The benefits of saliva are easy to miss—until you know how many jobs saliva actually has!

Read the full episode + resources: https://becomingnatural.com/benefits-of-saliva/

In this episode, we look at how saliva helps you taste, chew, swallow, and begin digestion, while also buffering acids, supporting enamel remineralization, and helping regulate the oral microbiome.

We follow the surprising nitrate-to-nitrite pathway that connects bacteria on your tongue with nitric oxide and blood-vessel function. We also look at persistent dry mouth, why medications and mouth breathing matter, and when it deserves more attention.

And we explore the unusual Gospel passages where Jesus used saliva in healing and what people in the ancient world understood about it. By the end, you may never think of spit as “just spit” again.

In This Episode You'll Learn:

• How saliva supports enamel and helps buffer acids in the mouth

• How bacteria on the tongue help convert nitrate to nitrite as part of the nitric-oxide pathway • Why medications, mouth breathing, and other factors can contribute to persistent dry mouth

• Why saliva appears in several Gospel healing accounts and how people in the ancient world understood it

Keep Listening Fluoride Skeptics: Hidden Truth Makes for a Safe and Healthy Life https://becomingnatural.com/fluoride-health-concerns/

This episode is educational and not medical advice. If dry mouth sticks around, or it started after a medication change, bring that to a dentist or the prescriber.

Moms have been using one very questionable cleaning product for generations.

No bottle. No spray. Usually applied directly with your hands.

And now I have questions. Is it really a cleaner? Does it eradicate 99

9% of germs? Or is there actually more biology happening there than we know

Is this cleaner Becoming Natural approved?

We’re about to find out.

Before we get into today’s episode, I wanted to take a few extra minutes and

fill you in on what Becoming Natural is becoming—and, with that, where I’ve been

If you listen regularly, you’ve probably noticed I’ve missed a few episodes over the summer

Becoming Natural is very much alive. In fact, behind the scenes, I

ve probably been working on it more than ever. Around the clock

actually

This summer, I decided to build an entire operating system for the podcast—something that could

help me manage research, summaries, the future website, downloads, analytics, SEO, and all the other things

I didn’t even know existed when I started. I just knew that I loved researching

and writing, but the time it took for the admin tasks was time I could not

sustain over time

I just want to read and write.

Apparently, at this stage of my life, I have also become someone who builds

operating systems and talks about code. Which is

comical

I actually took a computer science class in high school. For

my final project, I built a little matchmaking program in DOS. Ten questions for

the boys, ten for the girls, compare the answers, and voilà—a match

My teacher, who was very smart but clearly lacked

vision for my future empire, made fun of the

project

I could have invented Match.com, my friends.

he apparently thought I was just a silly girl making boys and girls match up on a computer

Missed opportunity, sir. Sure wish I could tell him now.

Anyway…

Building all of this has been fascinating, but the learning curve has been massive. I actually

I have built things, lost things, recovered things, rebuilt them better, celebrated way too

late at night because I finally figured something out…and then occasionally woke up

the next morning to discover that part of my beautiful little puzzle had disappeared

again

Some days it has felt like a roller coaster.

And the perfectionist in me has had a hard time moving forward when I

know the pieces behind an episode aren’t working the way I want them

to

There has been something

underneath all of that

though

When I started this podcast, I thought a lot of my purpose would be

talking about Crohn’s disease, my healing, and what I learned through that experience

That was what I knew.

And I am still incredibly passionate about helping people walking through Crohn’s and chronic illness

But I’ve realized my story is bigger than Crohn’s.

The more I study, the more fascinated I become with how our bodies were designed

how our ancestors used what was available to them to care for their bodies, what

Scripture teaches us about stewardship, and how connected our physical, emotional, and spiritual health really

are

I’ll start researching an episode thinking I’m going to learn about something, and before

long I’m sitting there with my mouth wide open amazed by what I’m learning

myself

The human body is incredible, and apparently this podcast is taking me somewhere I didn't expect to go

The connection between our bodies and the earth is real—not in some mystical sense, but in

the very practical reality that the same God who created us also created the world we live

in

Our bodies respond to light and darkness. They depend

on minerals. They interact with plants, food, microbes, seasons

sleep, movement, stress, and the environment around us every

single day

I keep finding myself amazed by those connections.

