of “oil pulling.” I hadn’t, so I clicked on her link and took a look.
As I was reading the article behind that link I was quite stunned that I had never heard of this before and was completely intrigued. The article essentially described oil pulling as an ancient therapy to “detox” your body, balance blood sugar, help with liver and health problems in general, whiten teeth, heal sensitive gums, take care of skin problems, get rid of allergies – the list goes on and on.
I spent the next few days trying to find more info and, to be honest, was quite skeptical. Things just seemed way too good to be true. According to oil pulling fans, all disease starts in the mouth, which are supposed to be a reflection of the health inside of our bodies. If you have poor dental health, you supposedly have other health problems, and the oil will pull the responsible toxins from your body by way of the mouth’s blood vessels. Which is a bit illogical, as the toxins in the blood are supposed to be water-soluble and water and oil don’t really mix. The blood vessels in the mouth are also really tiny.
Trying It Out
But I thought, ok, what do I have to lose, I’m gonna try this for a few weeks and see if I notice any difference, maybe it will at least do my gums and teeth some good.
See, I have a problem with really sensitive front lower teeth, making it sometimes quite painful to brush and even eat. Because they are so sensitive, I can’t brush them for too long, which over time made the lower part of my bottom teeth turn a bit yellow. Yuck! It was driving me crazy. The teeth in the back have had similar problems, it’s been happening for so many years that I’ve just learned to live with it. If oil pulling did anything for that, it would have already done enough of a job for me.
So I went and did the oil pulling as advised: every morning put a table-spoon of sunflower or coconut oil in your mouth, swish the oil around for twenty minutes, but make sure to do this before breakfast and do not swallow the oil.
Twenty minutes sound like a very long time to be walking around with oil in our mouth, but it’s actually not that bad. You can walk around and do other things while you’re swishing the oil in your mouth. It’s also recommended that you spit out the oil after the first ten minutes and then take a fresh tablespoon for the next ten. When you are finished, brush your teeth after, that’s all.
I can tell you for sure that I wasn’t hallucinating when I brushed my teeth after oil pulling for the first time and they looked whiter. The next day this effect increased and within a further three days, the sensitivity was gone. After a week the yellow bottom part of my teeth had whitened. I was stunned and exited at the same time because here I was suffering with terrible sensitivity and it seems the oil pulling did do some good here.
Emulsify Your Mouth
There is very little evidence for oil pulling doing all those wonders it is supposed to be able to. But what it probably will do is increase your oral health, through the emulsification process that takes place when the oil mingles with your saliva. Which actually makes sense: emulsification is basically the process that makes soap, so when you do oil pulling, you pretty much make a soap in your mouth and clean it with. For the health of your gums, tongue and teeth this can make difference, as it did for me, but take the other tall tales about oil pulling with a grain of salt.
Picture courtesy of Ryan Lackey.
Tags: detox, does oil pulling work, gum disease, health, oil pulling, oil pulling therapy, teeth, teeth damage
13 Comments
I don’t know, but I’m glad something helped you. Without seeing you (I have both an MD and DMD degree) I can’t be sure, but it sounds like you have lost some of the protective enamel on your lower front teeth. This will expose the dentin which has a yellow color. The other possibility is that your lower gums have receded a bit exposing the cementum of the tooth. Either way, a fluoride treatment by a dentist would probably help this discomfort. If more is needed there are tooth colored composites that will adhere to your front teeth and protect these exposed areas and that would work also.
The cause of this might be an overly acid diet. At any rate, if what you are doing is enough, then “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but at least now you have some information that might be useful at some point.
Cheers!
Thank you Dr.
Oil pulling helped me since I’ve started doing it, now my teeth have no sensitivity at all, the yellow on the bottom of my teeth is gone, back to one color now.
I don’t do fluoride at all, I stay away from anything with fluoride like water and toothpaste.
Hi Tati,
Do you keep doing that? If you stopped, has the sensitivity come back?
Thanks for this article, I’m deffo gonna try it, I have this sensitive back tooth and want to avoid a root canal for as long as possible..!
Hey JT,
I stopped for a few days only, I don’t think it’s long enough to find out, but I’ve been loving it so far.
So if there’s still no pain… it might be working
This is where I start having problems with “alternative” therapies. It’s one thing to deal with tooth sensitivity from exposed dentin, and completely another if there is a pulpal exposure, especially on a posterior tooth. If a posterior tooth abscesses and the abscess dissects into the deeper tissues of the face and neck, that can lead to very serious complicatons.
If I have a sensitive tooth from an obvious cavity, I go to a competent dentist and have it filled and the problem is solved.
I had that tooth filled already (no cavity) and it was fine according to the last check-up, the thing is that there was a big cavity (from a previous filling) and it’s taking a lot for the tooth to remineralize. So there’s a very thin layer to protect the pulp, that’s why I have sensitivity to pressure according to the dentist, and there’s a little dentin exposure too, as one of the “peaks” fell apart little after the filling, but attempting to fix it would be worse than letting it heal, as it would compromise an already delicate tooth estructure, making it more prone to fracture.
So the only way is to simply deal with sensitivity until it gets better, that’s why I asked Tati, but if I push it I’ll end up with a root canal sooner than later (I assume I’ll have it at some point).
Okay, I hope you do all right. Thank you for explaining it to me
Heard a lot about this & know people that swear by it but I have not tried yet…
Sloshing oil around in my mouth doesn’t sound that great…
Never heard of oil pulling before this article. I’ve a friend who swears that drinking a TB of EVOO does wonders for the body. Is oil pulling the same thing? I always wonder how people discover things like this.
Not sure it it’s the same thing. But I’ve been loving the oil pulling. I’ve made a video about this in Russian and a lot of my Russian viewers said that they’ve heard of this method from their grandmothers and grandfathers. This method is very old, but what I’ve noticed is the old methods always work so good.
I’ve been doing oil pulling since 2008 and up till now by using a cold pressed sunflower oil. It’s been 5 years now and becomes my daily habit that is doing oil pulling first thing every morning after getting up. I do toilet things and little exercise for 20 minutes (sometime 30) then spit in toilet, rinse and brush my teeth. Before 2008 I got diabetes, hypertension, stroke, prostate defected, gout, cardiomegly(enlarged heart) and migraine. All these not yet gone but not bothering me though I still take aspent-81, metformin-500, madiplot-10, harnal-0.4 and simvast-10(half). Taking all pills become my habit and I do feel so well as I feel 30-40 years ago. I don’t know whether oil pulling is good for those diseases or the pills I take. I sometime would like to stop taking all pills to see if oil pulling works out but my second thought never trust it and taking pills never bothering me.