Monthly Archives: November 2021

How to Get Rid of Canker Sores Naturally

Have you ever had a spot inside your mouth, perhaps on the inside of your cheek or tongue, that was painful and white? Most likely, this was a canker sore.

For some people, it can be difficult to get rid of canker sores quickly and naturally.

Here are some easy-to-apply solutions that anyone can use to help quickly get rid of canker sores.

Canker sores also called aphthous ulcers, are small, shallow sores on the inside of the mouth. They appear most commonly on the inner cheek, the tongue surface, and even the gum tissue.

These painful open sores tend to have a reddish inflamed ring around the sensitive white inner surface.

To understand how to naturally get rid of canker sores, it’s helpful to first briefly discuss the circumstances that provoke their creation. That way, we can try to avoid them going forward.

Western medicine hasn’t discovered the root cause of canker sores yet. However, it has identified several contributing factors that can increase the risk of developing these pesky sores.

Main triggers…

The main triggers for canker sores include:

• Nutrient deficiency
• Stress
• Acidic foods
• Trauma to cheek from biting it, braces, or ill-fitting dentures
• Food intolerances or allergies
• Gut malabsorption issues
• Poor oral hygiene 

As you can see, canker sores show up when the body is under some form of stress, whether that’s psychological, nutritional, or physical trauma.

What can be done to get rid of canker sores quickly? 

Navigating the path to optimal oral health often involves applying strategies both ‘in the mouth’ and the form of ‘whole body immune support’.

Getting rid of canker sores is no different.

Below you’ll find several ‘in the mouth’ and system-wide strategies to help you along your path.

We start with some simpler strategies. If you want to ‘step up your game’ when it comes to addressing and preventing canker sores (or if you’re motivated by some serious pain from recurring flare-ups) you may want to try some of the later ideas as well.

1. Keep your mouth clean. 

Health-giving oral hygiene is about balancing our oral flora and keeping the mouth clean, but not sterile.

The goal isn’t to create a ‘scorched earth’ effect and eradicate all microbes in the mouth (after all, some of them help to support our health!).

Instead, we’re trying to use oral hygiene products and strategies that help reduce the risk of ‘thug bugs’ colonizing in the mouth. Why? These thug bugs are implicated with issues like tooth decay and gum disease, and they also encourage an acidic oral pH, which slows the healing of canker sores.

Learning how to brush your teeth, floss consciously, and clean your tongue are all excellent strategies to reduce the thug bug numbers and support optimal oral health.

It’s also important to only use products with ingredients that are designed to help support, heal, and soothe (without any fillers, coloring, or other junk that might wind up irritating the mouth and/or body).

Another (ancient) strategy that helps maintain a clean mouth and encourages a balanced oral pH is oil pulling. We dedicated an entire article to this oral hygiene strategy that has stood the test of time: How oil pulling helps improve oral health and whole-body wellness.

If you’d like to take a deeper dive on oil pulling, when you should or shouldn’t do it, and how to do it properly, we invite you to download our FREE Ultimate Oil Pulling Guidebook here.

2.  Eat consciously. 

If you have a particular spot where you tend to regularly chomp on your cheek (which can easily become a canker sore afterward), be sure you increase your awareness while chewing.

Eating while reading or while watching TV are common ways to increase your risk of accidentally biting your cheek (or tongue–OUCH).

Once the tissue is traumatized by a chomp, the risk of developing a canker sore in that area goes up substantially.

3. Reduce acidic foods. 

Speaking of eating, reducing acidic foods can help create a more balanced oral pH, which can help canker sores to heal.

I have to be conscious when a plate of ripe pineapple is in the house, as I’ve found that if I eat more than a few chunks, my risk of canker sores goes way up.

If you like to consume naturally acidic foods for their alkalinizing benefit in the body, we invite you to check out our article on how to drink kombucha and not destroy your teeth. In it, we share tips for how to benefit from naturally acidic foods (like lemon water or apple cider vinegar) without creating damage in the mouth.

4. Cut your sugar intake WAY back.

Sugar consumption can play a role in canker sores and a bunch of other whole-body issues. It contributes to nutritional deficiency, raises stress by increasing blood sugar fluctuation, causes the mouth pH to be acidic, and directly undermines our body’s ability to heal itself.

This is especially the case when it comes to sweet, between-meal snacks (and beverages!)–they spike your blood sugar and suppress our hunger sensations for real nourishment (which, over time, makes us more nutritionally deficient).

If you have to pick just one action from this list, cut the sweets.

5. Eliminate wheat and other gluten-containing foods from your diet. 

Researchers have found a very interesting correlation between semi-regular canker sores, IBD (irritable bowel disorder), and celiac disease.

A canker sore is an ulcer in the mouth, and the mouth is the start of the digestive tract.

So, it makes sense that if you are sensitive to gluten (as is the case for people with either IBD or celiac), then canker sores in the mouth might be a sign of what’s happening ‘downstream’ in the small intestine.