I am learning right alongside you.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about why I'm doing this

in the first place—and what really belongs under Becoming Natural

This has become my checkpoint:

Becoming Natural follows the tension between what we’ve been told, what ancient people observed

what modern science can actually explain, and what the body has been showing us all

along

We look for the surprising connections between physiology, nature, everyday exposures, traditional wisdom, and

Scripture—the kind of connections that make you stop and say, “I had no

idea

Because the closer I look at the body and the world around us, the more intricate the design becomes

That has become the thread I come back to every episode.

Does this help us understand the body better?

Does it make us look more carefully at something we’ve accepted without much thought

Does it connect what people observed long ago with something science can now help explain

And does it leave room for me to ask what Scripture has to say without trying to force Scripture into a science lesson

If it does, it probably belongs here.

A few years ago, after what I called my “year of no”—a year

when I desperately needed to simplify my life and find some sanity again—I

went live on Facebook and announced that I was entering my “year of yes

Mostly to hold myself accountable. But I remember very clearly sitting in my

car on a rainy day in the McDonalds parking lot making my declaration

I said I was going to say yes to doing hard things and accept hard things if I believed that was what God was asking me to do

The discerning part alone can be hard.

I also highly recommend being very specific when you make statements like that to the Lord

My husband and I had done something similar years earlier after hearing a sermon about growing your faith

We actually prayed for challenges that would grow us.

I know.

Bold choice.

What followed included severe health struggles, sepsis, enormous

life changes, and eventually my husband leaving his

job and our family moving to another state

So…be careful what you pray for.

But our faith grew.

Our marriage grew.

And we learned something through those years that has stayed with us

even when we had absolutely no idea what was happening, God had

us

We had prayed for growth. I don't think either of us pictured it arriving quite like that

Years later, when this podcast unexpectedly came into my life, I knew saying yes meant sharing more openly about

my faith, my healing, and some of the things our family had witnessed that I can only describe as

miracles

I even talked with my husband about the possibility that doing that might bring some spiritual resistance with it

Again.

He was still in.

He’s always in.

I just like to run the big God matters past him before I dive in headfirst.

What I didn't expect was how much growth would come with saying yes to this podcast.

Since Becoming Natural began, our family has walked through challenge after challenge

Nothing I need to unpack here today, but enough little things piling up

that eventually you realize you’re not dealing with one paper cut anymore

It’s more like a thousand of them, and at some point you start noticing a pattern.

Growth by strength against resistance. Seems to be my life motto, actually.

Through all of that, I kept coming back to something I wrote in my journal years ago when

I was very sick, raising three little boys, and sometimes just trying to make it through the day

I wrote

Lord, use me and my words for Your purposes.

Let my experiences help grow someone’s faith so my pain is not for nothing.

Let my experience help someone trust You.

Let me be a vessel.

Let this be Yours.

I read that prayer very differently now than I did when I wrote it.

I have the privilege of hindsight now.

Back then, I was in the thick of it.

I was begging for healing while at the same time asking God to use what I was walking through for His purposes

I don’t think I fully understood what I was asking.

So yes, that is a big part of where I've been this summer.

been creating, learning how to build things I never thought I would be

building, designing the website that has been living in my head, and occasionally

playing spiritual whack-a-mole—which, truth be told, has not always happened

without tears

And I’ve been reading a lot of Scripture.

Partly because you are trusting me with some pretty big subjects.

If I’m going to talk about the body, healing, history, natural living, faith, and what Scripture

says about how we live and care for ourselves, I feel a responsibility to keep learning too

I don’t want to repeat something just because it sounds good.

I want to know where it came from and whether it’s true.

When it comes to science, I want to understand the research well enough to explain it

When it comes to history, I want to know what actually happened instead of repeating a story that has been passed around the internet a thousand times

And when I bring Scripture into an episode, I want to be in the Word myself. I

don’t want to grab a verse because it happens to fit what I already decided I wanted to say

I've learned some pretty amazing things this summer, and God has not disappointed.

