Your microbiome orchestrates MANY functions in your body. For example, peroxide will kill bacteria forming in a wound. But if you use it continuously, the wound will heal more slowly. Why? Because the peroxide kills pathogens and the beneficial organisms on the skin that help with healing.
Your gut has beneficial organisms, commensal organisms (they are not known to cause harm or benefits), and pathogens. When the beneficial organisms are destroyed, disease often follows.
There are organisms - of each of the 3 types - essentially everywhere in your body. Treatments may ultimately be beneficial. However, health is a balancing act (a risk/benefit consideration). The goal is always to do more harm than good. Oops - that's from Fauci.
Our goal is always to do more GOOD than harm!
Dr. Nathan Bryan, world expert on nitric oxide, the substances that play a significant role in regulating the health of your vessels, has shown that common mouthwashes harm the beneficial microbiome of your mouth. This short video is his "tell-all."
I frequently recommend "advanced" mouthwashes and rinses, including dioxi-rinse, which contains low levels of chlorine dioxide. I also recommend oil pulling and water flossing with an iodine solution. Some famous doctors recommend weak solutions of peroxide.
Based on this information, I continue to recommend these washes and rinses, but I caution against daily use until we learn more.
Dr. Thomas Lokengard, our dynamic biological dentist, indicates that the process of forming a harmful biofilm that leads to dental "tarter" takes 3-5 days to start forming after a thorough cleaning. Therefore, it makes sense to rinse based on this information. Prudence suggests that doing a mouthwash or rinse with an oxidizing substance should only be done every 5 days or so.
I remain an advocate of oil pulling, salt water rinsing and gargling, the dioxi rinse, and iodine water flossing - but not daily. Although salt, being the most natural, may be ok daily. I also believe daily water flossing with plain or slightly alkaline water (add some baking soda) is ok for daily use.
I suggest you have a container of water with baking soda readily available and use this as a rinse you use after consuming anything acidic like junk food, citrus, or even apple cider vinegar. The acid in your mouth harms enamel and promotes pathogens like yeast and bacteria. Doing a quick rinse more than once daily is a good and safe practice.
Other references:
Full text of press release from Dr. Nathan Bryan...
HOUSTON, TX., March 1, 2019 … A new paper underscores that the importance of creating and maintaining healthy bacteria in the mouth is an essential step in understanding how oral health affects systemic disease. These data suggest that management of the tongue microbiome by regular cleaning together with adequate dietary intake of nitrate provide an opportunity for the improvement of resting blood pressure.
The paper appears today in Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology.
Nathan, Bryan, PHD, said, “Nitric oxide is one of the most important signaling molecules produced in the human body. As NO is a ubiquitous signaling molecule, the systemic effects of orally produced bacteria may have other significant effects on human health beyond maintenance of blood pressure. We know one cannot be well without an adequate amount of NO circulating throughout the body. Yet, the very first thing over 200 million Americans do each day is use an antiseptic mouthwash, which destroys the ‘good bacteria’ that helps to create the NO. These once thought good habits may be doing more harm than good.
“The demonstration that the presence of NO producing bacteria in the oral cavity can help maintain normal blood pressure gives us another target to help the more than 100 million Americans living with high blood pressure. Manipulation of the human microbiome as a therapeutic target for disease management is on the near horizon.
Screening the oral microbiome of resistant hypertensive patients may provide new insights into the etiology of their hypertension. Two out of three patients prescribed high blood pressure medication do not have their blood pressure adequately managed. This may provide an explanation as to why. None of the currently FDA approved drugs for management of hypertension are targeted towards these NO producing bacteria.”
“There is enormous interest and research in the microbiome but most of the focus in on the gut microbiome. It is time we focus on the most proximal part of our gastrointestinal system, the mouth. The oral cavity is an attractive target for probiotic and/or prebiotic therapy because of the ease of access. The potential to restore the oral flora to provide NO production is a completely new paradigm for NO biochemistry and physiology as well as to cardiovascular medicine and dentistry.
These studies provide new insights into the host-oral microbiome symbiotic relationship. If we are going to make a leap forward in health, we need to take another look at boosting oral health as it relates to NO production and the role it plays in disease or find safe and effective therapeutic strategies to recapitulate NO production in the oral cavity, he said.”
This is the first longitudinal next-generation sequencing study demonstrating the impact of oral hygiene on the composition of the tongue microbiome. Regular tongue cleaning is recommended by the American Dental Association based on evidence that cleaning can reduce the severity of halitosis; however, there are no epidemiological data on tongue cleaning practices or frequency in the United States population.
Bryan is credited with a multitude of significant discoveries in Nitric Oxide function, production and metabolism, and has published extensively in peer-reviewed scientific journals in the field. He’s an inventor who has been awarded more than a dozen US and International patents related to his discoveries on Nitric Oxide. Dr. Bryan is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Baylor College of Medicine in the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics and has authored or edited 6 books on nitric oxide.
Index & Upcoming (short) blogs on cholesterol and statins
Number 1: Cholesterol fun (true) facts - completed
Number 2: Is the actual cholesterol molecule important? c - completed
Number 3: What is an optimal TC value? Remember, no one knows their actual cholesterol molecule value. - completed
Number 4: Surprising fact about cholesterol as an antibiotic - completed
Number 5: TC simple math - dumb doctors - completed
Number 6: What is LDL really? - completed
Number 7: Statins - do they lower the cholesterol molecule? - completed
Number 8: What did we learn from the new "biologics" to lower "cholesterol" - completed
Number 9: Niacin and other "cholesterol" management treatments - completed
Number 10: What did Natasha Campbell-McBride say about cholesterol/lipids? - completed
Number 11: What is a QALY, and how does it relate to "cholesterol"? - completed
Number 12: Idiot doctor from Johns Hopkins, Roger Blumenthal
Number 13: Statin drugs CAUSE diabetes
Number 14: Who says statins do NOT extend life?
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Very interesting! You will never hear this example from your doctor. It hits home because we all have probably overused peroxide at one point. "…peroxide will kill bacteria forming in a wound. But if you use it continuously, the wound will heal more slowly. Why? Because the peroxide kills pathogens and the beneficial organisms on the skin that help with healing”.