Oil Pulling?

Okay, I am sure you have all been hearing about oil pulling around the news and social media sites. I had never heard of it until last week. My guess is it's one of those fads that people totally get into and before we know it, something else will be taking it's spot in the top news.

But, I, of course, had to look into it, especially since that very week I was on my 3-day fix where I had to drink one teaspoon of coconut oil four times each of those days. I was curious if what I was doing was this "oil pulling" thing.

Turns out it wasn't, but I thought I would share with all of you what I learned about this new sensation. Ready? ;)

Apparently this isn't a new thing. Oil pulling has been around for years.

So what is it? 

It's an age-old remedy used to detoxify and clean teeth and gums using natural substances. You take the oil and swish it around in your mouth anywhere from 5 minutes minimum to 20 minutes maximum, without swallowing it. {I don't know about you, but I definitely don't have time to swish around something in my mouth for 20 minutes, not to mention I about gag at the thought of having something in my mouth that long!} Because of the "stickiness" of the oil, the supposed purpose is to get the bacteria from your mouth stuck in the oil and then dissolve it. "They" say when you spit it out, if it's yellow, it worked.

And why would you consider doing it?

Besides the fact that this would actually be quite inexpensive, I found there were actually many pros to this new fad. This picture has many of them listed here and it's much more eye-appealing than me listing each of them one-by-one, so I thought I would just share it.

{Source}

After going through so many sources, I can't remember where I saw this, but I do remember reading that oil pulling can help reduce the chances of dementia. I thought that was interesting. Whether or not that's true, I don't know. Extensive research has not been done on oil pulling but there have been a handful of studies.

What are the negatives?

I guess I can't imagine there would be anything negative about swishing coconut oil (or if you prefer olive, sunflower or organic sesame oil) around in your mouth, other than the fact that 20 minutes seems like an extremely long time if you chose to do the max., but coconut oil isn't harmful so you could always try. ;)

If you do, or if you have, I would love for you to comment below and share your experience.

If you haven't, what do you think… would you try this?