Thinking about gums and purple tea...

... the gums in your mouth, that is. Recently I sent Friend of Pairteas and Tea-cher Marzi Pecen a couple of tubes of toothpaste, because she was complaining of some gingivitis. 

Not ordinary toothpaste, but one developed by my friend and former student Jon Levine, that contains (among many other ingredients) cranberry powder.* A while back he realized that there was a growing body of literature suggesting that cranberry extracts could inhibit biofilm formation. Bacteria create biofilms to protect themselves against attack by your immune system, and as a way to spread around the enzymes they create in order to break down your guns and get the raw materials that they need to flourish.  Jon's toothpaste worked amazingly on my gingivitis and is working on Marzi's as well.

So my question was: what is in cranberries that inhibits biofilm formation? The literature says...catechins and proanthocyanins!**  Where do we find these chemicals? Purple leaf tea that is processed as a green tea—the purple for the proanthocyanins and the green for the catechins!

So I looked around some more, and found an article, reviewed in World Tea News, that suggested that a toothpaste containing green tea was superior to standard treatment for gingivitis.*** 

Now if we had a toothpaste with purple green tea...

* It's called Glo, and to get it you should contact Jon directly through his website, http://www.jonathanblevine.com or via the perfume site http://www.lovepalette.net. It's expensive, but you only need to use a tiny bit per brushing—a tube lasts me 3 months or more.

** Yamanaka, A., Kouchi, T., Kasai, K., Kato, T., Ishihara, K. and Okuda, K. (2007), Inhibitory effect of cranberry polyphenol on biofilm formation and cysteine proteases of Porphyromonas gingivalis. Journal of Periodontal Research, 42: 589–592. doi:10.1111/j.1600-0765.2007.00982.x.
Note: there are many subsequent papers that confirm and extend these findings. The full extract appears to be best.

*** http://worldteanews.com/tea-health-education/treat-teeth-with-green-tea; Int J Dent Hygiene 14, 2016; 178–183 DOI: 10.1111/idh.12131 Hrishi TS, Kundapur PP, Naha A, Thomas BS, Kamath S, Bhat GS. Effect of adjunctive use of green tea dentifrice in periodontitis patients – A Randomized Controlled Pilot Study.