Oral hygiene is important not just for a great smile, but your overall health.
Gum disease has been linked to Alzheimer’s and heart disease; healthy gums have been known to help with weight loss.
But employing mouthwash in your dental care routine isn’t helping, as researchers recently found that using mouthwash can increase your blood pressure.
How? Our mouths have both good and bad bacteria, and that balanced microbiome helps fend off illness. Mouthwash can upset that balanced, according to a study that was published in Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology.
Almost all mouthwashes contain an antiseptic compound called chlorhexidine, which can destroy the bacteria in the mouth that produces nitric oxide. Nitric oxide, which we get from veggies, helps maintain healthy blood pressure levels.
In the study of 26 people, they found that using using mouthwash with chlorhexidine twice a day for a week was associated with a “significant” increase in systolic blood pressure.
Related: Two Popular (and Weird) Hygiene Trends for Your Teeth and Hair
“We know one cannot be well without an adequate amount of NO circulating throughout the body,” says lead study author Nathan Bryan, an adjunct assistant professor at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. “Yet, the very first thing over 200 million Americans do each day is use an antiseptic mouthwash, which destroys the ‘good bacteria’ that helps to create the NO. These once thought ‘good’ habits may be doing more harm than good.”
To add, their findings can also explain why two out of three people with high blood pressure can’t regulate hypertension with medication, Bryan adds.
The good news? The scientists found that the good bacteria returned to study subjects’ tongues after they stopped using mouthwash with chlorhexidine.
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