Why Switching To Our Restorative Mouth Drops Could Be The Best Decision For Your Oral Health

Essential Oils Are Just As Effective and Gentler than Mouthwash Chemicals

Most prescription mouthwashes on the market today rely on a chemical called chlorhexidine, which destroys bacteria in the mouth so you get cleaner breath and lower risk for infections. However, chlorhexidine is notorious for staining teeth! Imagine using that as a daily mouth rinse. Plus, there’s plenty of medical evidence showing other side effects of this chemical, including tartar accumulation and a burning sensation in the mouth. Yikes.

It’s no wonder why even experts have begun looking at essential oils as viable ingredients in lieu of chlorhexidine. The astonishing thing is, essential oils have been found to be just as powerful as chlorhexidine in antibacterial activity! This means that you can ditch your drugstore mouthwash and replace it with a healthier, organic EO product that works just as well.

The Best Essential Oils For Oral Health, And Their Benefits

As I’ve mentioned, we’ve put a lot of careful work in deciding which EOs to use for our mouth drops. Here are our top essential oils for oral hygiene:

• Peppermint
• Spearmint
• Cinnamon leaf
• Clove bud
• Tea tree
• Myrrh
• Frankincense
• Oregano
• Thyme.

Let’s look at these essential oils’ benefits for our mouth care.

Thyme (Thymus satureioides)

It may be another common kitchen herb, but did you know that thyme is highly beneficial for dental health? Thyme oil has been clinically documented as a strong antiseptic, as it kills antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the mouth. This makes it a powerful oral cleanser that prevents tooth decay, gum disease, bad breath, and other oral infections.

That makes our list of nine amazing essential oils for oral care, and we’ve put all of them in our Refreshing & Restorative Mouth Drops. Yep, we didn’t scrimp on this one! You get complete oral care in one product: you’ve got organic ingredients that improve gum health, help prevent tooth decay and cavities, fight various oral infections, and of course, give you minty fresh breath.

We’ve even diluted the essential oils for optimum consistency and potency using organic sweet almond oil as carrier. Who says mouth rinses always have to taste like chemicals? (Note: This is a given, but NEVER swallow mouth drops or mouthwashes -- no matter how pleasant the flavour is!)

Will Essential Oils Kill Good Bacteria In The Mouth, Too?

You may have noticed that a lot of our recommended essential oils for oral health are potent antimicrobial ingredients. You definitely want this in order to get rid of harmful bacteria like strep and staph. But there have been concerns that antibacterial oral products also destroy good microbes in the mouth, leaving our teeth and gums more vulnerable to damage.

There is indeed some truth to this -- though not as much when you’re using our essential oil mouth drops properly. Let’s take a look at how it works.

Prescription-strength mouthwashes are designed to wipe out microbes in the mouth, but they are indiscriminate -- they can’t tell apart good bacteria from bad bacteria. So they tend to clear out both.

According to Dr. Mark Burhenne (whom you might recognize from his TEDx talk and bestselling books), we occasionally need this “bacterial ‘clean slate’” in the mouth to cut the risk of infection. But this would also weaken our mouth’s microbiome, the community of healthy microorganisms that serve as the mouth’s immune system.

This could happen even if you are using essential oils -- or rather, if you’re not using them right. Remember that essential oils are as powerful as the chemical chlorhexidine when removing mouth bacteria.

Does this mean you should avoid essential oils completely for oral health? Absolutely not! Here are tips on how you can use an EO-based oral care product in the healthiest way.

Use essential oils moderately.

To work around the bacteria wipeout conundrum, Dr. Burhenne suggests using only a tiny amount of oil in your oral care routine. If you’re using EO-infused products, pay attention to how strong the oil scent is, as this can tell you the amount of potent oils in the product.

This is precisely why we’ve formulated our essential oils as mouth drops -- easy doses, no harmful excesses, and ultimately cost-effective. Just a teeny-tiny amount of it already goes a long way for your oral health (learn more about how to use it, further below).

But it doesn’t end there.

Use an EO blend that restores bacterial balance.

Our mouth drops recipe is aimed not just at eliminating microbes but at restoring the ideal balance of bacteria in the mouth. This balance entails controlling bad bacteria while keeping the good ones, so we’ve specifically created a restorative formulation using oils that are also friendly to good oral bacteria.

As nutrition coach Shannon Dahlum puts it, “Not only do these powerful plant oils work to keep pathogens from taking over, they can peacefully coexist with all your good guys.” Her list of friendly essential oils for the mouth? Clove, cinnamon, peppermint, thyme, tea tree, and frankincense -- all ticked off in our mouth drops recipe!

