We all know that maintaining good oral hygiene is a must since oral health touches every aspect of our lives. If we don’t brush and clean our teeth and gums then our mouths will be prone to bacteria deposits from plaque buildup, which can cause gum issues and tooth decay among others.
No one wants to talk and interact with someone with foul-smelling breath so to feel more confident after brushing and flossing, some of us resort to swishing and gargling some badass antibacterial mouthwash solution. I’m not saying it’s bad to amplify our mouth health but there’s something that you need to know especially if you’re a post-workout mouthwash user. Wanna find out what it is? Keep scrolling down.
We all know that exercise can help us avoid a host of serious ailments and enhance nearly every aspect of our health from the inside out. Some of these health benefits might sound too good to be true but decades’ worth of evidence is enough proof that exercise does truly provide wonderful benefits. However, we won’t fully get the most out of it if we’re not aware that some of our habits are hindering its effects.
A study published in Free Radical Biology and Medicine found out that using mouthwash can interfere and limit one of the cardiovascular benefits of exercise: lowering blood pressure.
Yes, you read that right! Who would’ve thought that killing off bacteria in our oral biome can affect the important biological effects of physical activity, right?
This research study revealed that our dental wellbeing isn’t the only one affected after we rinse a cap-load of bacteria-killing solution around our mouths. Doing this also affects the complex molecular mechanism that works to sustain the blood pressure-lowering effects of working out.
This information is very surprising because we only know about the neutralizing, breath freshening and other beneficial effects of using mouthwash to our oral health, but there’s more going on than meets the smell of our mouths.
The researchers of this study asked 23 healthy adults to ran on a treadmill for half an hour. Immediately after their workouts, the participants were asked to rinse their mouths with either a mint-flavored placebo (control substance) or with an antibacterial mouthwash. They were also asked to do that again 30, 60, and 90 minutes after exercising. Here’s the catch though! No one knew which one is getting which to give that element of surprise.
After analyzing all participants’ blood pressure, as well as their blood and saliva samples, the study revealed that the blood-pressure lowering effects of exercise were reduced by 60+% and 100% after 1 and 2 hours (post-exercise) respectively.
The average reduction in systolic blood pressure of the placebo group is 5.2 milligrams of mercury (mm Hg) compared with mouthwash users with a reduction of 2.0 mm Hg.
Now that you know that using mouthwash interferes with post-exercise hypotension, it’s safe to say that it’ll be favorable to cut down the need to ingest antibacterial chemicals so it won’t trigger and affect the biological mechanism effects of your body after your workouts. Just use it before your workouts or before bedtime so that you don’t miss out on reaping the post-exercise cardiovascular benefits of exercise from here on out.
Reference:
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326259.php#1
https://www.sciencealert.com/a-strange-thing-happens-if-you-use-mouthwash-after-you-exercise