I’m still here.

Becoming Natural isn’t slowing down.

I'm actually trying to build a stronger foundation underneath if the Lord's will is to do so and it grows and does

something bigger. It can support that growth without me trying to hold everything all by myself with my hands. I just want

to be faithful with the part that God has put in front of me and let him decide what comes after that

And after that explanation of where I've been and what I've been doing all summer, today we are going to talk about

spit

Are you ready?

Today we're talking about saliva.

And I know. Very sophisticated.

Stay with me, because I kept finding things that made me stop and say, 'Wait—saliva does that too

I originally started looking into saliva because of dry mouth. That seemed straightforward enough. What causes it? Why

do some people suddenly develop it? Are medications involved? Does menopause matter? Is it actually because we're dehydrated

all the time, like every wellness article on earth seems to suggest? is our water actually truly hydrating

us

Dry mouth ended up being my way into a much more interesting question:

What is saliva actually doing when everything is working the way it should?

Because if you think saliva is basically water that keeps the inside of your mouth damp, you're missing most of the story

It is mostly water by volume, yes. But mixed into that water

are electrolytes, calcium, phosphate, bicarbonate, mucus-like proteins called mucins, digestive enzymes

antibodies and several different antimicrobial systems. Whole saliva also picks up cells

microorganisms and other material from the mouth as it moves around in

there

So we're dealing with a lot more than mouth water.

Before we buy anything to protect our teeth, moisten our mouth, help digestion, or

manage bacteria, our own physiology is already doing a surprising amount of that work

That doesn't make toothpaste, dentistry, or medicine unnecessary. It just means there

is already a system at work before we add anything to it

The body is doing a lot more in the background than we usually give it credit for.

Saliva is one small example of that.

And when we say saliva comes from salivary glands, we're not talking about one little spit

gland somewhere in your cheek. You have three major pairs: the parotid glands up around the

cheeks near your ears, the submandibular glands tucked underneath the jaw, and the sublingual glands under

the tongue. Then there are hundreds of much smaller salivary glands scattered through the tissues of

the mouth

They don't all contribute exactly the same kind of secretion, either. Some saliva is more

watery; some is more mucus-rich. And the amount changes constantly depending on whether you're

resting, chewing, tasting food, sleeping, nervous, or even just thinking about something you're about to

eat

Even 'my saliva' makes it sound more uniform than it really is. Your nervous system and salivary glands

are changing it all day long. And your food doesn't even have to be in your mouth yet

Think about biting into a lemon and you can literally make your mouth water. The thought, smell, sight

or expectation of food can send nerve signals that turn up salivary secretion. That's part of what's called

the cephalic-phase response—your body beginning some of the work of digestion before you've taken the first

bite. 'Mouthwatering' is actually pretty literal

Also, while we're giving spit a little more respect, humans have found all kinds of uses for it. Spitballs. Spit

shining shoes. Sealing envelopes. Wetting thread to get it through a needle. The mom-thumb face wipe, which children everywhere

have endured at one time or another. And now we mail tubes of saliva off to laboratories to test our

DNA

But there is one use of spit I did not see

Jesus uses spit in three different healing accounts in the

Gospels

In Mark 7, Jesus takes a man who is deaf and has difficulty speaking away from the crowd

He puts His fingers into the man's ears, spits, touches his tongue, looks toward heaven and says, 'Be

opened

In Mark 8, Jesus spits on a blind man's eyes and lays His hands on him.

And in John 9, Jesus does something even stranger. He spits on the ground, makes mud

with the saliva, puts it on the eyes of a man who has been blind since

birth, and tells him to wash in the pool of Siloam. The man comes back seeing

So what was the spit doing there?

Scripture never says, 'Saliva itself was the medicine.' And clearly Jesus did not need it

He heals people elsewhere with a word, with a touch, and even from a distance

But I'm also not convinced the detail is meaningless.

