OIL PULLING

This has got to be one of the dumber things I've heard people do for "health".



Leeches anyone? Pm me for prices.

Depends....do you spit or swallow.....





Giggity :drinker:

It may be a common practice in India--but it sounds absolutely disgusting and I have no need at all to do it. Yuck!

This has got to be one of the dumber things I've heard people do for "health".



Leeches anyone? Pm me for prices.

You are absolutely right. Over a billion people in India where oil pulling has been a common practice for over 2000 years are probably all dumb, while you are super intelligent, because I assume you know everything about everything.

I had for almost ten years a re-occuring streptococcus infection in my throat and mouth cavity that was never completely cured by conventional western medicine ( usually long term and high dose antibiotics that damaged my stomach and digestive system ). When I went to work and live in Western Bengal I did the oil pulling treatment because I did no longer know what else to do...honestly not being really convinced that it would work, but I had nothing to lose.
I did it for six weeks, was found through three consecutive lab tests streptococcus free and have been for over 15 years. Yes, I know it was a stupid thing to do for my health......:o).

Oh, I hate to seem judgmental, but even the thought of this makes me gag. I'll use my toothbrush, thanks though. I'm literally getting little chill bumps thinking about it.

That is exactly what impedes progress and causes more obesity, gagging at the thought of something different. I suppose you gag at the thought of getting rid of your car too? When you sit strapped inside your tin box and light gasoline you give me chills just thinking about it and I, too, want to gag.

Haha! People are really getting a kick out of this I suppose. Coconut oil basically deep cleans, whitens and strengthens your teeth. And yes you can completely substitute it for toothpaste. Which is actually better for you. Did you know the same amount of fluoride is in 8 oz of water as is the same amount of fluoride in toothpaste that if swallowed you're supposed to call poison control?

This has got to be one of the dumber things I've heard people do for "health".



Leeches anyone? Pm me for prices.

You are absolutely right. Over a billion people in India where oil pulling has been a common practice for over 2000 years are probably all dumb, while you are super intelligent, because I assume you know everything about everything.

I had for almost ten years a re-occuring streptococcus infection in my throat and mouth cavity that was never completely cured by conventional western medicine ( usually long term and high dose antibiotics that damaged my stomach and digestive system ). When I went to work and live in Western Bengal I did the oil pulling treatment because I did no longer know what else to do...honestly not being really convinced that it would work, but I had nothing to lose.
I did it for six weeks, was found through three consecutive lab tests streptococcus free and have been for over 15 years. Yes, I know it was a stupid thing to do for my health......:o).

Have you seen the average state of teeth in India? I have, and it's not good. I suppose swishing anything in your mouth is better than doing absolutely nothing, but not by much.

I don't care how many people believe in mysticism, magic, and little gods running around everywhere, it doesn't make them valid or legitimate medical practices

Didn't know coconut oil was considered mystical, magic or as a little god.

Way to not be a racist *kitten* there (y)

ETA: Oh, and many of the people with nasty teeth in India (that I've seen) have that from chewing tobacco with red colour in it (paan). These are the people with crazily discoloured reddish, orange-ish or black-tinged teeth.

Haha! People are really getting a kick out of this I suppose. Coconut oil basically deep cleans, whitens and strengthens your teeth. And yes you can completely substitute it for toothpaste. Which is actually better for you. Did you know the same amount of fluoride is in 8 oz of water as is the same amount of fluoride in toothpaste that if swallowed you're supposed to call poison control?

OOooooh. Do you use the toothbrush too? I have always been leery of flouride. Hmmmm, I may need to check this out.

This may be an odd question, but I just started oil pulling and I was wondering if I'm absorbing any of those calories from the coconut oil. I don't swallow any of the oil but it does swish in my mouth for 20 minutes. Thanks!

Calorie counting can go to ridiculous extremes and become an obsession. CHECK OUT THE REAL CAUSE OF YOUR WEIGHT PROBLEMS:
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Junk food, video games and a lack of exercise all have received their fair share of blame for the spiraling epidemic of obesity in the U.S. But according to a University of Illinois researcher, public health enemy No. 1 for our supersized nation may very well be the one staple of modern life most Americans can't seem to live without one (or more) of: the automobile.

