How Do I Choose the Best Herbal Treatment for Gum Disease?
A woman with healthy gums.
Herbal treatments for gum disease should be followed with a distilled water rinse.
Gum disease usually shows up around the tooth sockets in your mouth as red, inflamed flesh. It may also soften the gums, causing them to bleed at the lightest prodding. Regular brushing, flossing, and dentist visits can help clear up this condition, but usually don’t cure it. Combining an herbal treatment with a strict dental hygiene routine might just do the trick. There are no guarantees with herbs, but research shows that herbal treatment for gum disease may sometimes work as well as prescription medication. Before choosing one of these treatments, you should assess all of the different herbs you could use and speak to an herbalist about dosage.
Goldenseal is a highly recommended herbal treatment for gum disease. You can mix goldenseal powder with water to create a paste and gently place it on your gums, or create a wash by steeping a spoonful of dried goldenseal in hot water for about 10 minutes. Rinsing with this tea twice a day is said to help relieve infection, tighten gums, and break down tartar and plaque. The best goldenseal powder is usually golden-brown in color and can be found in many health food stores. Make sure you purchase food-grade herbs, ensuring that they’ve been processed under clean conditions.
Some herbalists recommend combining Echinacea and tea tree oil with goldenseal for an even more astringent treatment. Equal parts of all three herbs may be combined as a rinse and swished around in the mouth once or twice a day. An herbal mixture this strong generally should not be made into a paste because prolonged exposure could irritate sensitive gums. Herbal treatments for gum disease generally shouldn’t be swallowed and should always be followed by a rinse made from distilled water.
Hawthorn berries may sometimes be mixed into an herbal treatment for gum disease, but they must be used with extreme care. You should mix about .01 part of hawthorn with 1 part each of Echinacea, clove oil, tea tree oil, and distilled water for this wash. This rinse must be used only once a day and should never be swallowed. Hawthorn can be poisonous if ingested and should never be used as a rinse for children or the elderly. If you want to use hawthorn, speak to an herbalist first.
If you catch the infection early, a mixture of myrrh gum powder and clove oil is usually an effective herbal treatment for gum disease. When mixed, the myrrh disinfects the mouth, while the clove oil reduces inflammation and soothes pain. In fact, you can use clove oil with any herbal treatment for gum disease to help regulate paint, just don’t swallow much of it. Too much clove oil could cause an upset stomach.