People in the ancient world really did use saliva medicinally. Pliny the Elder, writing in

the first century, recorded beliefs about saliva being used for conditions including problems of the

eyes. Later Jewish writings also describe saliva being applied around the eyes for therapeutic purposes

So the people watching Jesus would not necessarily have reacted to saliva exactly the way

we do

John 9 may be the most fascinating of all.

Jesus doesn't simply use saliva. He spits into the dirt and makes clay.

Early Christians noticed something there that I had never really considered: an echo of creation. Genesis

tells us that God formed man from the dust of the ground. And here is Jesus

working with earth again as He restores something that had been missing since this man's birth

John never comes right out and says, 'This is a reference to Genesis,' so I wouldn't turn that into doctrine. But Irenaeus was making

that connection in the second century. He specifically connected Jesus making clay in John 9 with God forming man from the earth in Genesis

Three times the Gospel writers deliberately leave spit in the

story. And every time, Jesus could have healed another way

Side note, I kept wondering why there is so much mention of using saliva on the eyes…enough to record in

the Bible and the Shabbat as history. As I dug a little deeper, Eye disease was much more common in the

ancient world, so remedies for the eyes were part of ordinary life in a way that feels foreign to us now

Later Jewish writings even mention using early-morning saliva (before you eat) on the eyes because it was believed to be

especially strong medicinally. We can't say exactly which eye conditions they were treating or that they understood the biology, but it

does help explain why saliva around the eyes would not have sounded nearly as bizarre then as it does to us

today

And there's another interesting angle to saliva. Humans aren't the only creatures whose saliva

contains compounds involved in protection and repair. Watch a dog or cat get a

small injury and one of its first instincts is often to lick it. Part

of that is mechanical cleaning, and saliva itself is biologically active. Research on saliva

has identified antimicrobial compounds and proteins involved in wound repair, and canine saliva has

shown antibacterial activity in laboratory research. That doesn't make wound licking automatically helpful - mouths

also carry microbes, and licking can irritate or contaminate a wound - but the biology

is still fascinating

So saliva isn't just waste across mammals. It has real protective biology behind it.

That makes those Gospel details even more interesting to me. I still wouldn't say Jesus used

saliva because He needed its medicinal properties—clearly He didn't. But Scripture puts saliva right in

the middle of these physical healing stories more than once, and I can't help but notice

that

It's fascinating. And we never really get a clear answer for why He chose to use it.

out of ancient history and back into your kitchen. Think about eating something

really ordinary. A piece of bread. A cracker. A bite of baked potato

Before that food gets anywhere near your stomach, your brain and salivary glands are already getting involved

Seeing food, smelling food, tasting it and then chewing all stimulate salivary secretion. Saliva mixes into

what you're chewing and helps turn it into a soft, cohesive mass that you can actually

swallow without scraping a dry wad of food down your esophagus. Seeing, smelling, tasting, chewing—even

thinking about food—can activate brain circuits that eventually converge on salivation centers in the brainstem

Those centers then send autonomic nerve signals to the salivary glands and tell them to get

to work

This is basically the physiology behind Pavlov’s dogs. We remember the

bell and the drooling, but what Pavlov was really showing was that

the brain can start preparing the digestive system before food even arrives

There is a real term for that little chewed-up package: a bolus.

Which is not a particularly appetizing word, but there you go.

Saliva also dissolves compounds from food so they can interact with your taste receptors. We tend to think our

tongue just “tastes” food on contact, but those flavor molecules need a watery environment to reach many of those

receptors

So without enough saliva, food can literally taste different.

Then there is digestion.

One of the main enzymes in saliva is salivary amylase—AM-uh-lace—which starts breaking down starch

Your stomach did not receive the opening shift.

Digestion was already underway while you were chewing.

I used to picture digestion as food reaching the stomach and then the real work beginning. It starts much earlier than that

Think about what has already happened before you swallow:

Your brain anticipates food. Saliva increases. You chew. Food is

physically broken apart. Saliva moistens it. Taste compounds dissolve. Amylase

gets access to starch. You form that bolus. You swallow

The digestive tract is coordinating long before you hear your stomach growl.