Wrapping up…

If you get canker sores fairly regularly, take note of the triggers that seem to stress your system.

Once you identify foods or other potential imbalance-causing stimuli, you can avoid these triggers and help prevent painful canker sores from erupting again.

https://orawellness.com/how-to-get-rid-of-canker-sores-naturally/

How to avoid the 4 most common flossing mistakes?

We all get that flossing is good for our oral health.

Research even shows that flossing helps reduce our risk of heart disease and other big hitters.

But did you know that flossing, if done incorrectly, could harm your oral health and even undermine your whole body health, too? 

Here are 4 common flossing mistakes and some tips on how to floss correctly so you can avoid these costly errors that can undermine your health.

Flossing mistake #1: Zombie flossing

The first mistake most of us make while flossing is to just go through the routine without paying attention to what we’re doing or what the floss can tell us about the current state of our oral health.

We talk a lot about the importance of bringing awareness to our oral hygiene habits. We coined the term ‘conscious flossing‘ many years ago to describe this idea that we can bring more awareness to such a mundane habit as flossing our teeth.

The problems with flossing unconsciously (zombie flossing) are that we don’t gather the precious information that can be gained from ‘reading’ the used floss segments, and we stand to cause all sorts of damage by using an incorrect flossing technique.

So, let’s start by paying a little attention while we floss. Yes, we do sometimes floss while doing other things, like watching a movie. But we can still pay attention to what our flossing session tells us.

The solution to zombie flossing

Simply pay attention to any colors and smells that appear on the segment of floss that was used between two teeth.

Rather than ‘snap and run’ to the next pair of teeth, take a moment to ‘read the floss’ and see what’s going on between the two teeth you just flossed around. Do you have any color on the used floss segment? Does it smell? Did you have color/smell here the last time you flossed?

Paying just a little attention to what our floss tells us about any potential infection between two teeth (especially molars!) can be a very helpful first line of defense; we can use this information to take action and stop any gum infection from growing.

Flossing mistake #2: Using too little floss

Ok, we are a pretty thrifty family. We reuse plastic bags and tend to hoard glass bottles.

But when it comes to flossing, we each use at least 18″ per session. Here’s why…

Have you ever been doing your flossing routine and gotten to the last few teeth but have run out of floss? So you just ‘back up’ a few winds from your ‘used floss finger’ and finish up, right?

Well, doing so just may have transferred thug bugs from one infected gum pocket into another part of your mouth that’s not infected yet. Yeah, the bugs do move around the mouth pretty well on their own, but flossing is unfortunately an excellent way to ‘plant seeds’ of thug bugs into the gum pocket, where they can multiply and thrive.

It’s just not worth the risk.

Flossing mistake #3: Using vigorous, aggressive motions with floss pulled tightly

The two main reasons we floss are:

• to remove any food debris and plaque from between our teeth
• to disorganize any thug bugs and prevent them from colonizing in any gum pockets

While accomplishing the two objectives above, let’s remember that our gum tissue likes to be stimulated and massaged.

However, our gum tissue does not like to be tortured.

Snapping into the gum pocket quickly and banging on the gum tissue aggressively are sure ways to cause damage to our gums over time. Habitual torture to gums will cause the tissue to recoil and turn into gum recession.

The solution to using a vigorous flossing technique

Rather than taking an MMA (mixed martial arts) approach to flossing, try flossing with an aikido or tai chi mindset.

Allow the floss to be a bit slack while flossing rather than maintaining a super tightrope tension on the floss. Holding a slack floss will allow you to wrap the floss gently around the curve of each tooth, and this will do a much better job removing plaque and disrupting any bugs hanging around.

Once in the gum pocket and ‘hugging’ the curve of the tooth, gently but firmly slide the floss (with a soft level of tension on the string) down as far as the floss will reach (remember, no banging on the gum) and back up the tooth again. Do this 2-3 times. Then, move to the other ‘side’ of the contact between the two teeth and repeat.

Flossing mistake #4: Irregular flossing habits

Some experts speak out against flossing. Most of the experts in the ‘anti flossing’ camp reference the same research that suggests that flossing can drive bacteria from the mouth into the bloodstream and cause inflammation of heart tissue (called ‘infective endocarditis’).

Here’s the challenge: if we don’t floss regularly, populations of thug bugs grow and strengthen, which causes the gum tissue to become inflamed and bleed easily (gingivitis). It’s precisely this state of inflammation that allows the thug bugs to enter the bloodstream.

Regular flossing stops gingivitis in its tracks.

So, the problem with irregular flossing habits is we most likely are allowing bad bug populations to build, and this allows gum inflammation to develop. If we floss at that point, we are increasing our risk of driving bugs into our bloodstream.

The solution to irregular flossing

Simple enough, really: regular flossing.

While daily flossing helps, the research suggests that at least every other day is ‘regular’ enough to keep bad bug populations from colonizing the gum line.

