Are you as confused about health studies as I am?
Eat this. Don’t eat that. If you eat too much of this it will make you grow a tail but if you don’t eat enough you will be vitamin deficient and your teeth will fall out. Sometimes it’s obvious which studies are worth paying attention to because of their size and who has conducted them. Other times it’s just a big ol’ mess of confusion and worries.
Two studies about oral cancer came out in the past week. In the first, drinking coffee was found to reduce the risk greatly. Smoking and drinking alcohol are still the top factors for contracting cancers of the mouth and associated areas. Now coffee is thought to kill the whatchamacallits that conspire to form the disease. Yippee I’m covered!
But not so fast.
Regular use of mouthwash is now believed to increase the risk. Alcohol in Scope or Listerine (remember alcohol being a top risk factor?) is thought to be the problem. It changes its composition when it’s mixed in the mouth and becomes toxic for the tissue.
I checked my bottle of Scope and alcohol is listed as the second ingredient, after water. But should I really be concerned?? Who knows?
So taking all of this recent information into account, and just to be on the safe side, from now on, I think I’ll pour my Scope down the drain and gargle with coffee!