There's also an enzyme that we talk about called lingual lipase. All it is is it

breaks down fat. Lipase is like lipid, L-I-P. And really, it's just to identify

that there's different kinds of ingredients in saliva that break down different things in our mouth

Everything has a responsibility and a purpose that is very intentional. Saliva has a large job

Then I wondered what that whole process looks like when you don't have enough saliva

Food is still being chewed, of course, but it’s harder to turn it into

that soft, cohesive bolus your mouth is trying to make. Dry foods can stick. Swallowing

can become harder and less comfortable. Taste can change because food molecules aren’t dissolving

as well. You lose some of that early starch digestion from amylase. And if someone

already has swallowing problems, less lubrication can make the whole process even more difficult and

may increase the risk of food going the wrong way. Or aspirate. We think of swallowing

as something we just do. But saliva is part of what makes that possible without

us having to think about it

So saliva isn't just making eating more comfortable. It is helping get

that bite ready for the next phase before it ever reaches the

stomach

Your teeth are not just sitting there waiting for the toothbrush

This was another part I had seriously underestimated.

Your teeth spend the entire day in a changing chemical environment.

Every time you eat certain carbohydrates, bacteria in dental plaque can metabolize them

and produce acids. That lowers the pH around the tooth making it more

acidic

When the environment becomes acidic enough, minerals

can leave the enamel. That's called demineralization

And the mineral loss isn't always a one-way trip.

When conditions improve, minerals can move back into early weakened areas of enamel. Saliva

contributes calcium and phosphate to that process, while bicarbonate and other buffering systems help

neutralize acids and bring the oral environment back toward a safer pH. The National

Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research notes that early mineral loss can be reversed

before an actual cavity forms, with minerals from saliva and fluoride helping repair early

enamel damage

I knew saliva helped protect teeth. I just didn't realize how much was happening all day long

Your enamel is constantly sitting in this back-and-forth mineral environment.

Eat.

Acid rises.

Mineral can be lost.

Saliva dilutes and clears some of those acids, buffering increases, pH

begins to recover, and calcium and phosphate are available for remineralization

That doesn't mean saliva grows back a tooth after you've developed a cavity. Once

enamel has structurally broken down and there's a hole, we're in a different situation

But before that point, your mouth is constantly working to maintain the mineral environment around your teeth

How much saliva you're making changes that chemistry too.

When your salivary glands are stimulated—for example, when you're chewing—saliva generally contains

more bicarbonate. That gives it greater acid-buffering capacity than very low-flow resting

saliva. If your mouth remains too acidic, you increase your likelihood for cavities. So

now I understand why my dad said they didn’t use toothpaste at his

house…{gasp}. He brushed with baking soda and salt. Salt to mineralize and baking

soda to neutralize and if I don’t say…..my dad has never had

a cavity

So even your saliva isn't chemically identical from one hour to the next.

I had basically pictured it as a little water fountain in the mouth that helped us swallow

It is much more responsive than that.

Once you know what saliva normally does, dry mouth starts to look like more than an annoyance

When saliva really is low, you start losing some of the protection we've been talking about. Food can become harder to

chew and swallow. Taste can change. Cavities and oral infections become more likely because acids aren't being cleared and buffered as

efficiently

One of the biggest causes today is medication. Antihistamines, some antidepressants, blood-pressure medications, bladder

medications and quite a few others can reduce saliva. Taking several medications can compound the

problem

And dry mouth itself isn't automatically 'just aging.' We see more of

it with age partly because medications and health conditions become more common

Dehydration can contribute. Mouth breathing can dry the tissues. Salivary flow drops while we sleep

Even stress can change it—that cotton-mouth feeling when you're nervous is real autonomic

physiology

Then there are conditions like Sjögren's and damage from head-and

neck radiation where the salivary glands themselves may not be functioning normally

So if dry mouth sticks around—especially with new cavities, trouble swallowing, or dry eyes

it's worth bringing up with your dentist or healthcare provider instead of just reaching for

another

If the glands still work, chewing is one of the simplest ways

to stimulate them. That's why gum can help some people with dry

mouth

If you're actually dehydrated, correct that. If the dryness started after a medication change, bring that timeline to the

If the glands are damaged or significantly impaired, though, gum isn't going to fix that. Sometimes

the better tools are saliva substitutes, extra dental protection, and treating whatever is causing the problem

This is where spit starts getting even more interesting.

