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Mouthwash can make you more susceptible to cancer?
Maybe, but in a pinch it will still get you drunk.
Mouthwash can make you more susceptible to cancer?
Maybe, but in a pinch it will still get you drunk.
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Well, two things:
1. Correlation != Causation
2. The EtOH metabolism pathway is in the liver, so unless you are actually swallowing large amounts of the mouthwash, it will not be metabolized to acetylaldehyde. Secondly, the researcher's assumption there ignores the second step in the EtOH metabolism pathway, which is the conversion of acetylaldehyde to acetic acid, which is catalyzed by acetylaldehyde dehydrogenase, which eliminates acetylaldehyde.
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Guess I should switch to Crest's alcohol free version (well the Walmart* version)
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@battra92: I've been using that Crest stuff for years with no ill effects (even the generics). After I read the original Consumerist article I got scared and tried Listerine instead, but the burn sent me straight back to the Crest stuff.
I've never had any staining, and I would notice because my teeth are naturally pretty white since I don't drink coffee or tea.
@battra92: Consumerist has an article on that, too. They said it took away some people's sense of taste to varying degrees, in addition to the above-mentioned nasty stains.
I wish there was a safer alternative. My dorm lifestyle has me eating nasty, non-whole foods all the time, which ferment like rotten grapes in a yeast factory in my mouth. I used Crest the day before that post, and quit out of fear although I had no side effects (yet). Then I started using generic alcohol mouthwash. If that's bad, what can I gargle? My whole mouth tastes nasty without it when I'm eating the stuff at school, no matter how much I brush or floss.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-672431-100x100.png\")
@TVarmy: Tom's of Maine has an all-natural bacteria-killing mouthwash that is pretty yummy. It's at most drugstores.
@eyemandy: I've discovered their toothpaste at Target lately and *love* it. Doesn't taste like overflavored ass since it has a nice, unsweetened natural mint oil for flavor. Plus the mint flavor doesn't linger forever and screw up my sense of taste like Crest, Aquafrash, etc. do.
@battra92: Or none of the above, as the non-alcohol version is well known to cause brown spots on your enamel - sometimes they need to be bleached away (they can't be brushed off).
Then there are the problems with the bleaches either being not strong enough or making your teeth sensitive...
Yeah, stick with the \"none of the above\"... it's less work.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-107600-100x100.png\")
@amandakerik: That's dental flourosis and doesn't have anything to do with the mouthwash but more that you've been over-exposed to flouride. Of course that flouride can come from the mouthwash.
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there's a new independent study that states that breathing air can increase the risk of cancer.
news at 11
btw did you know eating too much BBQ can increase cancer too because you're eating a lot of carcinogen's..
OMG somebody call Famous Dave's their selling death!
There they're and their
Other than me being a grammar Nazi, I completely agree with your comment Skankingmike.
@Skankingmike: Oxygen is an oxidant. Seriously, Reader's Digest once ran an article about the anti-oxidant concept, and they actually said that each breath of oxygen is dangerous and destroys cells.
Really, can't magazines just say \"There's a balance out there you need to reach to be healthy, and it doesn't come down to a simplistic soundbyte\"?
@TVarmy: But then they couldn't scare you into paying attention to them, which would result in millions of advertising dollars lost.
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Acetaldehyde, sometimes known as ethanal, is an organic chemical compound with the formula CH3CHO or MeCHO. Acetaldehyde occurs naturally in ripe fruit, coffee, and fresh bread, and is produced by plants as part of their normal metabolism.
So as part of this line of thinking, we should also eliminate fruits and bread... because they cause cancer.
Is there a study that shows alcoholics get more cases of oral cancer? B/c, you know, they have alcohol in their mouth more than I have mouth wash.
That being said, since one of my medications leads me to get canker sores pretty easily, I found the Crest Pro-Clean stuff really helps me get rid of them when followed by a quick rinse of hydrogen peroxide.
@PorkchopSandwiches!_GitEmSteveDave: Yes. Good lord, yes. Countless studies. Try Google. Start here. [www.oralcancerfoundation.org]
@PorkchopSandwiches!_GitEmSteveDave: might just be the hydrogen peroxide, its an excellent debriding agent.
@lpranal and the magic holiday taco dip: Nope. I've tried different combos, and I think the Crest Pro kills whatever bacteria are causing the canker sore, and the h2o2 debrides it, helping me to heal better.
Battra92-- You should look that up here, I and many others have had that demon mouthwash cause brown stains on our teeth that are hard to get out. Crest also doesn't take any responsibility for it and it is up to you to foot the bill.
