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What is in your toothpaste?
Maybe you have thought about it before. Or like me, maybe you need a reminder to look a little closer. I know that it had never really crossed my mind until recently.
There are so many things that we include in our daily routine without much thought. Toothpaste is one of them. We put it in our mouth twice a day to brush our teeth without much thought to the ingredient list.
Did you notice that long list of chemicals that you cannot pronounce on the back of your toothpaste tube? Many of these things you wouldn’t want to touch with a 10 foot pole if you are focused on your health!
I don’t know about you, but I work really hard to be aware of what I put into my body. Especially after my autoimmune thyroid disease.
Knowing how organic whole foods heal our bodies, it’s hard to believe that you need a long list of chemicals for strong teeth.
MAKING MY OWN TOOTHPASTE
After running out of my regular toothpaste, I decided it was time to kick the chemical toothpaste habit. My interest was there, but sometimes it is hard to get started on a new project.
Ever find yourself dragging your feet? Me too.
I worked myself up to spend some time on it, but I was pleasantly surprised. I made my toothpaste in about 2 minutes. Yay!
Here is the recipe that I used for my homemade toothpaste:
½ cup of coconut oil
3 tbsp of baking soda
1 tbsp of organic stevia
25 drops of organic peppermint essential oil (optional)
I put it all in a small glass jar and mixed it up- without the organic peppermint essential oil since I didn’t have any on hand.
There was no need to need to warm up my coconut oil, it mixed up perfectly. However, if you have any trouble you can always warm it a bit before you start. If you warm it too much, you may have to wait for it to cool a bit and stir again because the baking soda may settle in the bottom.
It tasted pretty great. Sweet and salty! I already liked it much better than my old toothpaste. Except it was missing one thing. It didn’t have that clean mouth feeling after brushing my teeth. To fix that, I added this edible peppermint essential oil.
I was very pleased with my homemade toothpaste. Also- always rinse your mouth out after you brush. Otherwise, you may find that the baking soda in the toothpaste may irritate your gums when left in your mouth.
MORE ON TOOTHPASTE
Why do we think we need chemicals to make our teeth strong? I find this seems to go against common sense after everything I have learned about our bodies.
The baking soda provides a bit of grittiness to remove the plaque from your teeth and the coconut oil is antimicrobial. It can get into the tiny pockets teaming with bad bacteria and fight it while preserving the good bacteria residing in your mouth.
The stevia gives it a sweet flavor while the baking soda gives it a salty flavor. Adding the peppermint gives you the clean feeling when you finish.
Some of the agents in commercial toothpastes are fluoride, sodium lauryl sulfate, glycerin, hydrogen peroxide, propylene glycol, titanium dioxide, and triclosan. Fluoride is linked to hypothyroidism while titanium dioxide is linked to poor gut health.
You can read more about the many harms these chemicals can cause here from Dr. Axe. They range from mouth ulcers to numerous health and environmental problems.
And it is much cheaper to make your own toothpaste!
But what if you don’t what to make your own toothpaste? Here is a list of toothpastes from EWG that score well for not containing harmful ingredients.
You can purchase this one and this one easily from Amazon. Your oral health is important. After all, we know you can absorb things easily under your tongue and straight into your bloodstream. Why wouldn’t this be happening with the chemicals in your toothpaste too?
Have you considered what is in your toothpaste?