What is this? I don’t even…?
It would be interesting to see if the people reporting positive effects would get the same from swilling with water for 20 minutes.
I think bourbon would work well. It’s going to kill a lot more bacteria than oil will.
So is there any advantage, or is this just doing it the old timey way? I’m assuming that this might have been something people once did, although I could be wrong about that.
Just the idea of this makes me nauseous
In the past I’ve had to swish an antibiotic solution around for 1 minute. By the 1 min mark my cheek/mouth muscles were dead tired. No way I could do 10.
Possibly explaining the saliva.
I love plans like this, because of the arbitrary nature of the requirements.
- Oil? Sure, anything works…motor, mineral, vegetable, fruit, nut. All the same, right?
I bet snake oil works the BEST. - Then shalt thou count twenty minutes, no more, no less. Twenty shall be the number of minutes thou shalt swish, and the number of the swishing minutes shall be twenty. Twenty one shalt thou not swish, neither swish thou for nineteen, excepting that thou then proceed for twenty. Twenty-two is right out. Once the number twenty, being the twentieth minute, be reached, then spittest thy oil into the compost, not the sink lest thou wish to clog it, and thy breath shall be neutral. Not minty, however, merely neutral.
And if it was old timey, how did they accurately know twenty minutes? Was there a special oil-pulling hourglass that Dr. Farnum’s Amazing Oil-Pulling Show sold?
Are we going to start recommending ear candling and cupping now?
Whale oil beef hooked!
What’s wrong with protecting your balls?
Yeah. A mommy blog. And then later down, she talks about taking castor oil to try to induce labor in her 3rd pregnancy.
So. Add castor oil to induce labor…
God. Is there an unproven home remedy for making your eyes quit rolling? I need that now.
Back in my first dot-com-boom days of SF living when I still was acting like I knew what I was doing … I was living in a rented room in a huge 4 bedroom place on the top of Noe Valley. Nice view if you can get it.
The owner was five years younger than me, but he was a finance guy. It was a super nice place. I stuck out. One, because everyone else that lived there was super-fancy Ivy league, private secondary school, and well traveled, well spoken, and well dressed. And two, they were all, by their own admission, ABCD, which left us with two bits of an demographic rift to cross for most everything.
One day Neil swore to me that the secret to good teeth was a tongue cleaner.
“FACT,” he said. "South Asians (did he use the word Gujarati?) were used most often as medical skeletons because of the completeness of their teeth as a population he informed me arms folded triumphantly.
Which, he continued, was because of the consistent and near total usage of the tongue cleaner by South Asians. I still haven’t picked one up though.
It’s insane that she goes into defensive mode in the 3rd paragraph. And spends a whole tl;dr on it.
No, the old-timey way would have been using charcoal. This is some bullshit new faux-retro trend.
It would be nice if a professor of dentistry would speak up on the subject.
Swishing vigorously with water is effective in removing some particles. I can imagine that oil might work slightly better due to viscosity and lubrication, and maybe especially for removing particles of fatty foods. At any rate, it’s not magic, it’s just an easier and probably less effective substitute for flossing or waterpik or other devices, but it seems safe.
The 20 minutes seems excessive; it’s unlikely to dislodge any more than what you’d get after five. I occasionally swish dilute hydrogen peroxide for 10 minutes, which is, according to one study, the required time for it to start breaking apart the biofilm.
I was told that’s because the skeletons of lower-class Indians have been cheap and easily obtainable for a century or so, not because they are better specimens.
Edit: short adult skeletons with full sets of teeth used to cost more, I seem to remember. I know you used to able to buy cheaper ones with missing or damaged bones or teeth, too.