Slight possibility of cancer (and how many people you know have been using Listerine for YEARS and nothing wrong) or significant possibility of seriously F-d up teeth? You decide.
Where is the evidence? Did someone do a study or something?From the article:\"It hasn't actually been established that there is a direct relationship between mouthwashes with alcohol and oral cancer,\" Dr Neil Hewson from the Australian Dental Association says.\"
Please remove the misleading headline about the fake research. Thanks.
*gargle* *gargle* wha?..
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The thing with all these medical studies is that they only prove one thing - lazy journalism. Most of the time there is no context for the study given and a couple weeks later you are watching the news and some other study has different results. TV stations love them since they can tease, \"Something in your bathroom may cause cancer. Details at 11.\"
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@Triborough: Everything has the potential to cause mutations: heat, sugar, alcohol, Cuban sandwiches, sex, beach volleyball, cell phones, spending the day with your mom, or buying Ben Popken a birthday gift. All of these activities have some small chance of causing a mutation in one DNA strand in one cell in your body. Mutation rate is typically used as a marker of a potential carcinogen.
Most cancers require up to 20 mutations at specific points, all in different genes, all in a single cell. So, if you're binge drinking or sucking down a pack of ciggies everyday, your risk of liver or oral/throat/lung cancer might go up. If you're rinsing with mouthwash containing alcohol, your risk of oral cancer might go up, but it will be 1000X less risky.
MOST people who get cancer are born with one or two genes that are already defective in all of their cells. I'm not saying that you can chew tobacco and roll around in toxic waste without fear if you have a perfect genome. But, people born with defective copies of cancer genes have a higher risk.
There's risk in everything we do. I wear sunscreen, but I won't give up my vodka tonics.
being a chemist, I know that alcohol dehydrogenase works all the time to turn alcohol into acetaldehyde for you in your liver when you take a drink of natty light. If we should avoid alcohol in mouthwash, is Professor McCullough may be suggesting that we never drink liquor again? That would be the logical conclusion from the premise that acetaldehyde causes cancer... Maybe the mouth is unusually susceptible to cancer from this source, since you douse your liver in acetaldehyde when you drink ethanol anyways...
Although drinking everyday can cause health problems too, acetaldehyde is a common feeling in the human experience - ever had a hangover? too much acetaldehyde!
Anyways, I think I should go read the article...
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The CDC just released a list of ten highest causes of cancer
10. Mouthwash
9. Powdered donuts
8. Dreadlocks on white guys
7. Reruns of \"Xena: Warrior Princess\"
6. Clay Aiken's \"Measure of a Man\" album
5. Egyptian mummy curses
4. Jessica Simpson
3. The Food Network
2. Breathing
1. Cancer
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-131635-100x100.png\")
@FuryOfFirestorm: You should point out that the cancer that 'Xena' causes is actually pure awesomeness that consumes your entire body.
Wow, I can't believe eggs (eating or not eating, depending on the day) didn't make it into the top ten.
Or listening to Hannah Montana albums.
LOL! thats a good list right there.
First off, IANAD, but...
Is it just me, or does the study not really say it causes cancer?
we believe that there is now sufficient evidence to accept the proposition that alcohol-containing mouthwashes contribute to the increased risk of development of oral cancer [emphasis added]
Bad science! Bad bad bad! we do NOT presume causation without quantitative data and double-blind tests!
It looks like all they're saying is that it's theoretically possible for there to be an increased risk, and that they understand the mechanism by which such a risk would be caused. but they haven't actually proven it, or shown how much that increase in risk is. If someone wants to shell out 43 bucks for the full article, i'd be more than happy to check it out.
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@lpranal and the magic holiday taco dip: Hey, it's the same \"scientific\" method they use to \"prove\" \"climate change\" (formerly known as \"global warming\" in the 1980s and \"global cooling\" in the 1970s).
Like we learned from \"Futurama\", \"Anything is possible if you can imagine it! That's what being a scientist is all about!\"
@lpranal and the magic holiday taco dip:
And a double-blind test of this nature would be unethical science. Unethical unethical unethical! You can't subject people to something you hypothesize causes cancer if they don't already use it, meaning you'd have to give the placebo to non-users, rendering a double-blind test, well, NOT double-blind.
@lpranal and the magic holiday taco dip: And it's probably one of those situations where you have to use mouthwash 15 times a day in order to suffer any ill effects.
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WTF? Shouldn't drinking alcohol cause the most cancer of all then?
