How to Tell if Your Oral Hygiene Products are Holistic or Not

Why do some oral hygiene products have crazy-sounding ingredients in them while others are made with natural ingredients?

And how does someone tell if the ‘natural’ sounding oral hygiene products are made with really safe ingredients?

Looking beyond profit margins and corporate darkness, how can some manufacturers actually think that their products are helping when they contain ingredients that are ‘questionable’ at best?

Today, let’s take a look at one of the underlying reasons why some oral health products are made with less-than-ideal ingredients.

We’ll also ‘teach you how to fish’ by sharing a strategy that you can use to evaluate potential oral hygiene products that you’re considering. That way, you can determine for yourself whether or not a product is going to optimally help you navigate to greater oral (and whole-being) health.

To begin, let’s discuss one of the top oral health myths in our culture as well as how this myth can affect the formulation process for an oral hygiene product.

The #1 oral health myth: ‘What goes in the mouth, stays in the mouth’

Many folks believe that we can use something in the mouth and as long as we don’t swallow it and we rinse afterwards, we won’t get any of this product into our system.

However, this isn’t true!

It’s been proven that when we put something into our mouths, it is absorbed into the bloodstream through the cheek and gum tissue. In fact, in some cases it’s absorbed FASTER this way than if we’d actually swallowed the product!

All throughout the healing world, we find real-life examples that counter this ‘isolated mouth’ myth.

For example, to stop angina, conventional medicine uses nitroglycerin that’s absorbed under the tongue.  Also, those of us who appreciate holistic medicine know the merits of sublingual (under the tongue) homeopathic remedies.

We believe that this mouth myth is related to our culture’s mental disconnect with our mouths.

In general, our culture tends to think that we can somehow treat the mouth separate from the rest of the body, and that products can be put into the mouth and kept away from the rest of the body. However, the mouth is the main pathway to introduce new ‘outside stuff’ into the body.

When you think about it this way, you can see how silly the myth really is.

So, with this myth clearly debunked, let’s look at why the quality of oral hygiene products can vary so much.

Oral hygiene product formulation

It depends on the mindset of the formula creators.

If they believe the myth, ‘what goes in the mouth, stays in the mouth’, then they’ll feel comfortable using ingredients in their oral hygiene products that, from our perspective, really don’t belong in living bodies.

On the other hand, if the creators of a formula realize that whenever we put something into our mouth, we are putting it into our body, then they’ll only use ingredients that support healthy, living systems.

So, when you read through the ingredients on an oral hygiene product, look to see if you can tell whether or not the creators of that formula still believe this myth. We have found that the majority of the products on the market have ingredients that really don’t belong in the body.

Here’s another way you can go about this process…

How to tell for yourself if a product is going to help you

After you read the ingredients for an oral hygiene product, ask yourself the following questions.

1. Would using these ingredients help improve the environment in my mouth? Are they going to assist me in balancing my oral flora?  In other words, would using this product help my mouth navigate to greater oral health?

If you get a yes when pondering this question, then ask question #2 below.

2. Would using these ingredients disrupt my ability to create an optimal whole-body immune response?

In the spirit of staying focused on solutions, we won’t call out any specific ingredients in this article.

However, you don’t have to look very far to find examples of ingredients that seem to help in the mouth but that have been proven to offer zero help (or even cause harm) ‘downstream’.  Then, of course, there are all of the ingredients that are simply used as fillers or to create crazy colors and flavors.

So, if you answer ‘no’ to either of these questions, you may want to pass on using that product in your mouth. Simply put, if we use a product in our mouth that disrupts our ability to create an optimal immune response, then we are taking one step forward and two steps back.

Our primary focus is to maximize our immune expression, and then create improvement in the mouth. If a product claims to provide support in the mouth but has ingredients that could undermine our immune potential, it was probably created from the mindset of believing the myth that what goes in the mouth, stays in the mouth.

As an example, let’s apply this two-step questioning to our OraWellness HealThy Mouth Blend.

Question 1: Would the HealThy Mouth Blend improve the mouth environment to support an individual in navigating to greater oral health?

Well, using the blend increases saliva production and raises the pH in the mouth, which supports a shift to a healthier oral microbiome balance and facilitates tooth remineralization.

Many customers have told us that using the blend has helped stop their bleeding gums (a very common sign of infection).

