“Can I use the HealThy Mouth Blend and Shine together?”

Thank you for all of the positive feedback from everyone regarding the milestone of getting our HealThy Mouth Blend certified organic!  In the many ‘congrats’ emails we received, we had a handful of people ask us to share how we use our HealThy Mouth Blend and Shine together.

So, today let’s explore two helpful, high-level oral health principles and how they influence how Susan and I use the HealThy Mouth Blend and Shine to optimize our own oral health.

First, in the spirit of transparency, thanks to the research we do in order to provide you with helpful solutions, interviewing experts in the field, and sharing ideas with professional friends, we are constantly learning new ideas and strategies.

We expect that our viewpoints will continue to grow and evolve.  So, this article serves as our current ‘best practices’ for using these products together.

The “think global, act local” principle…

Through the years, we have come to see that there are different perspectives or ‘high level’ ways to view what we’re trying to achieve while walking this path to optimal oral health.

The first perspective we have found very helpful for many years is what we call the ‘global/local’ point of view.

Being of a holistic background, we find it very helpful to be able to address issues from both a ‘local’ and a ‘global’ approach.

When applying this concept to navigating our path to optimal oral health, the global approach is to support our whole being immune response via healthy diet, healthy exercise habits, restful sleep, etc.

Essentially, taking a global approach is incorporating anything that’s generally going to assist us to feel better, support our immunity, and live a healthier (& happier) life.

So, global solutions to greater oral health are habits like eating a savory breakfast, limiting how many times we consume sweet snacks (particularly between meals), knowing what foods support as well as what foods undermine our oral health, and many other lifestyle-based healthy habits.

Notice that none of these global solutions involve action that is taken directly in the mouth.

Instead, they support greater oral health by raising the bar of our overall health.

The ‘local’ approach to oral health…

In contrast, the ‘local’ approach is to address our oral health needs specifically from within the mouth.

Strategies that support this local or ‘in the mouth’ approach include healthy habits like oil pulling, knowing how to brush your teeth to reduce gum disease, how to floss consciously and not damage your gums, and many other strategies we explore here.

Incidentally, if you’re interested in both these strategies as they relate to living a cavity-free life, we encourage you to grab your copy of our best attempt to put all this info together in our FREE eBook, How to Stop Tooth Decay and Remineralize Your Teeth.  This free resource is loaded with helpful insights.

With this two-pronged, local/global approach in place, let’s turn our attention to another high-level principle that helps us navigate to optimal oral health.

Navigating the biological/chemical complex of the mouth

One of the principles we wrote about in the article ‘how to balance your oral flora’ is this idea that when trying to optimize any environment, we must address both the biological aspect AND the chemical aspect in that ecosystem.

Any attempt to optimally ‘tend to the organic garden’ must take into consideration the fact that the ecosystem has multiple dimensions. Every living system is teeming with life, the biology in that system. And all the biology is made up of (and relies on) chemistry.

And like we discuss in ‘How to be a good conductor of the symphony in our mouths’, if we treat a complex biological ecosystem like it’s only a chemical matrix, we miss the opportunity to really optimally care for the system.

This is what commonly happens with oral health products that use ingredients that aren’t honoring the life, the biological aspect, of our oral microbiomes. They ultimately miss the mark to help us optimize our oral health.

Here is how we have interpreted this principle when it comes to oral health:

1. We address the biology and rebalance the oral microbiome.
2. We address the chemistry and remineralize the teeth.

While a bit overly simplistic, our HealThy Mouth Blend helps us rebalance the oral microbiome and Shine helps us with remineralization.

In truth, they each play a role in both steps. You really can’t separate the biology and chemistry. However, each product solution is designed to have a primary and secondary job.

In this regard, our HealThy Mouth Blend primarily supports a rebalancing of the biology. And obviously, Shine’s primary intent is to support the chemistry of remineralization.

So, how do we use the HealThy Mouth Blend and Shine together?

There are several ways you can use these product solutions in conjunction with each other.

The first step is awareness. We have to know or at least have a sense of what’s going on in our mouth.

Once you have an idea of what’s going on in your mouth, you can use these tools as needed.

For example, do you commonly have bleeding gums or sore, swollen gum tissue but tend to not have lots of cavities or sensitive teeth? In this case, we would suggest using the HealThy Mouth Blend more frequently (to help establish a healthier biological balance) and use Shine less often.

