Mouthwash use could inhibit benefits of exercise

sciencedaily.com

17 points·t23··7 comments

N = 23. And "benefits of exercise" = specifically lowering of systolic blood pressure.

Interesting and surprising result that I expected to be complete BS, but reading the abstract made me do a double take. I'm still doubtful though, especially since they found such a large difference (60%). I wouldn't say it warrants any kind of reaction beyond "huh, cool" until it's replicated ten times over with much larger sample sizes, however.

Then again I don't personally use mouthwash and always assumed it was a gimmick (unless it's for a specific treatment).

I never understood why you’d want to kill the bacterial ecosystem in your mouth.

Links have previously been made in multiple studies between the use of anti-microbial mouthwash and increased mortality risk. One hypothesis is that it disrupts the nitrate-nitrite-nitric acid pathway as the below linked review article goes into details on. Use of anti-bacterial mouthwash has also been linked to blood pressure rises, possible explained by the same mechanism.

Antiseptic mouthwash, the nitrate–nitrite–nitric oxide pathway, and hospital mortality: a hypothesis generating review: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00134-020-06276-z

Over-the-counter mouthwash use, nitric oxide and hypertension risk: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31709856/

> Twenty-three healthy adults were asked to run on a treadmill for a total of 30 minutes on two separate occasions, after which they were monitored for two hours.

a tiny study

Honestly that sounds more like a high school student’s semester science project.

That is unfortunately not a tiny sample size for an exercise study..

(2019)

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