All Natural Mouthwash: Why It’s Better
The demand for all natural products is at an all time high. Conversations about health and the environment are widespread, and consumers have made their attitudes and preferences very clear. People want to take care of the planet, and they want to properly take care of themselves. Consumer attitudes have shifted tremendously to reflect these new values.
Manufacturers of the products we use to meet our daily needs have heard this demand. Many of them are changing their processes to use more recycled, biodegradable, or compostable packaging. The use of artificial colors, flavors, fragrances, and preservatives is beginning to decline.
As consumers are becoming more wise to ingredients and what they do, companies are reformulating their products to replace synthetic chemicals with natural alternatives. Many of them are using organic ingredients derived from sustainable sources.
Mouthwash is just one of the products that is moving in a new direction. Many people are making the switch to natural oral care products after discovering that they’re just as effective and affordable as their non-natural counterparts.
What’s in Normal Mouthwash?
Most mouthwashes contain artificial colorings and flavorings to make them look nicer and taste better. Strong mint flavors are often used to mask the unpleasant taste that naturally occurs as a result of the ingredients of the mouthwash. Colors prevent the mouthwash from looking dingy in a clear container. These components are solely superficial.
Most mouthwashes are made with a base of ethyl alcohol. Alcohol is a sterile compound that keeps bacteria from forming inside the bottle. The rest of the mouthwash is water and oral bacteria fighting compounds. Ingredients like quaternary ammonium, zinc gluconate, and cetylpyridinium chloride fight oral bacteria.
Most of the ingredients in normal mouthwash aren’t active ingredients. This means they don’t do anything to promote the health of your mouth. Aside from these bacteria killing components, everything a normal mouthwash contains is filler or masking ingredients.
The bacteria fighting ingredients are active and proven to work. While normal mouthwashes do serve a purpose, they’re not as optimized as they should be.
Is Normal Mouthwash Safe?
Normal mouthwash will not directly harm you unless you swallow a significant amount of it. It will indirectly harm you through continuous use. The bacteria fighting chemicals in mouthwash undoubtedly work wonderfully. Unfortunately, that’s the problem.
Antibacterial chemicals set out on a warpath to kill any and all bacteria they come into contact with. They’re more like a grenade than a well placed sniper. They cannot exclusively target bad bacteria, and all the good bacteria become victim to friendly fire.
Your body relies on its microbiome, a series of up to 200 trillion different kinds of bacteria. Everything is delicately in balance. There’s a fight happening throughout your body right now, both internally and externally. Good and bad bacteria are constantly keeping each other in check in an attempt to keep a balance that promotes optimal health.
When you use conventional mouthwash, you’re meddling in this battle. You’re wiping the slate clean for all bacteria and creating more work for your body. Without any bacteria, your body has to struggle to create the proper balance again. Every time you use a conventional mouthwash, your body puts itself hard at work to replace everything it lost.
How Are Natural Mouthwashes Different?
Natural mouthwashes still kill bacteria, but they approach it differently. They utilize ingredients meant to work with your body. Instead of being designed to eliminate everything in their path, natural mouthwashes work to create a balance. The good bacteria get the boost they need to overtake the bad bacteria, and the situation settles itself. Your mouth won’t be scrambling to get itself back into proper balance.
Ingredients You Understand
Before today, you probably never heard of quaternary ammonium, zinc gluconate, and cetylpyridinium chloride. You were putting them in your mouth on a daily basis, and you didn’t know what they were, how they worked, or the ways they were inconveniencing your body. It’s a little unsettling to think about the fact that so many of us use products without the information we need to make these important determinations.
Products like natural mouthwashes utilize ingredients that are highly effective and easy to understand. Some natural mouthwashes utilize natural antibacterial compounds like silver. Nano-silver is small enough to kill bad bacteria while creating a positive probiotic environment.
