The effect of daily usage of Mouthwash on the oropharyngeal microbiome | Hacker News Reader

The effect of daily usage of Mouthwash on the oropharyngeal microbiome

microbiologyresearch.org

61 points_glass33 comments

In the past i have struggled with having canker sores. After much googling l read there is an ingredient called sls that's in most toothpastes and it can cause canker sores in some people. I use sls free toothpaste and now i'm good. Less is more

What brand of toothpaste do you use for this? I often struggle to find a toothpaste that's SLS-free but still has fluoride.

Burst - https://burstoralcare.com/products/toothpaste-fluoride

Also Native has one too.

If you don't mind a baking soda toothpaste, then another option is Trader Joe's. They made a baking soda & fluoride toothpaste that is SLS free. Been using it for a number of years now... Though it's been briefly discontinued and is slated to be back later this year.

Also see Hello toothpaste (not affiliated) which has fluoride but not SLS: https://www.hello-products.com/products/naturally-whitening-...

Same problem for me, constant canker sores. Switching to Hello hasn't totally eliminated them, but it has reduced them.

Sensodyne is one that's readily available at most stores.

Hmm, I wonder if putting surfectants in everything might have negative consequences.

Thank you for sharing this! My 5-year-old daughter occasionally has canker sores. I just checked her toothpaste and it contains SLS.

I use sensodyne which is SLS free or low SLS, because I don't like how pukey regular toothpaste makes me, and my dental hygienist mentioned that she always recommends it for people with canker sores because doesn't cause them like normal toothpastes do.

I suffered from canker sores all of my childhood and well into my early adulthood. I sometimes had as many as 20 sores around my mouth. I've as long as I remember used a non-SLS toothpaste but I still got the sores - especially around stressful periods of time like around exams. For some reason they started appearing less and less as I approached my 30'ies. I never have them anymore now. I still use the same non-SLS toothpaste though as I'm not really keen on them returning despite the toothpaste not really helping me much when I was younger. I'm imagining it helped with them not being worse than they could be.

Another reason why I kept the same toothpaste brand is that I've never had a single cavity in my adult teeth while my siblings have had plenty (they used a different brand than me). Not sure if it's credited to the toothpaste or just if it's because I never flush my mouth with water after brushing - they still do that to this day.

Conclusions: it's bad. You get the opportunistic bacterial types associated with cancers

Cheers, saved me some time.

Are these bacteria causal or merely associated?

Reminds me of the time the national health something announced in the news it recommended avoiding anti-microbal cleaning products for general use as only the strongest & worst bacteria survive and then get to breed. Immediately followed by a commercial for Detol....

I've been using TheraBreath for the past 6 months. They have a ton of different versions now, when I started it they only had one. I can only assume it's becoming quite popular... how would this stuff stack up? I really like TheraBreath.. no more burning when you use it.

I'd recommend clove tea as a healthier mouth wash with an old history to it https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10036978/

> Streptococcus was the most abundant genus in most samples (n = 103, 61.7 %) So total sample size is 162: small but sufficient, should be replicated and scaled.

I wonder if xylitol mouthwashes fare better?

Does Listerine contain alcohol?

I think so yes

Yes, in the article they contrast alcohol and fluoride rinses, citing evidence fluoride rinses don't seem to result in notable microbiotic changes in the same way. They also cite similar findings as theirs in research on alcohol use.

The article is here:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/376202105_The_effec...

Alcohol based mouthwash should be banned, it certainly is in some countries.

Why? It has its benefits too. For example it can reduce viral load in the mouth, reducing the risk of COVID transmission for example. I think people can make their choice as to what product they want to use and what tradeoffs they are okay with.

Do you have any papers or studies showing it can reduce transmission of any disease? Covid lives in the throat and lungs so I am not sure how a mouth rinse could do anything. Similarly for many other common colds and the flu.

I did a quick search and there are numerous studies that come up. I haven’t analyzed them myself, but it seems like there is a lot of evidence for this (example https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8956107/). I also found various things written about covid living in the mouth and playing a role in transmission.

>> Why?

Alcohol is suspected to be carcinogenic.

https://drugfree.org/drug-and-alcohol-news/australian-study-...

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/alcohol-based-mout...

>Alcohol is suspected to be carcinogenic.

Everything is given high enough doses.

Consumers often don't make rational well informed choices though; the nuance that alcohol based mouthwashes both dry the mouth -- and, possibly correlated -- that this study show, leads to proliferation of bad bacteria biomes should be able to at least lead to removal from the recommendations from the American Dental Association.

In regards to benefits, peroxide based mouthwashes do have similar lysing effect but less drying effect - and this has been known for ~ a decade; and fluoride mouthwashes should actually activate the salivary glands, in addition to lysing. But, one could speculate that peroxide based mouthwashes would have a similar result to alcohol based in this study based on what we know about wound care (that peroxides kill both the bad and good bacteria)

Good luck repealing the Twenty-first.

No one is proposing that. Using a mouthwash (that may or may not have alcohol in it) is distinctly different and has different expected results than consuming alcohol.

Prohibition outlawed manufacturing, selling, transporting, importing, and exporting ethanol, not consuming it.

Interesting. See also Mouthwash use could inhibit benefits of exercise - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34855194

Not really a representative popoulation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com