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| Coconuts. |
Well, I call it that, but I'm sure most of its proponents would be really irritated that I do. The first reason is that I use coconut oil instead of sesame oil, but a lot of people do that so that's no big deal. The second and most damning is that I swallow it.
Which is like, the number one thing they tell you not to do. All of the instructions I have seen seem willing to throw every hippie in the world into a panic attack over whether or not they have swallowed any of this parasite-infested, toxic wasteland swishing in their mouths.
It actually gets to the heart of why I hate detox programs. Not because I think there is anything inherently harmful about most of them, but because the benefits they may or may not actually give are shrouded by the narrative that the human body is toxic and in constant need of cleansing.
And it isn't.
Your body is actually damned good at getting rid of that shit. If it weren't, we'd all be dead, having grown up on diets of crap. Our problem is that we keep putting gross stuff into our bodies too fast, not that we can't efficiently get rid of it. Stop putting the bad stuff in, and unless you have an underlying disorder preventing it, your body will take care of it.
This means that stuff like colon cleansing (including those ass-blaster programs that solidify in your colon and compel people to photograph themselves gleefully showing off the shit they expelled on a stick as well as regular old high-colonics), neti pots, swallowing gauze (yup, some people do that), kinoki foot pads, ear candles, and yes, oil pulling, are not usually necessary. Most of them do jack shit for you, some of them actually harm you.
Some of them are useful sometimes, or are useful for different reasons than people keep stating. I put oil pulling in that category. The reason is that it is pretty good for your oral health. It's good at cleaning your teeth, it's good for your gums, and by swallowing it I'm getting coconut oil into my system. Not only that, but your stomach is full of gastric acid which is pretty good at killing things; saying you need to spit the oil out is like saying you need to carry a spittoon with you whenever you're sick or you'll be sick forever.
Maybe it would be more scary if there was any weight at all to the original theory of why oil pulling is good for you. People are under the impression that this is detoxing your whole body by pulling parasites and bacteria out of your body through your mouth. This is ludicrous. Even if your body was loaded with parasites--and again, it probably isn't--they aren't being yanked out by sesame oil, or any oil for that matter.
I'll be continuing my oil-pulling experiment to see how it goes. Right now my mouth feels really good, so it'll probably continue at least for a while.
