Oil Pulling to Strengthen Your Health

Detoxify Your Mouth – and Entire Body – with an Ancient Ayurvedic Remedy “Oil Pulling”

Oil pulling is reviving itself to become a popular remedy to improve oral health, reverse chronic conditions and embrace overall well-being.

This easy and refreshingly simple technique involves swishing oils around in your mouth for 15-20 minutes daily.

By “pulling” from sunflower, sesame, coconut oil or olive oil, you experience an astonishing detoxifying effects. It is inexpensive and therapy you can do at home. Oil pulling benefits include:

• Clear skin conditions
• Cure gingivitis
• Decrease grey hair
• Facilitate weight loss
• Reverse arthritis

The impact of this remarkable therapy begins with its ability to foster a far cleaner, healthier mouth. By vastly improving your oral health, oil pulling benefits can have a tremendous and unexpected positive impact on your total well-being.

Link Between Oral Health and Overall Health

Oral health is a silent factor in millions of American deaths each year. In 2000, the Surgeon General of the United States issued a report, Oral Health in America, calling attention to the strong link between poor oral hygiene, overall health and onset of life-threatening diseases.

Millions of bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites and other toxins live and breed in the mouth. The dreaded candida virus, as well as streptoccocus, produces toxic waste in the mouth that causes gum disease and tooth decay, eventually debilitating the body’s defenses against disease and other health problems.

When you start to suffer from stress, poor dietary choices and toxins from food and air, your mouth releases destructive toxins into your body and immune system. Unfortunately, these secondary toxins generate infections, chronic inflammation and other health problems when overburdened. The diseases and conditions affected by oral health include (from Mayo clinic):

• Alzheimer’s disease
• Cardiovascular disease
• Diabetes
• Eating disorders
• Endocarditis (infection of the inner lining of the heart)
• HIV/AIDS
• Immune system disorders
• Osteoporosis
• Premature birth and low birth weight

Oil Pulling is Ancient Eastern Remedy Revisited Revived by Western Doctors

Traditionally, oil pulling was known in Ayurvedic medicine as “oil gargling.”

But in the early 1990s, one Ukrainian physician Dr. F. Karach, believed that you could cure everything from heart disease to hormone problems (and everything in between) by oil pulling. In fact, Karach cured his own chronic blood disorder and arthritis with oil pulling.

In modern medicine, Dr. Bruce Fife is known as a oil pulling enthusiast and writes about it his book, Oil Pulling Therapy: Detoxifying and Healing the Body Through Oral Cleansing.

“The first thing that most people notice when they start oil pulling is an improvement in their oral health,” says Dr. Fife. “Teeth become whiter, breath becomes fresher, and the tongue and gums take on a healthy pink color. Even problems such as bleeding gums, tooth decay, and gum disease are greatly diminished or completely healed.”
Dr. Karach likes to use sunflower oil for oil pulling, but Dr. Fife prefers coconut oil for oil pulling.  Nonetheless, the oil pulling method is similar: swishing oil in the mouth and “pulling” it through your teeth for about 15-20 minutes.

Think of oil pulling the same way oil cleans your car engine. Engine oil picks up dirt and grime and pulls the debris out with it when it’s drained. As a result, your engine is cleaner, runs smoother, and works longer.

Oil pulling has the same effect on the body. It “pulls” toxins and bacteria from your mouth and body. By expelling these harmful substances, you will improve your health so that you, too, can “run” better for longer.

Oil Pulling is a Natural Healer and Detoxifer

Dr. Fife describes oil pulling benefits as “one of the most remarkable methods of detoxification and healing” he’s encountered over the course of his career as a naturopathic physician.

Rather than detox with juice fasts, herbs, pills and other bowel-loosening methods, oil pulling is cheap, practical effortless and completely harmless!  No unpleasant toilet experiences.  No expensive detox “programs.” Well-being benefits.

“All you are doing is rinsing your mouth out with vegetable oil—a food,” Fife reminds patients. “You’re not even swallowing the oil. What can be more benign than that?”

Oil pulling is completely safe, without any harmful side effects and produces many health benefits, such as:

• Alleviated PMS symptoms
• Clearer complexion
• Decreased migraine headaches
• Elimination of allergies
• Fewer asthma symptoms
• Healthy, pink gums
• Improved or reversed arthritis
• Improved sleep cycle
• Increased energy
• Less sinus congestion
• More regular menstrual cycles
• Whiter, straighter teeth

Regardless of what health condition you are in, oil pulling is safe and simple.  Even the most serious health condition can improve with consistent oil pulling treatment.

How to Practice Oil Pulling

Ayurvedic practice of oil pulling uses unrefined, cold-pressed sunflower or sesame seed oil. Today’s experts use unrefined oils such as coconut oil or olive oil, which is actually more effective for certain health conditions.  Of course, coconut oil tastes good, too!

Nutrition expert and health writer Elizabeth Walling provides these tips for trying oil pulling:

• Oil pulling should be done on an empty stomach immediately after waking up.
• Use about 1 tablespoon of oil.
• If desired, a drop or two of an essential or healing oil like oregano can be added (available at natural health stores).
• Swish the oil slowly, try to reach every region of your mouth.
• Be careful not to swallow the oil, which will become very thin and foamy as you swish.
• After 20 minutes has elapsed, spit out the oil and rinse your mouth with pure water.
• Brush teeth with a natural toothpaste.

If you are combating a particular health condition, then it is recommended you practice oil pulling every day.  However, it can be done as often as you’d like in pursuit of outstanding detoxification, overall health and well-being.