We all know that maintaining oral health is essential, but can anyone really answer why or how is it important? Do you wonder how tooth sensitivity has become so prevalent? Do you often see the bleeding gums as you brush and think it’s normal? Do you know that there is a single solution to manage all of this?
Our mouth and intestine are the two ends of the alimentary canal. The mouth is the second largest house for bacteria, after the intestine. An average person swallows an estimated 1.5 *1012 oral bacteria per day1. We and the micro-organisms that inhabit us, together, constitute a holobiont or a ‘superorganism’.
Don’t mistake your mouth as an isolated body part! It is connected to your immune system. The poor health of the mouth puts us at a risk of illnesses such as heart disease and certain cancers2. The great physician Hippocrates said; “All diseases begin in the gut” to which, we know, the mouth marks the entry point. Research has also shown that women with periodontitis are more likely to deliver infants with lower birth weight than normal3. This implies that oral health is associated with the whole body’s wellbeing.
Let’s understand how bacteria inside the mouth can affect our overall well-being.
Trigger is in mouth
Bleeding gums are an easy route for bacteria to reach the bloodstream through which they can reach other body parts and trigger immune response and inflammation. The easiest target for such bacterial migration is the blood vessels. Here, inflammation can even shoot the blood pressure up, increasing the risk of heart attack or stroke.
(Fun fact: Have you ever wondered why the emergency medication for preventing heart attack is kept below the tongue? The tissue beneath our tongue has a dense capillary network that connects to our entire body circulation. Health professionals rely on these capillaries to get the medication into the system quickly enough to prevent heart attack).
Oral to gut transmission
Oral bacteria can easily reach and colonize the gastrointestinal tract, termed oral-gut transmission. The gastric acid, bile acid and antimicrobial peptides that line the gut are thought to form a barrier that can block such transmission. But, this idea of mouth-gut barrier has now been challenged4.
77% of the oral bacteria show evidence of oral-gut transmission. Interestingly, the transmission rates are much higher in patients with diseases such as bowel cancer and rheumatoid arthritis.
Modern problem, ancient solution
A simple way to manage oral health is oil pulling. This practice was recommended by Indian Vedic healers, 3500 years ago. They saw that squishing around a teaspoon full of oil in your mouth (now known as oil pulling) facilitates speedy recovery from illnesses5.
You might be thinking, isn’t gargling salt water sufficient?
Scientific comparison of oil pulling with salt water gargles has shown that the former results in higher production of saliva and decreases the bacterial load much better than the latter6.
A controversial view about oil pulling suggested that it wipes off even the good oral bacteria. But studies of the bacterial profile after oil pulling suggests that not only is it able to preserve the good oral bacteria, it also decreases the number of harmful gram-negative bacteria and increases the abundance of beneficial gram-positive ones.
Conclusion
Understanding oral health and ways to keep it in check must be an integral part of a holistic approach to maintain overall good health. It definitely provides huge dividends. Oil pulling is one proven solution to all oral health related problems. Would you adopt this habit for your healthier future?
Special thanks to Nishtha Bhargava, CSIR-IGIB for editing the article.
REFERENCES:
1. Sender, R., Fuchs, S. & Milo, R. Revised Estimates for the Number of Human and Bacteria Cells in the Body. PLoS Biol 14, e1002533 (2016).
2. Barker, J. Oral Health: The Mouth-Body Connection. WebMD (2012).
3. Haerian-Ardakani, A. et al. Relationship between maternal periodontal disease and low birth weight babies. Iran J Reprod Med vol. 11 625–630 (2013).
4. Schmidt, T. S. B. et al. Extensive transmission of microbes along the gastrointestinal tract. eLife 8, (2019).
5. Oil Pulling for Detoxification – Lotus of Life Chiropractic.
6. Griessl, T. et al. High-resolution taxonomic examination of the oral microbiome after oil pulling with standardized sunflower seed oil and healthy participants: a pilot study. Clinical Oral Investigations 25, 2689–2703 (2021).
Aarti Darra is a researcher who finds people to be beautiful experiments. She writes to woo herself.