Billions of people worldwide rely on toothpaste to keep their teeth and gums healthy.
You might be extremely pleased that companies have managed to come up with such a complicated toothpaste; you might think that such a complicated formula must work excellently…
…but what if I told you that your beloved toothpaste brand is actually making your acne worse?
What if I told you that you can create your own simple toothpaste using only two ingredients, which will not only be safer for your skin but will also be excellent for your teeth?
Read on and discover the truth…
The problem with toothpaste
The basic problem is that many of the substances in toothpaste are highly inflammatory and thus make your acne worse. The average bar of toothpaste contains all sorts of different ingredients. It contains the fluoride that is supposed to help your teeth, it contains foaming agents, it contains flavourings, it contains stabilisers, it contains preservatives; the list is endless.
You only have to look on the back of a toothpaste box to find a staggeringly large range of nonsensical items. Many of the chemicals are not fit for human consumption. In scientific studies they have toxic effects on animals, yet for some reason are included in toothpaste anyway.
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The biggest problem with all these chemicals is that they add to chronic inflammation. If you’re a regular reader of this website, you’ll know that chronic inflammation is a state where your body pumps out far too many inflammatory chemicals. That is extremely bad for acne because when your body unleashes its inflammatory response against acne bacteria (p .acnes), the response will be far too powerful and that causes red, swollen, and painful acne to develop.
We talk about tackling inflammation all the time here and that’s because it’s utterly critical for clearing your acne. In the modern world, sources of inflammation lurk everywhere; basically, any substance your body sees as a threat can trigger a release of inflammatory chemicals and thus crank up the overall activity of your immune system.
This applies to many of the chemicals in toothpaste, some of which are…
Fluoride – the grandfather of unhealthy toothpaste ingredients. Fluoride has received a lot of attention recently for its health destroying properties, such as brain damage, hormone disruption, and sleep prevention. The one we are concerned with is its powerful ability to cause inflammation, which is shown by this study, this study, and this study. Using a fluoride-enriched toothpaste twice a day will add substantially to your level of inflammation.
Sodium lauryl sulphate – one of the worst substances in toothpaste. This ingredient is not added to toothpaste to help your teeth. Instead it is designed to help toothpaste foam up in your mouth in the way that we all know and love. The idea is that this will trick you into thinking that the toothpaste works.
Sodium lauryl sulphate is notorious for the inflammation it can cause; this study found that small concentrations of sodium lauryl sulphate were enough to trigger an inflammatory response, and other studies have found the same. That’s the kind of substance you don’t want to have on your body full-stop, let alone in your mouth.
Formaldehyde – this substance is extremely useful for killing bacteria in your mouth, but is also extremely useful for causing cancer. It is known for its inflammatory effects (see this study) and swallowing too much can easily kill you. Formaldehyde is not as common in toothpastes as it was but nevertheless, it is still there.
Titanium dioxide – an extremely white substance that is used in toothpaste to give it its colour. It’s also used in white paint to give that its colour. Titanium dioxide is not poisonous but ingesting it has been shown to cause inflammation in several studies.
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Many, many more – toothpastes are full of all sorts of other damaging chemicals. Do all of them cause inflammation? We don’t know for sure, because they haven’t all been tested thoroughly but given the harmful effects of the others I certainly don’t recommend them. Toothpaste also contains some pretty strange ingredients such as chalk and seaweed (although that’s actually quite healthy).
So as you can see, the average toothpaste is not something you want in your body. The average man encounters tons of inflammation in his daily life; he eats inflammatory foods such as sugar, he eats inflammatory ingredients like trans-fats, and plastic containers and tin cans are loaded with inflammatory chemicals such as BPA.
By removing unhealthy toothpastes you won’t cure this inflammation, far from it, but you will be able to bring it down a notch or two.
You might also be wondering why this is a problem, after all you don’t swallow toothpaste and you certainly don’t eat it as a snack. The problem is that as you brush your teeth you inevitably swallow small amounts of toothpaste without realising it.
The tissues and membranes in your mouth are also excellent at absorbing chemicals. They’re designed to absorb vitamins and minerals from foods, healthy substances that you need, but in this instance it’s chemicals that go directly to your bloodstream.
The reason that toothpaste companies have no problem with using dubious substances is that theoretically, you’re not going to eat them. But that’s not the case at all.
How to really clean your teeth
If you’re reading this with a heavy heart, imagining that you’ll have to lose all your teeth in order to have clear skin, then don’t worry. There is a simple method to clean your teeth without any of these damaging ingredients.
The ingredients are cold-pressed coconut oil and good old baking soda. All you have to do is mix the two together to form a paste, and then brush your teeth with it. Here’s how it works…
Baking soda – this is a strongly alkaline ingredient. Much of the daily damage to your teeth is due to acids and baking soda will neutralise them, thus preventing enamel erosion and decay. Baking soda has effective antibacterial properties (according to this study), and it leaves an interesting and pleasant taste in your mouth when you use it.
Coconut oil – coconut oil is strongly antibacterial and thus, quite obviously, it will destroy the bacteria that can damage your enamel. It also functions as a carrier for the baking soda; baking soda is difficult to use on its own but is very easy to use if you mix it with coconut oil.
This system is very easy to use and is backed up by solid science. I brush my teeth in this way twice per day and all was well at my most recent dental check-up. My gums are lot pinker and less inflamed compared to when I was using a normal toothpaste, which makes sense given the inflammatory chemicals in most toothpastes.
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The most important thing is that these ingredients will not add to inflammation and they won’t cause acne in any way.
Here are a few tips: when you do this it’s best if you melt the coconut oil first as this makes it a lot easier to judge the ingredients. If you attempt to use semi solid coconut oil then it is very difficult to know if you have enough baking soda. You know that the balance is right when it forms a paste similar in texture to regular toothpaste.
Use plenty of the mixture; you will need a bit more for one brush than you would need for a regular toothpaste. Also note that this will not foam up in your mouth like a traditional toothpaste, but that doesn’t mean that it’s ineffective.
Do you have to poison yourself with fluoride?
You might be worried that your teeth will rot away without fluoride, but they won’t at all. Fluoride may have some benefit for your teeth, but to say that you need it is ridiculous. If fluoride was really so important for healthy teeth then every animal you see in the wild would have none.
What you really need to do is address the root causes of tooth decay. You can reduce your sugar consumption, which is generic but accurate advice, and also get proper nutrition such as vitamin C, calcium (to form the bones), vitamin D (to let your body use calcium), and vitamin K2 (to send the calcium to the right place). You need to avoid too many acidic foods like whole grains and nuts (unless you soak them beforehand).
Fluoride is also linked to all sorts of health problems such as male infertility and brain damage, so I wouldn’t recommend it even if it was a miracle.
In fact I strongly recommend that you avoid fluoride across your whole life and we will discuss this further in a future article (update: here’s the article).
Conclusion
The point is that there’s no need for you to use a toothpaste with such inflammatory ingredients when there are far healthier ways for you to maintain healthy teeth. Baking soda and coconut oil will do the trick nicely and you’ll be free from an extra source of inflammation in your life.
As we discussed earlier, avoiding toothpaste will not cure your acne, but it’s one extra strategy in our all-important quest to reduce chronic inflammation. Finally, baking soda has some pretty strong teeth whitening qualities. I haven’t noticed this myself, but numerous other people have.
Therefore if you use this toothpaste for a few months, not only will your skin get clearer, but you might astound your friends with a blindingly white set of teeth.
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Thanks for reading!