Recently someone asked me about oil pulling and how can we know it’s not just a bunch of hooey since the research on it is so thin.

This is a great question and lets me address two important points!

1. Personal experience and anecdotal experience matters.

2. If there is no money to be made in studying something, there won’t be much research done on it.

I did become a scientist before I became a doctor, so I admit I like research.

But this focus on science has gotten really skewed, because it is supposed to be about asking questions.

Those questions typically start off on the personal experience end of things.

And when we are talking about health, the individual experience matters.

There are a lot of anecdotal experiences from people about it working.

So that alone would make it interesting for me to try: something that is said to be helpful, not harmful, and easy.

And yes, I do oil pulling and think it is great.


It supports healthy gums and teeth, helps get rid of toxins, improves oral health.

And other people have said it helped against a toothache, got rid of bleeding gums, got rid of bad breath, etc.

So anecdotal evidence is solidly in place for oil pulling.

Moving on to the second point of where there is no money to be made there won’t be big big research involved…

There is no money to be made in oil pulling.

No industry gets to make money off of people oil pulling.

But even with the few small studies that have been done on oil pulling, it has been shown to hinder plaque on teeth.

And we need healthy bacteria in our mouth, so instead of killing them off like typical mouth washes do, we support the entire oral space with oil pulling.

That’s a win in my book!

Plus, with some logic we realize that there are toxins that are lipophilic.

That means they love fats.

So swish some oil in your mouth and those toxins that are lipophilic will get spit out with that oil in a few minutes. Yay!

So… does oil pulling rank high on the list of healthy habits to me?

Yes! It doesn’t really cost anything, it’s simple to do and supporting oral health means we support the entire body!

So can we always make our best decisions based on research?

No! Research is great, but there are great shortcomings especially in how certain studies are designed… and again, where there is no money to be made… research will be scarce.