When you consider just how effective flossing is in lowering the risk of disease throughout the whole body, it becomes clear that flossing is a simple yet important habit that we should incorporate into our daily routine.

How to maximize your benefit from flossing

Let’s sum this all up in a quick ‘To-Do’ list:

1. Floss consciously. Check for color and smell after each contact.
2. Use plenty of floss so you can use a clean segment for each contact.
3. Floss your teeth using ‘tai chi’ hands rather than a ‘no mercy’ attitude.
4. Allow the floss to wrap around each tooth to clean more effectively.
5. Floss regularly, at least every other day.

https://orawellness.com/avoid-4-common-flossing-mistakes/

Why cleaning the tongue is the most underrated oral hygiene habit?

In this article, we’re going to explore the often-overlooked oral hygiene habit of cleaning the tongue as well as the important role that tongue cleaning plays in supporting greater oral and whole-body health.

We often emphasize that the health of the mouth plays a central role in the health of the whole body, so it’s important to balance our oral flora by being good conductors of the symphony of microbes in our mouths. In essence, a critical step in navigating the path to greater whole-body health is to establish and maintain a healthy microbial balance at the beginning of the digestive tract: our mouth.

So, let’s start by exploring why cleaning the tongue plays such a big part in any holistic oral hygiene routine and how it can impact our whole-body health.

Scientists have found that the mouth may function as a reservoir for microbes that can cause gut inflammation.

Why is this so important?

Well, like Hippocrates said around 2500 years ago, “All disease begins in the gut.” So, if our gut is unhealthy, it’s impossible for the body to be healthy.

Research suggests that common oral microbes may perpetuate and aggravate gut inflammation. If left unchecked, this could result in, or at least contribute to, inflammatory bowel disease, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, and leaky gut.

The mouth is the beginning…

The digestive tract actually begins in the mouth.

The mouth chews food, breaking it down into smaller pieces and mixing it with our saliva (which contains digestive enzymes), and then the masticated food travels down the throat and into the stomach. Then the stomach, spleen, and pancreas create fuel for our systems by digesting the food, the small intestine absorbs nutrients from that digested food, and the remaining food waste is eliminated through the colon (large intestine).

The big point here, the digestive tract is also home to 80% of our immune system and the mouth is the beginning of this whole system.

This is why holistic oral health strategies like oil pulling go a long way toward helping us have a healthy gut microbiome.

You see, we swallow a lot of oral microbes every day with our saliva. If the mouth is healthy and has a balanced oral flora, bathing the digestive tract with saliva definitely supports our overall health.

However, if the mouth is out of balance and ‘thug bugs’ are running the show, everything ‘downstream’ can suffer from this imbalanced mouth ecology.

For example, overpopulation of the bacteria klebsiella in the mouth can wind up causing problems in the gut. Remember, as we swallow, the bacteria hitch a ride through the rest of our digestive tract. Research has found that when strains of klebsiella populated the gut, they caused a strong inflammatory immune response in some of the test subjects.

How does this relate to cleaning the tongue?

Well, klebsiella is facultative anaerobic bacteria. That means that while they can live in environments with regular levels of oxygen, they really thrive in low-oxygen environments.

And where is the most prolific low oxygen environment located in the mouth?

Yep. When the tongue isn’t cleaned regularly, it creates a low-oxygen environment where bacteria like Klebsiella can thrive. In fact, the majority of the microbes in our mouths live on our tongues.

As we’ve shared before, the first strategy for balancing our oral flora is to maintain thin biofilms in the mouth.

Thick biofilms create low-oxygen environments, which enables thug bugs like klebsiella to build their numbers.

However, using oral hygiene techniques to maintain thin biofilms on our teeth and tongue creates an oxygen-rich environment, which discourages thug bugs while simultaneously encouraging health-giving microbes to thrive.

How to clean the tongue…

Cleaning the tongue is really simple, but it involves a little more than just brushing your tongue.

Step one is to get the ‘gunk’ (biofilm) off of our tongue in order to remove the low-oxygen environment. And brushing the tongue simply doesn’t remove the gunk.

Our preferred device for step one is a tongue cleaner, and oral hygiene tool that’s been used for centuries in the traditional Indian medicine practice called, ‘Ayurveda’.

Take your tongue cleaner (or spoon, with the bowl facing downwards, towards your tongue) and reach as far back on your tongue as is comfortable. Then, using gentle pressure, drag your tool down your tongue from the back (near your throat) to the front (towards the tip of your tongue). Then rinse the gunk off your tongue cleaner or spoon.

If you’ve never done this before, please, go do it right now.

You’ll never stop cleaning your tongue once you see the sheer volume of biofilm that comes off a tongue that hasn’t been scraped regularly.

Do this quick scrape 3-4 times and then spit and rinse. Not only will your mouth be healthier, but many people also find that this increases their ability to taste subtle flavors in foods.

https://orawellness.com/tongue-cleaning-importance/