{"id":178,"date":"2012-04-10T12:24:42","date_gmt":"2012-04-10T16:24:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.freysmiles.com\/dev\/?p=178"},"modified":"2023-06-16T05:49:39","modified_gmt":"2023-06-16T09:49:39","slug":"what-makes-some-mouthwashes-burn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smile-365.com\/what-makes-some-mouthwashes-burn\/","title":{"rendered":"What Makes Some Mouthwashes Burn?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float: right; width: 277px; height: 240px; margin: 5px;\" src=\"https:\/\/smile-365.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Listerine_Rinse.jpg\" alt=\"Listerine Rinse\" \/><strong>Alcohol usually gets all the blame for the burning sensation you feel from certain mouthwashes, but in fact, the burning sensation usually comes from essential oils in the mouth rinse. <\/strong>When I tell people this it usually comes as a big shock, but I am sure that most people have experienced similar burning sensations from cinnamon because of its essential oils, so it shouldn\u2019t be all that surprising.<\/span><br \/>\nAlthough alcohol unfortunately does dry out your mouth, which can enhance the burning sensation you feel, alcohol ultimately isn\u2019t the cause of the burning you\u2019re feeling. Interestingly, <strong>alcohol isn\u2019t actually added to <a href=\"https:\/\/smile-365.com\/what-is-the-ideal-mouthwash\/\">mouthwashes<\/a> to fight plaque, in reality, it is present as a solvent to keep the other ingredients dissolved in solution.<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2>Why Essential Oils in Mouthwashes Produce a Burning Sensation<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">The traditional culprit when we think of burning is Listerine. As we have mentioned before on the blog, <a href=\"https:\/\/smile-365.com\/is-your-mouthwash-staining-your-teeth\/\">Listerine<\/a> relies on a special blend of essential oils to kill bacteria, and while these essential oils are great at fighting plaque they also tend to irritate the insides of our mouths, which is where the burning comes from. Some of these essential oils are also responsible for the increased staining sometimes seen with phenolic mouthwashes.<\/span><br \/>\nSome of you might be wondering&#8230;.what about Listerine Zero then, doesn\u2019t it have less alcohol and less burning?<br \/>\nI hear this question a lot, and actually, <strong>the newer Listerine Zero, which is marketed as a \u201cless intense\u201d mouthwash with no alcohol, gets its lower intensity from the fact that it has far fewer essential oils<\/strong>. It is likely that without the alcohol added as a solvent, they could not maintain the same levels of essential oils in their formula.<br \/>\nAdditionally,<strong> because the concentrations of essential oils in Listerine Zero have been reduced, it cannot be advertised that the rinse is antiseptic like other versions of Listerine<\/strong> (there also will be fewer phenolics that might cause staining). If you don\u2019t believe, me just look at the bottle, the antiseptic label is not longer present and the essential oils\/\u201cFlavors\u201d are way down the list of ingredients indicating lower concentrations.<br \/>\nI hope you all found this post interesting. It should make for great<span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">\u00a0discussion at cocktail parties \ud83d\ude09<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Embark on your path to a brighter smile by <a href=\"https:\/\/smile-365.com\/services\/\">scheduling a consultation<\/a> with your orthodontist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why some mouthwashes burn when you rinse with them. Hint: it is not alcohol.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":939,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smile-365.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smile-365.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smile-365.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smile-365.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smile-365.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/smile-365.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8735,"href":"https:\/\/smile-365.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions\/8735"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smile-365.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smile-365.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smile-365.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smile-365.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}