What are the benefits of brushing your teeth with salt? Is this method advisable?

As we all know, saline has anti-inflammatory and bactericidal effects and is often used by doctors to clean wounds. As a result, many people have learned from this and believe that when oral inflammation occurs, they can choose to brush their teeth with salt to reduce inflammation and kill bacteria. In fact, this method is not advisable. Not only does it fail to eliminate inflammation, it also affects the health of the body.

When there is bad breath or gum inflammation, many people like to brush their teeth with salt water, believing that salt water has a bactericidal effect and can reduce inflammation and remove odor. Brushing your teeth with salt water can indeed be used as a daily health care measure, but experts believe that salt water cannot replace disinfectant to kill bacteria, and brushing your teeth with salt water that is too concentrated is harmful to the body.

Recently, foreign doctors have re-studied this ancient treatment method and found that brushing teeth with concentrated salt water can significantly increase the body's absorption of sodium, which is particularly harmful for patients with hypertension, heart disease, kidney disease, chronic liver disease, etc. Concentrated salt water is ineffective in eliminating bacteria deep in the mucosa, but it can reduce the amount of lysozyme in the oral cavity, giving viruses a chance to settle in the upper respiratory tract mucosa. According to other studies, high concentrations of sodium salt can inhibit the activity of upper respiratory tract cells and reduce the secretion of interferon, causing the "barrier" function of the throat mucosa to weaken. A variety of viruses and bacteria can take advantage of the situation and enter the body, increasing the possibility of respiratory infections.

In fact, the best salt water for brushing teeth is 0.9% saline. Because its osmotic pressure value is roughly the same as that of normal human plasma and tissue fluid, it can prevent cell rupture. Its osmotic pressure is the same as that outside the cells, so it will not cause cell dehydration or excessive water absorption, and will not cause damage to the oral mucosa. Brushing your teeth with normal saline can remove bacteria, viruses and other microorganisms attached to the oral mucosa, achieving a certain effect of removing harmful microorganisms and cleaning.

You can buy normal saline solution at the pharmacy, or you can make it yourself by adding 1 gram of salt to 110 ml of boiled water.

Traditional Chinese medicine believes that bad breath is mostly caused by heat accumulation in the lungs, spleen, and stomach, or undigested food. If these things accumulate in the body for a long time and cannot be discharged, they become toxins. Bad breath is mostly caused by the long-term accumulation of toxins in the body. Therefore, to eliminate bad breath, you need to fundamentally regulate the body. Do not rush to use some drugs that are highly irritating to the gastrointestinal tract.