I'll keep this short, because let me just cut to the chase and say: this one was a bust. For me. But maybe you would like it? My friend Sarah sent me a link to this article about oil pulling, knowing that it would be right up my alley: "No Money for a Dentist? Try Oil Pulling."
Did I ask our resident dentist, Grandpa Dave, before diving right in? Of course not! That would be too sensible. Instead, I bought this sesame oil that Georgia is allergic to (an exception to our house rules of not buying or storing anything with her allergens), slapped warning labels all over it, and stuck it in our medicine cabinet for about a month before getting around to my first experiment with oil pulling.
Oh, I also took a bunch of disgustingly close-up "before" pictures of my teeth, thinking that I'd have miraculously cleaner, whiter and different looking "after" pictures to compare them to. I'll spare you the photographic evidence, but suffice it to say my expectations were way off base. See, there are many supposed benefits of oil pulling, a technique that has been around for thousands of years and essentially involves swishing oil around in your mouth for about 15 minutes and then spitting it out. Benefits like removing "toxins" (whatever that means - it's a somewhat nebulous term). But in my vanity, the one benefit I was most interested in was the cheap and effective teeth whitening.
I thought this would be more of a "once and you're done" thing, but it turns out that practitioners of oil pulling recommend doing it every day, or at a minimum several times a week, to achieve the desired results. And that's where oil pulling lost me. I set a timer for 15 minutes and swished away while surfing the Internet, so it wasn't an impossible task. Yet it felt like a chore. (It didn't help that all the while I became paranoid about Georgia's allergies and had to be extra careful not to get the oil on anything and to thoroughly clean off my lips and the bathroom sink afterwards. I have since realized that oil pulling can just as easily be done with coconut oil, a much safer alternative in our household.)
In the end I simply decided that if I can find 15 minutes a day to spend on my own health, well-being, or looks, I'd rather spend it walking or doing other exercise, meditating (something I don't practice but really want to learn this year), or (and I do not mean this facetiously) taking a shower and actually drying my hair. I have not been consistently kind enough to myself on that front for a couple years.
Perhaps this hippie weirdness better suits your style of relaxation or self-care. As for me, I'm going back to brushing, flossing, and yes, probably eventually paying for some kind of professional tooth whitening. Does anyone want a mostly unused bottle of sesame oil?
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