Saliva contains components involved in immune defense, including

Those names are a mouthful, so let me translate what they're actually doing.

Secretory IgA is an antibody found across mucosal surfaces—places like the mouth

respiratory tract and digestive tract. In saliva, it can bind to microorganisms and

other antigens and help interfere with their ability to attach and interact with

tissues

Lysozyme is an enzyme that can damage the cell walls of certain bacteria.

Lactoferrin can bind iron. Since microorganisms need iron too, controlling

its availability is one way the body can influence microbial

growth

And salivary peroxidase systems participate in chemical reactions that

can inhibit certain microbes and help manage potentially damaging

compounds

A healthy mouth isn't supposed to be sterile.

There are large, complex microbial communities living on the tongue, teeth, gums

and other oral surfaces. Some organisms can contribute to cavities or gum

disease under certain conditions. Others perform functions that may be useful to

us

Saliva helps influence that whole environment. It washes material away, gives some microbes

places to attach, limits others, and carries immune factors that affect how microbes

behave

So 'saliva kills germs' is way too simple.

The mouth has its own ecosystem, just like

the gut—and, of course, the two are

connected

At this point saliva had already earned more respect than I expected to give it.

Then I hit the part that really changed the way I thought about the mouth.

For a long time, a lot of oral-health marketing has basically taught us that bacteria equal bad and stronger killing equals cleaner

Dental plaque and harmful organisms absolutely matter, and there are times an antiseptic mouthwash

is useful. But 'stronger killing is always better' turns out to be too simple

But we now know some oral bacteria are performing

chemistry that we humans cannot perform efficiently on our

own

Because this next piece takes us from spit all the way to blood pressure.

The beet, the tongue bacteria and the blood vessel

Let’s say you eat spinach. Or arugula. Or beets.

Those foods can contain a good amount of nitrate.

Your digestive tract absorbs that nitrate and it enters your bloodstream.

So far, nothing strange.

Then your salivary glands do something I still can't get over.

They pull some of that nitrate back out of your blood and concentrate it

into your saliva. Research suggests the glands can take up roughly a quarter of

the nitrate circulating in the blood and concentrate it many times higher in saliva

Your body has already absorbed that nitrate—and then it sends some of it back to your mouth

Why?

Because certain bacteria living on your tongue can do something with nitrate that our own cells don’t do very efficiently

They convert nitrate into nitrite.

Then you swallow that nitrite-containing saliva.

Now the pathway shifts again.

Some of that nitrite can be converted into nitric oxide—first in places like the

acidic stomach and later in blood and tissues, especially under conditions where oxygen is lower

Nitric oxide is a signaling molecule.

One of its important jobs is telling the smooth muscle in the walls of blood vessels to relax

When that muscle relaxes, the vessel widens a little.

That means blood can move through more easily, which is one

of the ways nitric oxide helps regulate blood flow and blood

pressure

just to be clear, your saliva isn't traveling down to your heart and opening a blood vessel

Its role happens earlier in the chain.

Saliva is part of the recycling and processing step that makes the rest possible.

The salivary glands take nitrate from the blood and put it back into the mouth.

Your oral bacteria convert it into nitrite.

You swallow it.

Then that nitrite becomes available for nitric-oxide production elsewhere in the body

That whole process is called the enterosalivary nitrate–nitrite–nitric oxide pathway

The name sounds complicated. The actual idea is much easier.

Picture it this way:

You eat a beet.

The nitrate is absorbed into your blood.

Your salivary glands pull some of it back out.

They send it into your mouth.

Bacteria on your tongue change it into nitrite.

You swallow it again.

And farther downstream, that nitrite can help your body make nitric oxide, which

helps blood vessels relax and supports normal blood flow and blood-pressure regulation

That recycling is the part I can't get over.

Your body had already absorbed the nitrate.