Sheldon H. Jacobson, a professor of computer science and the director of the simulation and optimization laboratory at Illinois, says that the surge in passenger vehicle usage in the U.S. between the 1950s and today may be associated with surging levels of obesity.

"You can think of obesity as an energy imbalance," Jacobson said. "People consume food, which is a form of energy, and then they expend it in their activities. But if you look over the last 60-plus years, the automobile has become our primary mode of transportation – so much so, in fact, we have literally designed our way of life around it. It is that energy imbalance that ultimately may lead to obesity."

To analyze the relationship between obesity and vehicle use, Jacobson and students Douglas M. King and Rong Yuan looked at annual vehicle miles traveled per licensed driver as a surrogate measure for a person's total sedentary time.

Previously, Jacobson studied the effects of extra driver and passenger weight due to growing obesity trends in the U.S. causing excessive fuel consumption.

Jacobson said this new study reverse-engineers the relationship between weight and driving.

"What we did before was based on physics: You add more weight to a vehicle, it consumes more gasoline, and we burn more gasoline on an aggregate level," he said. "This then raises the question, 'Is the reverse true?' If we drive more, are we going to become heavier as a nation?"

After analyzing data from national statistics measured between 1985 and 2007, Jacobson discovered vehicle use correlated "in the 99-percent range" with national annual obesity rates.

"If we drive more, we become heavier as a nation, and the cumulative lack of activity may eventually lead to, at the aggregate level, obesity," he said.

Jacobson chose annual vehicle miles traveled as a proxy for a person's sedentary time because inactivity is most obvious when you are sitting in a car.

"When you are sitting in a car, you are doing nothing, so your body is burning the least amount of energy possible," he said. "And if you are eating food in your car, it becomes even worse."

The sedentary lifestyle that automobile use enables coupled with the prevalent role it plays in increasing the sprawl of our cities, towns and suburbs is the "societal price we pay for always being in a rush to get places," Jacobson said.

"For the last 60-plus years, we've literally built our society around the automobile and getting from point A to point B as quickly as we can. Because we choose to drive rather than walk or cycle, the result is an inactive, sedentary lifestyle. Not coincidentally, obesity also became a public health issue during this period."

Before the automobile became such a prevalent mode of transportation for the vast majority of Americans, "it took much more energy just to live," Jacobson said.

"The way our communities were built, the way we bought and prepared our food, even the heating and cooling systems in our living environments – just about everything took more physical energy. Over time, that has been eliminated."

Similarly, in developing nations that are just beginning to incorporate passenger vehicles into their way of life, obesity is on the rise.

"In places like China and India, where the automobile is increasingly competing with cycling and walking as a mode of transportation, they are observing more obesity," Jacobson said.

Jacobson, who also holds appointments as a professor of industrial and enterprise systems engineering, of civil and environmental engineering, and of pediatrics in the College of Medicine at Illinois, says researchers and policymakers have not focused as aggressively as they should have on the automobile as a potential culprit of obesity.

"As a society, what we should be doing is encouraging activity in our daily routines," Jacobson said. "Ironically, the obstacle to that is the automobile. So what we really need to think about is how we use cars. What we really have to do is look at the system of issues that affect obesity, and come up with a national policy that covers all of these issues to address obesity. If we try to solve these societal problems in a vacuum, we will continue to get poor outcomes and make limited progress in addressing these issues."

To push the limits of their analysis, Jacobson and his team hypothesized how obesity could be eliminated completely through driving less.

"To completely eliminate obesity, every driver would have to reduce their driving by about 12 miles per day, which is around a third of the average daily miles traveled in the United States," Jacobson said. "But here's the catch: We have to still do everything we are currently doing."

How do we continue to do what we have been doing and still eliminate obesity?

"It's effectively impossible," Jacobson said. "But if every licensed driver reduced their travel by one mile per day, in six years the adult obesity rate would be 2.16 percent lower. In other words, almost 5 million fewer adults would be classified as obese based on the 2007 adult population. At the aggregate, if we drive less, not only will our carbon footprint be smaller, we will also lose more weight as a nation."

Ultimately, Jacobson said, we are going to have to rethink the way we use our automobiles if we want to address obesity.

