Toothpastes & Mouthwashes: Which Help And Which Harm?

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The 10almonds Team

Toothpastes and mouthwashes: which kinds help, and which kinds harm?

You almost certainly brush your teeth. You might use mouthwash. A lot of people floss for three weeks at a time, often in January.

There are a lot of options for oral hygiene; variations of the above, and many alternatives too. This is a big topic, so rather than try to squeeze it all in one, this will be a several-part series.

For today, let’s look at toothpastes and mouthwashes, to start!

Toothpaste options

Toothpastes may contain one, some, or all of the following, so here are some notes on those:

Fluoride

Most toothpastes contain fluoride; this is generally recognized as safe though is not without its controversies. The fluoride content is the reason it’s recommended not to swallow toothpaste, though.

The fluoride in toothpaste can cause some small problems if overused; if you see unusually white patches on your teeth (your teeth are supposed to be ivory-colored, not truly white), that is probably a case of localized overcalcification because of the fluoride, and yes, you can have too much of a good thing.

Overall, the benefits are considered to far outweigh the risks, though.

Baking soda

Whether by itself or as part of a toothpaste, baking soda is a safe and effective choice, not just for cosmetic purposes, but for boosting genuine oral hygiene too:

Activated charcoal

Activated charcoal is great at removing many chemicals from things it touches. That includes the kind you might see on your teeth in the form of stains.

A topical aside on safety: activated charcoal is a common ingredient in a lot of black-colored Halloween-themed foods and drinks around this time of year. Beware, if you ingest these, there’s a good chance of it also cleaning out any meds you are taking. Ask your pharmacist about your own personal meds, but meds that (ingested) activated charcoal will usually remove include:

  • Oral HRT / contraceptives
  • Antidepressants (many kinds)
  • Heart medications (at least several major kinds)

Toothpaste, assuming you are spitting-not-swallowing, won’t remove your medications though. Nor, in case you were worrying, will it strip tooth enamel, even if you have extant tooth enamel erosion:

Source: Activated charcoal toothpastes do not increase erosive tooth wear

However, it’s of no special extra help when it comes to oral hygiene itself, just removing stains.

So, if you’d like to use it for cosmetic reasons, go right ahead. If not, no need.

Hydrogen peroxide

This is generally not a good idea, speaking for the health. For whitening, yes, it works. But for health, not so much:

Hydrogen peroxide-based products alter inflammatory and tissue damage-related proteins in the gingival crevicular fluid of healthy volunteers: a randomized trial

To be clear, when they say “alter”, they mean “in a bad way”. It increases inflammation and tissue damage.

If buying commercially-available whitening toothpaste made with hydrogen peroxide, the academic answer is that it’s a lottery, because brands’ proprietorial compounding processes vary widely and constantly with little oversight and even less transparency:

Is whitening toothpaste safe for dental health?: RDA-PE method

Mouthwash options

In the case of fluoride and hydrogen peroxide, the same advice (for and against) goes as per toothpaste.

Alcohol

There has been some concern about the potential carcinogenic effect of alcohol-based mouthwashes. According to the best current science, this one’s not an easy yes-or-no, but rather:

  • If there are no other cancer risk factors, it does not seem to increase cancer risk
  • If there are other cancer risk factors, it does make the risk worse

Read more:

Non-Alcohol

Non-alcoholic mouthwashes are not without their concerns either. In this case, the potential problem is changing the oral microbiome (we are supposed to have one!), and specifically, that the spread of what it kills and what it doesn’t may result in an imbalance that causes a lowering of the pH of the mouth.

Put differently: it makes your saliva more acidic.

Needless to say, that can cause its own problems for teeth. The research on this is still emerging, with regard to whether the benefits outweigh the problems, but the fact that it has this effect seems to be a consensus. Here’s an example paper; there are others:

Effects of Chlorhexidine mouthwash on the oral microbiome

Flossing, scraping, and alternatives

These are important (and varied, and interesting) enough to merit their own main feature, rather than squeezing them in at the end.

So, watch this space for a main feature on these soon!

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    If you’re already a seasoned plant-based athlete yourself, you can probably skip this book; the 60 recipes at the end would still provide value, but there is the “No Meat Athlete Cookbook” that you could hop straight to, in any case.

    For most readers, there will be plenty of value from start to finish. We get a quick ground-up tour of nutrition basics, before getting into restructuring diet to optimize it for performance.

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  • Banana vs Goji Berries – Which is Healthier?

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    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing banana to goji berries, we picked the goji berries.

    Why?

    Both are great! But…

    In terms of macros, goji berries have much more fiber, carbs, and protein, thus making it the most nutrient-dense option, as we might expect from a dried fruit being compared to a non-dried fruit—since the non-dried fruit has water weight that the dried fruit doesn’t, its percentages of other things will be proportionally lower, because the percentages must still add up to 100%, and if 75% is water (as is the case for bananas, compared to goji berries’ 7.5% water), then that only leaves 25% to work with, while goji berries have 92.5% to work with. In short, an easy and expected win for goji berries.

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    What Is The Cause?

    Zac Cupples’ video (below) makes an appealing claim: 90% of movement issues and discomforts we experience daily come from one source: reduced joint space due to increased muscle tension.

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    Well, if there’s just one cause, that means there is only one thing to fix

    Can This Be True?

    Whilst we normally stray away from oversimplifications, we found Cupples’ example quite powerful.

    Cupples defends his thesis by illustrating it with a simple wrist movement experiment: try moving your wrist in a circle with your palm open, and then do the same with your fist clenched.

    Did you notice a difference?

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    So How Do We Fix It?

    To combat issues with reduced joint space, Cupples proposes a three-step solution: reducing muscle tension, increasing range of motion in commonly limited areas, and enhancing movement efficiency. He delves into strategies for achieving these, including adopting certain positions and breathing techniques.

    There are also some elements of strategic muscle engagement, but we’ll leave that to him to describe:

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    Questions and Answers at 10almonds

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    This newsletter has been growing a lot lately, and so have the questions/requests, and we love that! In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

    As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

    So, no question/request too big or small

    How to get to sleep at night as fast and as naturally as possible? Thank you!

    We’ll definitely write more on that! You might like these articles we wrote already, meanwhile:

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