November 28, (THEWILL) – It is a morning ritual for millions of people around the world. But each time we squeeze a toothpaste tube on a brush, do the up and down, sideways and inward movement, we might unwittingly be doing some damage, starting with the mouth. Michael Jimoh reports…
A comely woman of 34, Dupe has a well-defined mouth and even dentition. With more than average height for a woman and an ever-ready smile, men ogle her shamelessly.
As a law undergraduate in one of the institutions of higher learning in Lagos, a school mate fell in love with Dupe. She was 24 when she graduated, two years younger than her lover. They married in 2009 and, like many newly married couple, shared a bed.
After three years of marriage, her spouse stopped giving her nightly kisses. That was not all. He started facing the wall each time they went to bed. Pressed severally by Dupe on what might be the cause of his sudden turn off, Wale said nothing. Dupe herself had no idea.
The gulf between Dupe and Wale widened as time lengthened, the husband staying longer with friends after work and the wife punishing him with feminine silences on his return. Anyone could see the marriage was headed for the rocks. But not Dupe!
A born-again Christian, Dupe took her case to the church mothers in a Pentecostal denomination where she worshipped. They counselled her to endure the un-husbandly attitude from Wale, to bear it with Christian equanimity. Has she forgotten that, as a Christian, demonic forces are up and about looking for marriages like hers to break up?
“Why, he would come to his senses in time,” they assured her, two or three recalling their own experiences with their spouses who, in their words, “misbehaved” but have now “seen the light.” When Dupe’s marriage crumbled and fell apart years later, no one was surprised.
Apparently, Wale did not, or refused to, “see the light,” as the church mothers assumed.
As it turned out, Dupe’s problem was anything but spiritual. One day, a female friend told her she had halitosis, a medical term for mouth odour.
“She was a true friend,” Dupe confided in another friend recently. “Because not many friends can open up to you that you have MO.”
For sure, Dupe was not born with halitosis. The cause of her mouth odour, she later found out, was a particular brand of toothpaste she was using then. After the rather unsettling disclosure from her friend, Dupe consulted a dentist. The dentist advised Dupe to change her brand of toothpaste, to switch to any with no chemical ingredient, especially alcohol. She did, and started using herbal toothpaste. The MO stopped. But then, her husband was gone!
For all the years they were married, Dupe and Wale had no children. While that may be a primary cause of their divorce, Dupe insists that her bad breath cannot be ruled out as a remote factor in rending her marriage asunder.
Ebiseme (not his real name) is a 37-year-old generator mechanic living and working somewhere near Ikeja. The first thing you notice about him when he talks or laughs is his coloured dentition. His mother has a dry goods shop in Yenagoa where he comes from. Growing up as a child through adolescence, Ebiseme never had to look elsewhere for toothpaste to clean his teeth in the morning. He only had to reach for it on a shelf in his mother’s shop. It went on for as long as he can remember.
Today, the result is evident in his teeth, thoroughly browned like a habitual kola nut chewer.
Either because of his ignorance of the possible harmful effect of the particular brand, Ebiseme has not discontinued its use.
Ordinary users may not be aware but experts have since acknowledged that some toothpaste do, in fact, contain ingredients that not only cause bad breath but are generally harmful.
Dr. Harold Katz is an expert in oral hygiene, specializing in bad breath. He says that some of the ingredients in toothpaste are quite harmful even though big pharmaceutical companies conceal such information.
“Although you surely take for granted that the toothpaste and mouthwash you use every day are working to improve your oral health and freshen your breath, in fact, the oral care products you use could be causing you actual harm,” Katz has written. “For several decades the large pharmaceutical companies have made commercial oral care products that contain harmful ingredients such as alcohol, sodium lauryl sulfate, saccharin and benzalkonium chloride.”
Why do companies use alcohol in toothpaste? The answer is to kill germs in the mouth, especially food carrying germs.
Katz has also speculated on why alcohol is used in oral care products. “Many people believe that commercial oral care manufacturers have added alcohol to mouthwash for many years as a way to kill the germs that cause bad breath. The truth is that many of the ingredients used in old-fashioned mouthwash are NOT soluble in water. That means those mouthwashes would look like dirty dish water if they had a water base. However, those ingredients are soluble in alcohol. And, that’s how alcohol ended up in most mouthwashes.
“Unfortunately, because alcohol is a drying agent, the alcohol actually makes bad breath worse. You see, a dry mouth is bad breath’s best friend. Without saliva to combat the bacteria that cause bad breath, your dry mouth is a perfect breeding ground for bad breath bacteria and the volatile sulfur compounds they create. By the way, there is not enough alcohol in mouthwash to kill significant numbers of bad breath germs. You need a 70% solution to do that. The leading mouthwash is up to 27% alcohol. Not enough to do much killing, but certainly enough to make your mouth dry.”
