 Hello everybody, Andrea Trausky here with Dental L Tutoring. So the question of a week seems to be about oil pulling. Now a couple years ago, this seemed to be a very popular question more so than it was now because I think something exploded on Pinterest where just everybody was talking about oil pulling and back then like a couple years ago. It was pretty much those who didn't want to floss heard that oil pulling means that you don't have to floss. So you might be wondering well, what is oil pulling? So what what actually is is you would swish oil in your mouth like like you would mouthwash almost but for 20 minutes. So for it to be effective you have to swish the oil in your mouth for 20 minutes and what was said was that supposed to sort of draw out all of the toxins and the bacteria in your mouth and then when you spit out the oil in 20 minutes it's supposed to be healthier for you. So all of that are those toxins, the bacteria, the unhealthiness plaque that's supposed to come out with the oil. Now, but you should only be using a certain kind of oil because there are some healthier oils and there are some not so healthy oils. So they say that the coconut oil, the sunflower oil, the avocado oil, those are the healthy ones to use. Canola oil as an example is not healthy, so you shouldn't be using it because if you're swishing around for 20 whole minutes, that's a long time for that oil to be absorbed almost in your system. But you might be wondering what I think about oil pulling. Now I can't say that it hurts because I don't see it hurting anything hurting anybody. But if you think about it, I mean, try it. If you haven't yet, are you able to swish around with oil for 20 minutes? I tried it. I couldn't do it because I had patients asking me. I thought, okay, well, let me see what this is all about. I tried it with coconut oil and I couldn't do it. I mean, I even tried it where I tried to do other things so I wouldn't notice it as much. Like I believe I hopped in the shower. You know, I was getting ready. But I still couldn't do it for the whole 20 minutes because I didn't like constantly having something in my mouth having to swish it around, but then of course you have to spit it out, right? But a lot of people ask me, well, is it better than flossing? Well, how can it be better because you're not able to get in between your teeth properly? But what I was also thinking was so if a patient's coming to me asking if they should use the oil pulling or the flossing, well, what I typically say is, well, if you floss, that takes two minutes, but you're okay to put oil in your mouth and just swish around for 20 minutes. You know, because typically when a patient doesn't want to do something it's because it takes too long. So if people don't have problem with oil pulling and they all want to try it so that way they don't have to floss, it doesn't make sense to me because flossing is a lot easier and takes less time. Why not just floss? You know what I mean? And why not just brush? Twice a day, floss once a day, you don't have to worry about there being all this bacteria in your mouth if you're taking care of your mouth in the first place. So I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but anytime a patient asks me, I just kind of say, well, it's not a bad thing. I don't see it actually helping because for it to work, they say to take out the toxins, you have to be swishing around for 20 minutes. Who has time for that? Who wants to do that? Why not just brushing floss in the first place? It's a lot easier. It's quicker and done. So that's kind of my two cents about the whole thing. So you should always kind of have your own opinion if a patient asks you about it but that's just kind of my two cents. It's just pretty much me saying, well, if you can do that for 20 minutes, you might as well just floss for two minutes and you know that's actually working. There has been studies showing that it's actually working with oil pulling. There's no studies saying that it's actually doing anything. So that's what it is you guys. That's just kind of my two cents. But good luck and let me know what you think. Thank you so much for watching.