Oil pulling is the ancient Ayurveda practice of pulling oil through your teeth and gums around your mouth in order to clean your mouth, detoxify your body and achieve wrinkle-free, clear skin.
Oil pulling has shown remarkable benefits not only in oral health but also in facial skin and overall health.
This practice is truly rewarding, and it has significantly helped me in clearing up my acne and achieving clear, hydrated skin.
Table of Contents
Benefits of Oil Pulling
1. Fewer Oral Cavities
When you do oil pulling, your teeth get a healthy protective film that doesn’t let the food stick to your teeth. This results in less food stuck in teeth, less bacterial attraction and fewer cavities.
2. No Bad Breath
Bad breath or halitosis occurs because of the growth of bacteria in the mouth. When you do oil pulling regularly, that is once a day or every alternate day, then the bacteria get pulled out of the system.
When the bacterial growth is not there, the bad breath gets treated on its own.
3. Hydrated & Tightened skin
Finally, something that really tightens skin and prevents skin sagging. As the oil hydrates the skin from within (like literally), the exercise of all face muscles is done as you squish the oil around your mouth for such a long time, which leads to skin tightening as well.
See, it’s a win-win!
Start doing it before you start seeing droopy chin and wrinkles around your face.
4. Acne-Free Clear Skin
As the microbes and pimple-causing bacteria are removed via oil, the toxins also get removed, and the skin feels fresh and becomes acne-free.
Even doing oil pulling twice a week has helped clear my skin to a great extent.
5. White Teeth
Coconut oil has teeth-whitening properties, and if you do oil pulling with coconut oil regularly, then you can expect the yellowness of teeth to reduce considerably.
6. Younger Looking Skin
Antioxidants in the oils (either coconut oil or sesame oil) remove the free radicals that are responsible for ageing. Skin elasticity also improves with regular oil pulling.
7. Removal of Toxins
Removal of all the bad substances from the mouth not only leads to better oral health but also a better body. It even leads to better digestion and better nutrient absorption.
Oil pulling kills the microbes inside the mouth, including candida, H. pylori, etc, that are responsible for some serious infections.
Even gingivitis, that is, gum infection, also decreases (source) with oil pulling.
It also helps in the prevention and supportive treatment of systemic disorders like bronchitis, asthma, eczema, chronic skin diseases and even inhibits the spread of cancer in the body.
Oil Pulling is also known to treat dry mouth or xerostomia.
Oils To Be Used for Oil Pulling
- Coconut Oil – Extra virgin oil has a better taste. I use this one for oil pulling. It also contains a higher amount of nutrients and dietary bioactive compounds like polyphenols.
- Sesame Oil – It is full of antioxidants, vitamin E and healthy fatty acids. But it has a strong flavour, so coconut oil would be a preferred oil for oil pulling.
How to Do it
Take one tablespoon (start with a teaspoon) of extra-virgin coconut oil or sesame oil and squish it into your mouth.
Keep it for 5 to 10 minutes; the ideal time is 20 minutes, but it will be challenging to maintain for that long initially. I have reached at 5 minutes with much difficulty.
Once you can no longer maintain it in your mouth without swallowing, spit it out in the toilet bowl, trash can or in the mud.
Don’t spit it in the wash basin; it can clog the pipes, and I won’t be responsible for the scolding you will be getting from the family members.
DO NOT SWALLOW THAT OIL!
References
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5654187/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11909057/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7481940/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30395784/
