Morin: Your Mouth’s New Best Friend

There is a problem with most oral hygiene options, and the problem is, as Dr. Fernanda Brighenti explains:

❝We have a constant flow of saliva. We produce, on average, 1 milliliter of saliva per minute.

Anything we put in our mouths is quickly removed by saliva, especially because it has a smell and taste, which stimulates salivary flow.❞

“Anything we put in our mouths” includes oral hygiene products.

So, what to do about that?

The oral hygiene helper that sticks around

Dr. Brighenti and her team were investigating morin, a flavonoid found in guava leaves, apple peel, fig peel, teas, and almonds, for its antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant properties.

See also: Are You Getting The Right Kinds Of Flavonoids?

This is relevant, as gum disease is caused by bacterial biofilm buildup, and (inconveniently) current rinses to try to deduce that often have side effects (taste changes, tartar buildup, stains), and antibiotics are definitely not an option you want unless absolutely truly necessary.

See also: Antibiotics: Useful Even Less Often Than Previously Believed (And Still Just As Dangerous) ← includes, halfway down the article, the four ways that antibiotics can kill you!

What they discovered: dried morin powder can be added to oral hygiene products—and it works. Tests on multispecies bacterial biofilm showed strong antimicrobial action, and treated biofilms appeared less stained too.

See also: Make Your Saliva Better For Your Teeth

In the study, more things were tried too: encapsulation with sodium alginate and gellan gum improved solubility, stability, and adherence in the mouth despite saliva washout, but that’s certainly not something most of us can do at home unless we happen to live in a lab—is more something we can expect to see added to commercial products in the future.

What this means: per the researchers’ conclusions, morin provides a safe, natural, inexpensive alternative to antibiotics, and can reduce the side effects of existing treatments.

While this is great news for anyone who has teeth and would like to keep them*, it’s expected to be particularly useful for people with reduced motor skills (older adults, patients with special needs), and people who are sensitive to current oral hygiene products.

*That’s not the only reason, of course; the impact goes far beyond the teeth. Remember, for example, that periodontal disease is the sixth most common chronic condition worldwide; nearly half of the global population has oral disease, and none of us are immune (and it has big implications in turn for cardiovascular disease risk).

To read the paper in full, see: Anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and antimicrobial evaluation of morin

Want to learn more?

We did a three-part series on oral hygiene:

• Toothpastes & Mouthwashes: Which Help And Which Harm?
• Flossing, Better (And Easier!)
• Less Common Oral Hygiene Options ← this writer is personally a big fan of the miswak stick! While she wouldn’t want to replace the other options entirely, it’s a great quick-and-easy on-the-go way to give one’s teeth a quick clean after a coffee or snack or such, without having to go to a bathroom and use a toothbrush and toothpaste etc.

Take care!