Coconut oil
For your mouth, not your pan. As a rinse it holds its own against chlorhexidine, without the brown staining.
Glycemic index
None. There are hardly any carbohydrates in this, and the index measures what carbohydrates do to your blood sugar.
How to use it
Oil pulling. A spoonful in your mouth, let it melt, pull it through and between your teeth for a few minutes, then spit it out.
The best version
Virgin, cold pressed, unrefined. There is nothing else to look for. For your mouth it does not need to be organic and it does not need a label on it.
How to prepare it
Spit it into the bin and not the sink, because coconut oil sets hard as soon as it cools and your drain is cold. Then brush as usual: this does not replace a toothbrush.
Combine with
Brushing afterwards
In the trial the participants went on brushing as usual. Oil pulling is an addition and not a replacement, and that is exactly how it was measured.
What it does
Against the rinse a dentist prescribes, it holds up. Twenty-nine people rinsed for four days with coconut oil and four days with 0.2 percent chlorhexidine, with a washout in between. Plaque came back to the same degree, 1.67 against 1.61, and coconut oil stained the teeth less: 0.21 against 0.47.
Watch out
Not your cooking fat. Across sixteen trials pooled together, coconut oil raised LDL by 10.47 mg/dL compared with ordinary vegetable oils, and HDL by 4.00. That is why it sits here under your teeth and not under your stove.