“Oil Pulling” – What the Eff?

Late last night on Twitter, my friend Yoli (we met at the beach cleanup last summer) recommended a battling my current batch of The Ills with a technique called “Oil Pulling.”

After going to bed around ten thirty last night, I woke up at five with gross phlegmy ick, saw her tweet, and read this line: “Within 30 minutes of doing it, I thought I was in an episode of X Files with the neon stuff that came out of my nose.”

Sold and sold and SOLD.

I did some quick reading and saw that some people had good results using olive oil, which I had in the house (my sesame oil was, regrettably, toasted). Somewhere, someone said “put some peppermint oil in to help with the taste,” which was a lifesaver because olive oil on its own tastes really gross. I only managed to swish the oil in my mouth for about 5 minutes before I had to spit it out.

I didn’t get any X-Files horror effects, but my nose definitely did some extra dripping and I for the rest of the night (woke up again around 20, and moved on to battling the ills with Emergen-C, tea and juice.

So I’m declaring oil-pulling  a win, and preparing to head out for multi-vitamins and chicken soup.ten am) I could take a deep breath without sending myself into a coughing fit.

Related:

Yoli’s full blog entry about Oil Pulling.
Blog from the last time I got The Ills.