Dr. Katz continues that recent research published by a leading dental journal in Australia has shown that “long term use of alcohol can lead to oral cancer.” So, the “burn” that you feel when you are rinsing with a mouthwash containing alcohol is not only killing the bad breath bacteria, it may also be damaging the delicate oral tissue in your mouth and increasing your risk of oral sores and oral cancer.”
According to the bad breath specialist, not only alcohol in toothpaste and oral mouth wash can be harmful. There is, for instance, sodium lauryl sulfate SLS, for short. It is the hash detergent that makes the mouth foam when you brush your mouth. This has also been linked, he insists, to cancer sores in the mouth. Worse still, Katz writes, “the microscopic damage and shedding of vital oral tissues also provides a food source to the bad breath bacteria allowing them to rapidly reproduce which results in bad breath.”
Dr. Harvey Wiley was the director of the bureau of chemistry at USDA in 1907 when saccharine became widely used. He pointedly cautioned against its use in food, observing that “[Saccharine is] a coal tar product totally devoid of food value and extremely injurious to health.”
Dr. Femi Kusa is a veteran journalist who writes a weekly column on alternative medicine in The Nation. In one of his columns that went viral soon after publication years ago, the topic under discussion was fluoride and other poisons in toothpaste. At the end of the day, there was a consensus about the harmful effects of the many ingredients used in making toothpaste. There was general condemnation, for example, of fluoride and other poisons in pastes.
In his words, “the general condemnation underscores how science and medicine lead humanity to ruin of human health today, only to discover their folly tomorrow…Many toothpastes are still advertised on Nigerian televisions as the best for dental and oral care whereas in the countries from where fluoridised toothpaste came to Nigeria, such toothpastes have been named as the culprit behind many diseases.”
Some of the diseases identified are lowering of insulin blood levels thereby predisposing some people to diabetes, colouration of teeth, cancer sores, etc.
Are there natural options to toothpastes that might be harmful?
Yes, says Dr. Kusa. Chewing sticks are natural options to chemically-infested toothpaste. Some of those recommended by the practitioner of alternative medicine are Ijebu and Calabar chewing stick, as well as chewing stick from Dogonyaro tree.
How convenient are those options to the paste most of us squeeze from the bottom or the middle most mornings?
In a poll conducted by THEWILL, respondents agreed with Dr. Kusa’s recommendation of using chewing sticks. Some did not.
Uwa is one. Ijebu, Calabar or chewing stick from Dogonyaro tree, the 47-year-old native of Benin in Edo state would have none of that. He sticks to a brand of paste he grew up using. “And I have never had mouth odour,” says Uwa who now lives and works in Lagos, adding that the messy nature of chewing sticks alone makes it extremely inconvenient for him. “I don’t like the frequent spitting that comes with chewing sticks. It is not a pleasant sight to see around you.”
For Adesola, a female banker working in one of the banks in Lagos Island, time is the decisive factor for her. In her view, it takes at least a quarter of an hour to make good use of chewing sticks. “First, you have to chew it to become brush-like. And then, you now scrape the teeth with it, up and down, left to right, right to left, inside the teeth and even up to the molars and finally, the tongue and gums. You may even injure yourself in the process of brushing those tender parts of the mouth with chewing sticks. I don’t have that much time just for the teeth alone,” she says, shaking her head.
Continuing, Adesola insists that it takes her less than three minutes to do all of that with a brush and the paste she uses. Has she ever had MO? Not at all. True enough! When this reporter met and spoke with her, he didn’t have to turn away his face like Dupe’s former husband.
On his part, Dotun, an Ogbomoso native, admits that chewing sticks are incomparably preferable to toothpastes because, as he puts it, “our forefathers made use of what was available – chewing sticks – pako.” As he tells it, the favourite teeth cleaner in his homestead in his natal town was chewing stick obtained from the roots of bitter leaf plant.
His grandparents, he admits, used to roast many of such roots in hot ash, dry them, dust off the ash and that’s it. “My grandfather never used toothpaste one day in his 88 years and he never had mouth odour or bad breath,” Dotun insists, with a grin as wide as the tribal marks across both cheeks.
That may be true of some rural communities. What about urban places like Lagos where such herbal recipes are hard to come by?
With sales of the conventional toothpastes in the millions across the country and alternatives like chewing sticks lagging far, far behind, it is clear where the answer lies. Still, users of harmful toothpastes may do well to remember Dupe’s hard lesson: use pastes that are not likely to cause your spouse to turn his/ her back on you.
About the Author
Michael Jimoh is a Nigerian journalist with many years experience in print media. He is currently a Special Correspondent with THEWILL.