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@henwy:
The other effects of just drinking tend to get you before the cancer - cirrhosis, etc.
Chronic drinkers and smokers tend to have *MUCH* higher incidences of oral cancer than do non-drinkers/non-smokers or people who are chronic drinkers/chronic smokers.
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So the alcohol in the mouthwash is bad, but the Sodium Saccharine, the sodium fluoride, and the sodium lauryl sulfate is ok?
Saccharine caused cancer in lab rats because they metabolize saccharine differently than humans do. We don't have the metabolic pathway that causes the cancer.
(Much like how chocolate is fatal to dogs)
Sodium Fluoride: there are TONS of websites out there that are teeming with insane people who think Fluoride is some big conspiracy. It's not. Fluoridated water is not going to kill people. Don't like it? Get a water filtration/water softener system. And then make sure your dentist doesn't use a precautionary fluoride paste on your teeth. You get about 100x more fluoride in that treatment than in a solid year of drinking fluoridated water. Good luck with the shitty teeth, though.
Sodium Laureth Sulfate is NOT necessarily worse than anything else you come in contact with during the day. . It's an extremely effective detergent that is used in pretty much everything- even the laboratory. Stop regurgitating uninformed echain mails about Herbal Essences.
@Parapraxis: And yet they were able to get saccharine out of all the soft drinks because of that stupid study, and we're stuck with splenda or nutrasweet, both hideous
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@Parapraxis: Please provide sources for your facts.
\"For example, in Finland and Germany, tooth decay rates remained stable or continued to decline after water fluoridation stopped. \"
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@hi: though you left out the fact (which is mentioned right after your quote) that Finland and Germany BOTH offer pediatric dental care in their schools. The reason the rate either didn't change or kept going down is that the children in that part of the world get regular free dental visits courtesy of their public schools. Not so much in the US.
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@Parapraxis: Chocolate is poisonous to EVERYTHING - its just down to how much you consume. If you ate enough, it would poison you, its just the amount required to kill a dog is a lot lower.
@Green Goth Brit Chick - Goin to America!: No, actually, chocolate isn't poisonous to humans (no more so than say, salt). We are perfectly capable of digesting it safely -- barring irrationally, insanely high consumption (but then again, irrationally insane consumption of anything kills us, from salt to water).
The real reason most animals (other than humans) are \"poisoned\" by chocolate is because they can't process the theobromine in it like we do. We rock at metabolizing it, but they don't. Sad for them, but happy for us.
@Parapraxis: Saccharine can cause cancer. So can aspartame. So can sugar.
Fluoride at low doses helps rebuild teeth. At high doses breaks down bones. It has not been shown to cause cancer.
Sodium laurel sulfate is soap. S-O-A-P. It's in Ivory. It's in Irish Spring. It's in shampoo and dish/laundry detergent. If you're afraid of soap causing cancer, then I don't know how you stay clean.
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This is old news.
When people drink alcohol, like in beer, wine liquor etc., alcohol dehydrogenase in the liver converts that alcohol (ethanol) to acetaldehyde (AKA ethanal) which circulates throughout your body until, at some point down the line, it makes it back to the liver and is process from acetaldehyde into acetic acid (vinegar) by aldehyde dehydrogenase. The acetic acid is then excreted via the kidneys.
@padams89: Ok, now, cut out everything past your gullet. What happens in your mouth? because that's the only part relevant here. You don't drink mouthwash.
Thats it! Im flossing everyday for now!
Just as long as I don't forget...
Umm, the burning from Listerine is caused by the mint oils and not the alcohol.
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flossing is the real key for keeping your mouth and teeth clean. sure, it's a pain in the ass to do it every single day, but it really, really makes a difference.
and when you go for your dental checkup and they ask if you floss and you say yes? they can totally tell when you're lying.
@kittenfoo: Flossing every day is a PITA? Geez, never seemed tough to me, I gotta wonder how low the bar is for someone to find THAT difficult.
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@dweebster: It's a pain for me because I've had braces for the past year, but before I got them on, it was a piece of cake (I used those plastic Y-shaped things with the piece of floss in them). I know I don't floss as much as I should right now with the braces, but I brush a whole lot more meticulously than I used to and I rinse with mouthwash every day (whereas before I had the braces, I didn't use the mouthwash as much).
@dweebster: i get those pre-threaded dental pick things of floss...easy to carry around, work great...yea floss
@dweebster: I find it extremely painful. I have terrible gums (great diet, fantastic teeth, no cavities) but inherited bad gums. Flossing is torture.
