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The Diary Of A First Time Oil Puller

Alana Bracken |
October 1, 2014 | 4:49 p.m. PDT

Staff Reporter

"Oil pulling" with coconut oil can boost oral health. (Twitter, @giadaweekly)
"Oil pulling" with coconut oil can boost oral health. (Twitter, @giadaweekly)

A new craze sweeping health sites recently is a process called “oil pulling.” The name, which comes from the idea of natural oils “pulling” bacteria from the surface of the mouth, is an Ancient Indian medicinal practice that has been used for thousands of years. 

The toxins in one’s mouth dissolve into the oil, as they’re fat-soluble. In simpler terms, it’s using natural oils like sesame and coconut oils as mouthwash to increase oral health.

Celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and Shailene Woodley swear by the practice, saying it whitens their teeth and acts as a body detox. Lauren Conrad has even tried the craze.

I’ll be honest, I’ve never been one to hop on the bandwagon with offbeat health trends, but the benefits that oil pulling advertised were almost too good to ignore. Twenty minutes of my life each day to have a brighter smile and healthier mouth? It sounded good to me, especially since my experience with at-home whitening kits has always been a disaster.

Most websites or blogs I came across when researching oil pulling, though, only told me two things: the supposed benefits and the results, the before and after. But what about during the process? Personally, I wanted to know what it was like, considering I spent roughly twenty minutes staring at the gigantic scoop of coconut oil in my kitchen dreading what I was about to do.

So, ladies and gents, I give you… a play-by-play of a first-time oil pulling experience.

READ ALSO: Toothpaste And Other Unusual Allergy Treatments

First off, the staredown with my tablespoon happened because a heaping tablespoon of solid oil just doesn’t look pleasant at all. I ended up opting for a slightly smaller scoop, so I suggest if you’re trying out oil pulling for the first time, like me, to do the same (unless you like the feeling of your gag reflex). 

Now I don’t want to scare people off with this next statement, but I just want to clarify. When the websites say that coconut oil tastes the best out of all the options out there for oil pulling, they don’t mean that it tastes good. When I finally mustered up the courage to begin the process, the consistency of the solid oil for the first ten seconds of swishing was downright nauseating, but once it liquefied, it was bearable. Just don’t go expecting the taste of coconut milk or a Mounds Bar like I was. 

At five minutes, viciously swishing the oil between my teeth, I realized that I had checked the timer on my phone roughly thirty times, somehow expecting that the twenty minutes would magically be up the next time I looked. My jaw hurt like I had been chewing some cheap bubblegum, and I almost gave up.

Almost.

The process takes twenty minutes and can lead to a whiter smile. (Twitter, @lisa_fenwick_)
The process takes twenty minutes and can lead to a whiter smile. (Twitter, @lisa_fenwick_)

To kill a little more time (and distract myself from my aching jaw), I continued my research on oil pulling and found that many people experienced the same problems. One website, however, mentioned that the process should be pretty minimal effort, swishing the oil through your teeth only a few times a minute. And so, following the site’s orders, I spent the next fifteen minutes watching an episode of the Office (Season 3 Episode 21), occasionally swishing the coconut oil and almost forgetting that I was doing this oil-pulling thing in the first place.

When the twenty minutes were up, though, I had a slight headache. This can be a side effect of the detox process, as all the bad stuff the oil absorbs is concentrated in your head. Needless to say, I was ready to finish with the whole thing.

A key tip I found in twenty minutes of extra research: it is so important that you don’t spit the oil out in a sink. Remember that gross scoop of solid oil from twenty minutes ago? It will re-solidify in your pipes and cause you all sorts of trouble. Trust me, as weird as it seems, just flush the oil down the toilet or put it in the trash.

Once that mess was settled, I brushed my teeth, as instructed, and to my delight, my mouth felt the way it does after a teeth cleaning: polished and squeaky-clean. Obviously one time wasn’t going to give me a perfect white smile, but there was definitely progress.

Overall, oil pulling isn’t the most pleasant twenty minutes of my day. After two weeks of doing it religiously, however, I’ve seen definite improvements in my gum health, my smile is whiter and frankly I look forward to that fresh-from-the-dentist feeling I get after the whole process is done.

So even though oil pulling is initially weird to experience, the benefits are pretty true to hearsay and worth trying out.

Reach Staff Reporter Alana Bracken here and follow her on Twitter here.



 

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