Only through becoming aware of what our current needs are in our mouths can we really have any chance to optimize our oral health.

“Can I use the HealThy Mouth Blend and Shine together?”

Definitely! In fact, we sometimes use both products together for our own oral health routines.

After all, both products have their point of focus. And both products help support the job of the other.

That said, you don’t have to use them together as we’ll explain next…

How we use the HealThy Mouth Blend and Shine in our own oral health routines…

For full disclosure, Susan and I each use the products differently based on what we feel is going on in our mouths.

We encourage you to do the same.

Become the MVP (most valuable person) in your journey to optimal oral (and whole being) health.

How Will uses the HealThy Mouth Blend and Shine…

More often than not, I tend to use the products individually. How I decide what product I’m going to use (or use them together) is simply a quick feel of what’s going on for me.

Here are some of the questions I ask myself…

Do I have any spots on my gums that are sensitive?
How are my teeth feeling? Any sensitivity recently?
Are my teeth looking a little dingy? (Thank you, blueberries.)
Have I been eating more sweet foods recently?
Do I feel more or less plaque on my teeth?

With this, I’ll throttle between the products, using them as I feel I need what each of them helps me achieve.

In general, I find that I use the HealThy Mouth Blend and Shine each once a day. But that’s me. I don’t have any active infections brewing in my gum pockets and haven’t had a cavity in several years now (knock on wood).

I find that using each product once daily provides me the maintenance support I need to continue along my path to optimal oral health.

Sometimes, I’ll use both products together.

To do this, I put 2 drops of HealThy Mouth Blend on my Bass toothbrush, then put a scoop of Shine in the palm of my hand. Then I do the ‘dip, brush, re-dip’ technique we show in the ‘How to Use Shine’ video that you can see if you scroll down on the Shine product page.

How Susan uses the products…

I use both the Healthy Mouth Blend and Shine daily (well, almost).  Some days I only use one or the other.   I really do appreciate the taste and clean feeling in my mouth after using the HealThy Mouth Blend, so I tend to brush in the morning with the blend and Shine in the evening.

As Will said, if I ever have a sore spot on my gums or a bump erupts on my tongue. I’ll put a drop of blend on my finger and massage it. I also love to gargle as I feel it clears my throat and stimulates my vagus nerve. So I put a drop of Blend in a small amount of water to gargle daily.  I’ll gargle a short melody to make it fun.  I think Will enjoys hearing me. 🙂

I have tight junctions in between my teeth, so I floss daily.  If I have any gum tenderness, I will use a drop of HealThy Mouth Blend on the floss like we show in the video “How to floss and not damage your gums”.

A new favorite habit of mine is to floss while I have Shine in my mouth to ensure that I get some Shine/saliva solution in between my tight molars.  It can get messy, so I hold a dry washcloth in my hands when I do this.

Since I’ve started using Shine, I love the way my teeth feel when I use it.

I’ve always been sensitive to and aware of how my teeth are feeling and how different foods affect the feeling in my teeth. Acidic foods, especially pineapple, can really hurt (and we used to live right next door to a pineapple farm).  Brushing with Shine gives my teeth a strong, solid feeling, like my teeth are denser or have more protection on them.

After I’ve brushed for a few minutes, I like to swish the leftover Shine/saliva solution around my teeth before I spit. Then after that I will gargle with a drop of HealThy Mouth Blend.

So that’s how we each use the HealThy Mouth Blend and Shine together to help us.

How do you use our products to optimize your oral health?

Please share your strategies in the comments below so we can all continue to learn from one another.

Until next time, may your healthy smile continue to bless your life and the lives of those around you!

Love and Aloha!

Will and Susan

Helpful, Related Resources

OraWellness Free Resource Guides [FREE eBooks]
OraWellness Expert Interview Library [FREE expert interviews]
How to find the healthiest diet for YOU [article]
The connection between receding gums, chronic fatigue and sleep issues [expert interview]
How to reverse tooth decay with diet [article]
What is oil pulling? [article]
How to brush your teeth to reduce gum disease [article]
How to avoid the 4 most common flossing mistakes [article]
How to balance your oral flora [article]
The first step to dental self empowerment [article with FREE download]