I know, I know, if I do it regularly it'll get easier. But it's hard to regularly self-inflict that much pain. And it's not like ripping a band aid off or something - it takes *forever*.
/hates flossing
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@dweebster: My teeth are so close together that I cannot floss except with flat floss, and the hygienist comments on it every time I go in to get my teeth cleaned. For me, flossing takes quite a while and is very difficult to do properly.
So yes, at the end of a very long day when I'm about to fall into bed, I do skip it.
Guess I'll have to live with the knowledge that I'll never be as perfect as you.
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@dweebster: It is for me. Flossing properly between every tooth takes up more time than I have patience for. It's not that I think it's difficult, it's that I find it tedious.
@dweebster: It's actually a great challenge for me because I have a small mouth opening, so maybe next time you can speak for yourself.
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Hm. I think I had an ex girlfriend that gave me oral cancer.
Wait, they do not say the mouthwash is a problem. What they say is more interestin: by excessively cleaning any open sores or whatever are more readily open to infiltartion by whatever you have in your mouth for a while after. Which may include some by-product of tobacco. OR germs, viruses, alcohol and its byproducts... Remember, in the regions where it is produced curare is often drunk - quite safely as long as there are no open sores from lips to stomach, where it is rapidly destroyed, despite being an extremely dangerous drug//poison if it passes directly into the bloodstream an carried to the areas where it has deadly effect.
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Yeah...well, for about two years my dentist has recommended I use non-alcohol mouth wash at night before I go to bed. That along with my trusty old Sonicare has given me four straight clean bills of health. No gum bleeding at all during the cleanings.
So, don't run away from mouthwash. Just run away from mouthwash with alcohol.
Let me reiterate: The dental community has know about this for a very long time.
@FrankenPC: There was actually a thread a while back about the side-effects of Crest ProHealth mouthwash and several dentists came in and said they prefer alcohol mouthwashes but that the others work fine, too.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-267895-100x100.png\")
@FrankenPC: Sonicare wasn't so great for me..what helped me was..a children sized toothbrush. I have a small mouth.
Yes, I was definitely recommended an alcohol free mouthwash when I was at my dentist a few years back. She said it would help a lot.
@FrankenPC: +1 on the sonicare. def. not a gimmick, and it actually works (if used properly) kinda pricey, but you can get some amazing deals on ebay (NOT used ones, of course...)
Tonight at 11: New study, Based on assumptions; null hypothesis; and dated scientific research, finds life.....IS CANCER!!!!
Details at eleven
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Fortunately, you'll only get cancer until next month when \"new studies show\" that using mouthwash doesn't cause cancer, but actually increases your life span.
If you can, hold off using Listerine until February.
Technically being in direct sunlight for more than 8 minutes is causing cells in your body to become cancerous.
Really everything causes cancer because cancer is a catchall for when your cells stop functioning correctly.
Basically, take all the this and that cause cancer news with a grain of salt.
This is absolute bunk. Alcohol has to be metabolized by our liver to become acetaldehyde. No one I know admits to drinking large quantities of listerine, and if they do, they have other problems to worry about. Also, acetaldehyde is found in most fruits, so tough luck, if you eat fruit you're eating known carcinogens!
Does this professor work for ACT or Crest or another manufacturer of alcohol free mouth wash?
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-280348-100x100.png\")
I dipped Copenhagen for eight years. Mouthwash was part of the routine. I finally quit. I don't want to die of face, mouth, throat etc cancer.
I'm a compulsive flosser. It's so satisfying when I get a big clump of food on the floss. Free horsedouvers.
flossing is actually pretty fun if you do it while watching TV. Its better than commercials.
Notice it only says it increases your chance of getting oral cancer...they never give you the important numbers.
the chance of getting cancer, ANY cancer, is .4% using their own incidence (cancer incidence/US population I got from google). Thats ANY cancer, and includes people predisposed to it. So lets be generous and say oral cancer accounts for .1% of new cancers. This doesnt even raise your risk by 40 times like smoking. So the most its going to make you is, say, .39%. Which is pretty low. That 39 people out of 100,000 who regularly use mouthwash. How many people regularly use mouthwash? Now you could say, my town is 300,000 people, 1.3 of them are going to get cancer from mouthwash! Well only if ALL of them regularly use mouthwash and dont die of something else. The number of people this study is pertinent to is so small that the increase in cancer risk to you and the public is negotiable. So I didnt RTFKA. But I did get the number because I was curious about cancer incidence.