Customers also report that their dentists and hygienists tell them that their mouths are ‘boring’ to work in because of how little plaque accumulation they have on their teeth.

Dental literature states that specific essential oils in the HealThy Mouth Blend formula have a unique ability called ‘adhesion inhibition’. In other words, using the HealThy Mouth Blend makes it more difficult for thug bugs and plaque to stick to teeth and gums.

This is why we so commonly hear that folks love the very clean feeling of their teeth and gums after using our products, and it’s also why dentists find so little plaque in the mouths of OraWellness customers.

And finally, customers have reported to us that their dentists have told them that the active decay in their mouths has stopped. They credit this to using our blend.

As a side note, if you’d like additional support in your efforts to remineralize your teeth, we invite you to check out our Shine Remineralizing Tooth Whitening Powder.

You can also download our FREE eBook, How to Remineralize Your Teeth.

For more information on our blend, we invite you to read our articles, “What’s in the HealThy Mouth Blend? (and why is it so effective?)” and, “Are essential oils safe to use in the mouth?“. To us, the above examples already support a ‘yes’ answer to question one; using our OraWellness HealThy Mouth Blend will support the mouth to navigate to greater oral health.

So let’s ask question 2 and see what we find…

Question 2: Would the HealThy Mouth Blend disrupt our ability to optimize our immune response?

Well, the HealThy Mouth Blend is made from 100% organic ingredients. So, it contains no pesticides, genetically modified ingredients, or chemical fertilizers that would undermine our health.

It’s made from organic plant essences and an organic carrier oil (organic sweet almond oil for our Original blend and organic jojoba oil for our Nut-Free blend). Hmm, no chemical-sounding ingredients here.

There are no additives or harmful ingredients in the blend just to fill a tube.

It also has a balanced formula.  One of the core principles of the HealThy Mouth Blend is that it’s a balance between warming and cooling herbs.

Traditional medicines around the world recognize that if we use only warming or only cooling products, then we can cause imbalance in the body over time.  So years ago when we were formulating our blend, to ensure the safety of its long-term use, we made it a balanced formula that includes both warming and cooling plant essences.

Last, as the creators of the formula, we have over 30 years of experience studying the Chinese longevity arts, and we are very aware that the myth, ‘what goes in the mouth, stays in the mouth’ isn’t true!

I think we have clearly answered question 2 here as well.  Using the HealThy Mouth Blend isn’t going to disrupt our ability to maximize our immune expression.

I hope this simple two-question strategy helps you shake down the details about any oral hygiene product you’re considering.

Again, if a product claims to help in the mouth but doesn’t address the potential impact that it may have on the whole body, the formulators likely still believe the #1 oral hygiene myth, ‘what goes in the mouth, stays in the mouth’.

And of course, if you wanted to be super sure about the ingredients in your oral hygiene products, you could always create your own. Here’s a link to our article, “How to make a DIY remineralizing tooth powder (that really works)“.

Wrapping up…

If you find benefit from this information, please help us help others by sharing this article with your loved ones.

What about you–what do you think?  How do you see this cultural myth impact society?

And finally, if you want to have some fun, let’s hear about how the two questions in this article help you evaluate the oral hygiene products you have in your home!  Let’s keep it clean and not call out any brand or product names, but feel free to post ingredients in the comments below so we can all continue to learn from one another!

Helpful, Related Resources:

How to Stop Tooth Decay and Remineralize Your Teeth [FREE eBook]
So what exactly is ‘holistic oral health’ anyway? [article]
How to determine if a toothpaste ingredient is safe to use in the mouth? [article]
Debunking the 3 most common oral health myths (that undermine our oral health) [article]
How to Balance Your Oral Flora and Be a Good Conductor of the Symphony in Your Mouth [article]
HealThy Mouth Blend [product solution]
Shine Remineralizing Tooth Whitening Powder [product solution]
Tracking Your Saliva pH [article and free download]
What’s in the HealThy Mouth Blend? (and why is it so effective?) [article]
Are essential oils safe to use in the mouth? [article]
The HealThy Mouth Blend’s Long Road to Organic Certification [article]
How to make a DIY remineralizing tooth powder (that really works) [article]
5 Steps to a Healthy Mouth [[FREE video tutorial series]]