Ingredients like cinnamon, clove, tea tree oil, and salt can all play a role in keeping your mouth clean. These ingredients are safe to eat. They come directly from nontoxic plants. If you were to swallow a mouthwash made with these ingredients, no harm would come to you.
Combatting Dry Mouth
Dry mouth can be a side effect of medications or certain medical treatments. It can also be a symptom of a larger health problem. The cause of dry mouth should be discovered and addressed. Natural mouthwash can become a part of the solution.
If you frequently experience a dry mouth, the last thing you want to do is further dehydrate it. Most traditional mouthwashes contain a significant percentage of ethyl alcohol. All types of alcohol work to dehydrate everything they come into contact with. If you drink alcohol, you wake up with a hangover as a result of dehydration. If you swish alcohol around your mouth, you’re left with an uncomfortable parched sensation.
Natural mouthwashes don’t use alcohol in their formulations. In addition to a lack of dehydrating ingredients, natural mouthwashes contain ingredients that help the mouth to produce an adequate amount of saliva. It’s a multifaceted way to tackle the uncomfortable symptoms of dry mouth.
Natural Mouthwash is Great for Sensitive Mouths
If you have sensitive teeth or gums, unnecessary artificial additives in your toothpaste or mouthwash can exacerbate the problem. Your body can treat any artificial or dehydrating ingredient as an irritant. Sensitive mouths work harder to maintain a comfortable balance of good to bad bacteria and produce adequate moisture. Conventional mouthwash undoes everything a sensitive mouth is struggling to do.
Mouthwashes made exclusively with natural ingredients eliminate the potential for irritation. Your body knows how to recognize and use plant extracts better than it knows how to utilize unnatural materials. Think about how you feel after you eat a big salad versus how you feel after you eat highly processed packaged food. The same principle applies to natural care products.
Preserving the Health of your Tissue
Most people experience some form of gum disease in their lifetimes. Yes, most people. The risk of gum disease is higher for anyone who lives with an illness that affects the overall health of their tissue. People with diabetes, arthritis, inflammatory conditions, or autoimmune diseases often experience pain in the soft tissues of their bodies, including their gums.
Sulfate compounds, alcohol, and zinc gluconate dehydrate the mouth and shrink the gums.
Zinc gluconate’s entire purpose is to shrink swollen gums, and it’s used in mouthwash under the guise that this is a perk. If your gums are swollen due to chronic inflammation, forcing them to shrink through dehydration can create a more painful situation than the one you started with.
Natural mouthwashes keep your mouth clean without the use of these ingredients that can negatively impact the health of oral tissue and cause painful sensations.
Your Teeth and Your Heart Correlate
One of the most important reasons to rethink what you put in your mouth has to do with your anatomy. Your oral mucosa, the glands in your mouth, feed directly into your bloodstream. That’s why sublingual medication drops and dissolvable tablets work. Medication kicks in much faster when the mouth allows it directly into the blood.
Your conventional mouthwash contains a lot of ingredients only intended to come into contact with your teeth and gums. Whether you want them to or not, these ingredients are going to enter your bloodstream. If you don’t know what they are or what they do, you probably don’t want them to pass through your heart.
Natural mouthwash is essentially safe to drink. It doesn’t contain anything that will harm your body, and many of the ingredients in natural mouthwash can even be found in some of your favorite foods. Your mouthwash will enter your bloodstream in very small amounts, and that’s completely alright. There are no artificial chemicals that will take a toll on your system.
Conclusion:
Natural mouthwash is a solution to a problem that many people didn’t even know they had. Many people assume there’s nothing they can do about their sensitive teeth, sore gums, or perpetually dry mouth. Switching your mouthwash is the easiest solution to a lot of common dental woes.
You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by giving natural mouthwash a shot. You’ll still have a clean mouth and fresh breath when all is said and done, but you’ll get it without exposing yourself to unnecessary chemicals and destroying the microbiome of your mouth. Your body will thank you.
Sources:
https://microbiologysociety.org/blog/what-is-a-microbiome.html
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