Originally “invented in the nineteenth century as powerful surgical antiseptic. It was later sold, in distilled form, as both a floor cleaner and a cure for gonorrhea. But it wasn’t a runaway success until the 1920s, when it was pitched as a solution for “chronic halitosis” — a then obscure medical term for bad breath… Ads featured forlorn young women and men, eager for marriage but turned off by their mate’s rotten breath. “Can I be happy with him in spite of that?” one maiden asked herself. Until that time, bad breath was not conventionally considered such a catastrophe.”1 What am I talking about? This common floor stripping oral rinse is none other than the ubiquitous Listerine! According to noted advertising scholar James B. Twitchell, “Listerine did not make mouthwash as much as it made halitosis.”
All this occurred during a time when medicine and the public were just becoming aware of the role of bacteria in post-operative complications as well as common diseases such as cholera, syphilis, and gonorrhea, and marked the beginning of our current bacteriophobic culture. The truth though is that most bacteria, rather than being harmful, are extremely beneficial. In fact, in health we actually have more bacteria on and in our bodies than we have cells. We call this symbiotic community our human biome. And, because it is critical to producing many essential nutrients not available any other way, without it we would literally cease to exist!
One such vital nutrient is nitric oxide (NO). The nitric oxide molecule is critical to the control and regulation of most cellular functions. And its deficiency is often the first step in the progression of 80% of the top ten causes of death – including heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and cancer.2 So critical is nitric oxide to our health and wellbeing that we actually have two sources backing each other up.
The first is our own epithelial cells that line our arteries and nasal cavities. This is why habitual nasal breathing (“The mouth is for eating and the nose is for breathing.”) and controlling arterial inflammation is so critical to health, and why it is so important to control and manage snoring. Unfortunately, with every decade of life we lose 10-12% of our ability to produce nitric oxide. So, by the time we reach 50 years old, we’ve lost 50% of our ability to make it. Fortunately, we have a second backup source – our oral biome. Healthy oral bacteria are responsible for converting dietary nitrate (found in green leafy vegetables, such as spinach and kale, and root vegetables like beets and garlic) into nitrite. When swallowed, nitrite is then converted by stomach acid to the essential nitric oxide. Note the critical steps to this process.
- We have to be eating an abundance of nitrate containing food – eat lots of those roots and greens previously mentioned.
- We have to have an abundance of nitrate converting bacteria in our mouths – so quit killing them; no antibiotics and no antibacterial mouth washes.
- We have to have a healthy amount of stomach acid – no antiacids, including the proton pump inhibitors commonly prescribed for acid reflux. Merely taking PPI’s for 3-5 years increases the incidence of heart attack and stroke by over 30%, as well as significantly increasing the incidence of food allergies and auto-immune diseases! All due to failure to convert nitrite to nitric oxide.
Once again, the health of your mouth is integral to the health of the rest of our bodies. And once again, lifestyle choices are really the only way to attain lasting oral and systemic health. Want to know how to know if you have an adequate NO supply? Give us a call, and we’ll set you up with a simple test to find out.