Try EOs with oil pulling.

Being in the form of drops also makes this product super-easy to include in your oil pulling session. In fact, we recommend this habit, because with it comes yet another way that our EO mouth drops restore oral bacterial balance.

Oil pulling is a fantastic way to disintegrate bad microbes but not good microbes. Dr. Burhenne also approves of this practice, saying that “oil pulling is able to support your saliva’s efforts in disorganizing bacteria without killing the good bacteria and drying your mouth out.” With this in mind, we designed our mouth drops to be an ideal addition to an oil pulling routine -- a mighty little boost to a beneficial health practice.

If you’re not sure how to oil pull (or even what it is), no worries -- it’s probably the easiest health trick ever. The practice, which originated from the ancient Ayurveda medicine of India, is all about “pulling out toxins” from the body by -- wait for it -- swishing natural oils in your mouth. Yep, that’s pretty much it.

Oil pulling has long been linked to a variety of health benefits, not just regarding the mouth but throughout other areas of the body. I know, I know -- the question inevitably arises as to how a gargling session can affect anything beyond the mouth. The answer starts with the traditionally-held concept that the tongue has connections to other organs of the body. It’s a system that requires an entire article on its own, so I’ll just link you to Dr. Axe’s overview here plus a scientific review you can read on the National Institutes of Health.

While you may be skeptical at first about the bodily benefits of oil pulling, at the very, very least, many dentists agree on its oral health benefits. We’re talking renowned dentists like Dr. Burhenne, who outright says, “I can confirm that oil pulling is an easy, inexpensive way to rebalance the oral microbiome and improve oral and dental health.”

Convinced yet? I have been for years! Now, how do we do an oil pull with our essential oil mouth drops? We’re just getting to that in the section below.

How To Use Our Essential Oil Mouth Drops

Here’s one more thing you might like about our restorative EO mouth drops: they’re so easy to use in practically any oral hygiene activity. You can brush with them, rinse with them, even floss with them! No fussy extra steps required.

• Brush. Add two to three drops onto your toothbrush and brush as usual.

• Rinse. Add a couple of drops with water and swish like a mouthwash. (30 secs)

• Floss. Place a drop between your clean index finger and thumb. Run your floss through the fingers so it’s coated with the product. Floss as usual.

• Apply directly. Place a tiny drop on your clean index finger and massage directly onto a sensitive area in your mouth.

• Oil pull. Coconut oil is the most recommended (and accessible) oil for swishing. Take a tablespoon of organic coconut oil and add a couple of drops of our EO blend. Swish for 10 to 20 minutes (not a typo -- we really recommend 10 minutes at least). Spit out in a trash bin, not the sink, as the oil may solidify and clog pipes. For best results, do this twice daily.

It’s that simple. Whatever your lifestyle is like, however you tend to your teeth and gums, our essential oil mouth drops are an ideal companion. Brushing before bed? Got just enough time for a quick rinse after lunch? Taking your sweet time for a total oil pull session? Drip a bit of this EO blend, and you’ve got powerful, total oral care just like that.

You don’t have to take it from me (even though I swear by this product!). Our customers, discerning early adopters that they are, have already sent us glowing reviews and thanks for the Refreshing & Restorative Mouth Drops. See for yourself.

And even if you’re not ready to try out our blend just yet, I do hope you consider essential oils for your mouth care. Read about them and consult your hygienist about what would work for you. That’s really the biggest takeaway that I want to share here. I’m a living, breathing testimonial to EOs, and here’s me cheering you on towards more natural and balanced oral health.

xx Judit

Additional References and Further Reading

“6 Essential Oils for Healthy Gums and Teeth” by The Dental Group of Amarillo

“Antimicrobial effects of essential oils in combination with chlorhexidine digluconate” on PubMed

“Cinnamon Essential Oil for Oral Health” on Indianapolis Dentistry

“Cinnamon Oil: 10 Proven Benefits and Uses” on Dr. Axe

“Effect of local application of tea tree (Melaleuca alternifolia) oil gel on long pentraxin level used as an adjunctive treatment of chronic periodontitis” on National Institutes of Health

“Four effective gingivitis home remedies” on Medical News Today

“Tea Tree Oil for Receding Gums” on Livestrong

“Tea tree oil -- just a fad?” on Registered Dental Hygienist Magazine

“Effect of frankincense on plaque and gingivitis” on Natural Health Research