Oil Pulling

I have a four-part video series starting with see.nf/oilpulling on a time-honored folk remedy that involves “pulling” oil back and forth between the teeth for minutes before spitting it out for a variety of purported oral and systemic health benefits. In fact, there appear to be no such systemic benefits, and effects on oral health are mixed—good, bad, and neutral. 

The reason to avoid oil pulling completely is the very real risk of lipoid pneumonia, a potential consequence of aspirating small amounts of any oily substance into the lung. In fact, the reason some of the dental studies were performed on “a stored collection of human extracted teeth”—sounds like straight out of a horror movie—instead of on real-life subjects is because the researchers considered it “not ethically sound to conduct a human trial of [oil pulling]…with the knowledge that there was a chance of inducing lipoid pneumonia in study volunteers.”

For substantiation of any statements of fact from the peer-reviewed medical literature, please see the associated videos below.

Image Credit: Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash . This image has been modified.