"We have had 60-plus years of infrastructure that has facilitated the obesity epidemic," he said. "How do you turn that around overnight? You don't. But you can make some changes. I am not convinced that tactical interventions like taking soda machines out of schools and adding 15 minutes of recess time will have an enduring impact. I do believe we need to re-think how we live as a society and effect policy changes that strategically focus on the root problems, not just the symptoms."

The results of Jacobson's research were published in an article titled "A Note on the Relationship Between Obesity And Driving" in the journal Transport Policy.

I don't care how many people believe in mysticism, magic, and little gods running around everywhere, it doesn't make them valid or legitimate medical practices

Didn't know coconut oil was considered mystical, magic or as a little god.

Way to not be a racist *kitten* there (y)

ETA: Oh, and many of the people with nasty teeth in India (that I've seen) have that from chewing tobacco with red colour in it (paan). These are the people with crazily discoloured reddish, orange-ish or black-tinged teeth.

Defending any practice based on the number of adherents is absurd, and please do please show me how oil pulling (widely associated with people claiming magic detox properties) has any basis in science. Calling that out is far from racist. Grow up and learn to reason like an adult.

As much as I'd like this thread to die at this point (seriously, thread necromancy, much?), it probably won't until it rolls. So, I'll toss out here a couple of triple-blind studies that have been done on the efficacy of oil pulling.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18408265
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19336860

Both of these studies have shown that oil pulling is on par with chlorhexidine for reduction in plaque, gingivitis markers, and Streptococcus mutans count. The Strep one does take longer (chlorhexidine works within a couple of hours, but oil pulling becomes on par at the 1-week mark, making oil pulling a viable long-term solution).

Also, as I mentioned before, but seemed to get lost in the torrent of people deciding to mock the idea without even taking a little time to consider it even as a hypothesis (it seems that people forget that most modern medicine has roots in more "traditional" sources), coconut oil is well-known for its anti-microbial and cleaning capabilities (I'm less familiar with sesame oil, so can't speak to its efficacy, though I have noticed mention that it also has anti-microbial properties). Coconut oil is so good at cleaning, in fact, that soap makers have to be careful when making soaps with a high concentration of coconut oil, so that the soap doesn't strip away too many oils without replacing them (with what's known as super-fatting), or the soap becomes way too drying. This is due to the properties of lauric acid, which are amplified in the soapmaking process, but appear to still be present and useful in the oil itself. There's even evidence that coconut oil is one of the few things that can kill MRSA. Additionally, there's some evidence that sesame oil can help treat dry mouth, which alone can help prevent a number of dental problems.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17651080
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24328700
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3296356/

Also, this article describes how oil pulling can have a systemic effect (as can any dental hygiene routine, or lack thereof, as any dentist worth a grain of salt will tell you) -- http://www.dentistryiq.com/articles/2014/03/how-dental-professionals-can-respond-to-oil-pulling-patients.html

I read the dentist's article and I'll read the NCBI studies tonight as I'm at work and doing this from my phone, but if the best that can be said by the dentist is that it can't hurt, when combined with brushing and flossing, then I'll remain skeptical. I put that statement up there with the magic weight loss pills that work "when combined with diet and exercise." Further, if we're talking dental health then I'm all ears, but if we're talking magical detox properties then see my response above.

ETA: I skimmed the first two quickly, but the conclusion of the second was basically that it's better than the control group. I can do that by chewing a pine twig three times a day as we were taught to do in scouts. I'll keep my dental floss, toothpaste, toothbrush, and mouth wash for now. The antimicrobial properties of coconut oil for the potential treatment of yeast infections is interesting though.

I don't care how many people believe in mysticism, magic, and little gods running around everywhere, it doesn't make them valid or legitimate medical practices

You have many valid points but you should know that toothpaste is extremely destructive and ruins your teeth to keep dentists in business. I have been oil pulling and using baking soda to brush; the hygienist has very little to do during my appointments now. Oil pulling loosens the plaque so you can brush and floss it away. I now have that fresh from the dentist smoothness each time I brush. With a proper diet, teeth constantly repair themselves by the action of saliva and enzymes. Toothpaste coats the teeth with glycerin which blocks the action of saliva; this prevents the teeth from naturally repairing themselves and they have to be artificially hardened with flouride.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18408265
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19336860


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17651080
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24328700
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3296356/