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I need my Listerine. It's the only think that helps when my tonsils and uvula decide to swell up.
So...what you're saying is you need to be a mega-crazy hypochondriac if you want to avoid cancer?
I'll take the 1 in a million bet and enjoy the minty freshness. I even drink diet soda. I live on the edge.
Umm... did they ever check out to people who drink a glass of red wine each day? That would kinda suck if I drink a glass of red wine each day to keep a stroke away, but then a chance of oral cancer every day.
\"Both the American Dental Association (ADA) and the United States National Cancer Institute (NCI) agree that the alcohol contained in antiseptic mouthwash is safe and not a factor in oral cancers.\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ListerineWhen the ADA tells me it's bad, I'll stop using it. I'm not going to stop using it just because some guy in Australia says so.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-570288-100x100.png\")
Sometimes after a night at the bar I would just mouthwash instead of brushing, but my dentist told me that mouthwash is only useful for fresh breath and even that doesn't last very long. Truly unnecessary.
Months ago, when I first heard the rumor that Listerine causes cancer, I did a Google search. I read a few articles of studies regarding mouthwash and oral cancer. From reading those articles, I could definitely say that mouthwash does and does not increase risk of oral cancer and that smoking does and does not also increase the risk.
One study said that the dividing line between significant increased risk and not is 14% alcohol by volume (ABV). Regular Listerine is slightly above 14%, flavored Listerine is slightly below 14%, and all other brands have less, down to Targon with 4%.
Although some studies say that smoking and drinking alcoholic beverages do not increase risk of oral cancer, I am tending to believe another study that says that Listerine plus booze plus tobacco significantly increases risk more than Listerine alone. After all, the more alcohol consumed, the drier the membranes in the mouth and throat, making it easier for the carcinogens in tobacco to get into the bloodstream.
What annoys me is when so-called \"scientists\" have a hypothesis, devise a test to prove their hypothesis, and if the results don't significantly disprove the hypothesis, they say \"there is now sufficient evidence to accept the proposition.\"
\"Anything is possible if you can imagine it! That's what being a scientist is all about! Right, Dr. Farnsworth?\"
@Parapraxis:
OT, but I really want to know about this chocolate and dogs thing. I hear it all the time, but I once had a 13 lb. miniature wire haired dachshund who snatched a two pound box of chocolates when I wasn't home.
He polished off over a pound, then hid the ones he couldn't eat immediately in the couch cushions for later. I so appreciated that. (This dog was amazing; he could also pry open the refrigerator with his nose and take whatever he wanted; we had to keep it locked. We could remember to lock it 100 times in a row and the one time we forgot he would have a feast).
Anyway, old Rusty was fine and lived to scavenge another day. Was he just immune to the dog/chocolate syndrome?
Bad science! You produce WAY more acetaldehyde processing the alcohol you drink (which, incidentally, is what causes some of the ill effects of alcohol) than what you gargle.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-22998-100x100.png\")
Please be careful with this information. I just ran it past my dentist (just had a cleaning and read this on my iphone) and he thinks its crap. His opinion is that his patients would be worse off without using Listerine than with it. Scope and all the rest he thinks are practically useless. Listerine is the only one he says that really provides a benefit.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-659687-100x100.png\")
Use Act or Crest or Tom's of Maine... all alcohol free.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-254112-100x100.png\")
so does that mean i shouldn't swish vodka around in my mouth before swallowing?
@wickedpixel:
Just do what I do:
drink cosmos or bloody marys or screwdrivers etc.
The antioxidants in the healthy juices counteract all the bad stuff in the alcohol!
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-72607-100x100.png\")
This is going to sound very strange, but I wet my face with listermint mouth wash before I shave. I used to get red rashes after shaving, and this has stopped it. I've been doing it for over a year.
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cancer be damned! I won't give up my listerine. Once a day, in the morning, and diluted 50/50 with a 3% hydrogen peroxide solution. Try it every second day for a week or so and be amazed at how much cleaner and smoother your teeth feel.
I usually enjoy reading these articles; they're very informative and enlightening. But this headline is just a little bit misleading to say the least. Of course, I don't know why I care: I rarely use mouthwash anyway. Brush and floss, brush and floss, brush and floss.....
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Brush your teeth really well, brush your tongue because that's where a lot of bacteria lies...I get the reasoning for mouthwash, but it's not like teeth are going to crumble without it.
@Writer, TheNinjaReport: It does not get your tonsils though.
@Writer, TheNinjaReport: Mouthwash actually causes bad breath more often than not.