Instead of leaving the nitrate in circulation, the body routes some of it back through the

mouth because bacteria on the tongue can perform a chemical step we don't do very efficiently

ourselves

So the mouth isn't only the entrance to digestion.

In this pathway, it becomes one stop in a loop that involves the

gut, blood, salivary glands, tongue bacteria, and then the body again after you

swallow

That's why saliva gets some credit here. Spit isn't opening blood vessels, but this salivary

recycling step helps dietary nitrate move through the pathway that can eventually support nitric-oxide

production

If I drew that pathway while trying to invent the human body from scratch, somebody would look at my flowchart and say

The oral bacteria are doing a real piece of the work here

converting nitrate to nitrite so the pathway can keep moving after you

swallow

That blows my mind. The body had already absorbed the nitrate, then routed some of it back to the mouth because another step could happen there. That feels incredibly intentional to me

The more I learn about things like this, the harder it is to picture our organs as separate little departments doing their own jobs

We have the liver, we have the pancreas, we have the kidneys, we have all these organs, but

then we have all of these other interconnected cycles and processes that are going on all around us

that there is no way that we could orchestrate any of this all by ourselves. Every piece is

affecting another. And some of the work is actually being done by organisms that live within us, not

just the organ

And somehow spit is right in the middle of it.

That's a lot going on in something we barely think about.

And in this case, it can start with a beet. Or spinach. Or arugula.

Which brings us right back to mouthwash. If tongue bacteria are part of this pathway

researchers naturally started asking what happens when we repeatedly knock down broad groups of oral

bacteria

In studies using strong antiseptic mouthwashes—particularly chlorhexidine—researchers have

seen nitrate-to-nitrite conversion drop. Some studies have also

seen small increases in blood pressure while that pathway was

disrupted

That does not mean mouthwash causes high blood pressure. The studies are relatively small

different rinses behave differently, and there are absolutely times when an antimicrobial rinse is

useful

But it does make the old idea of 'kill as many mouth bacteria as possible' look a little too simple

Some of those bacteria are doing jobs we may actually need.

And that takes me straight back to all those products that promised to make us

99.9% bacteria-free. Maybe the more useful question is not, 'How much bacteria

can I kill?' Maybe it's, 'Which bacteria are here, and what are they doing

I started with spit and expected an episode about moisture. Instead I found a fluid

that helps us taste dinner, swallow it, start digesting starch, buffer acids, protect enamel, participate

in immune defense, shape the microbial environment in the mouth and—this still gets me

help recycle dietary nitrate through tongue bacteria into a pathway involved in blood flow and

blood-pressure regulation

Then there was the history. People in the ancient world used saliva medicinally. Later Jewish writings describe early-morning saliva

being used around the eyes. And the Gospels include spit in three different healing accounts. We still don't know exactly

why

Meanwhile, most of us mainly notice it when the dental hygienist asks us to close our lips around the suction tube

One thing I want Becoming Natural to keep asking is what the body is already doing before we decide we need to add something

Natural health can turn into a never-ending list of things to buy, take, eat, avoid, or fix

I don't want to miss the systems that are already working while we're busy looking for the next

thing

I already get annoyed remembering my supplements every day. Praise the Lord I don't also have to tell my

salivary glands when to turn on, remind my enamel to grab minerals, or ask my tongue bacteria to process

nitrate

Most of that is happening without me thinking about it at all.

And saliva gave me a pretty good example of just how much that can include.

Between toothbrushings, your mouth is already doing a lot of its own maintenance.

There is so much science there. When I see how much protection, repair, communication, and preparation is

built into something this ordinary, I have a hard time taking the design of the body for

granted

I mean, we're talking about spit—and there is this much coordination built into it.

That makes me appreciate the body God created a little differently.

But I do think we can forget how much it is already trying to do for us—and how some of

our habits, exposures, or treatments can either support those systems or make their job harder. So tonight when you're brushing your

teeth

maybe give spit just a tiny bit more respect. If you enjoyed this episode, or you know someone who

would get a kick out of realizing how much work spit is doing all day, send it their way

And if this kind of digging into the body, history, and the way God designed us is

your kind of thing, make sure you're following the show so you don't miss the next one