Paul Saladino· MD
if you give these patients high blood pressure medications and you're not getting the results that you want there is a biological process that if your patients are using an antimicrobial mouthwash every day they are damaging or disturbing that pathway and the pathway is this when you eat foods that have natural nitrates in them your body absorbs the nitrates mainly in the duodenum and literally 60 70 percent of these nitrates get into your salivary glands and those salivary glands obviously are pointing saliva out of your mouth or into your mouth constantly and these biologically active nitrates get into your mouth now the nitrates react with the gram negative bacteria on the top of your tongue creating a little chemical reaction so it reduces it from nitrate to nitrite and then you swallow the nitrites not consciously you just swallow on a regular and it gets into your gut and several things happen but the majority what happens with the nitrites that get into your gut is it becomes nitric oxide nitric oxide is critical for cardiovascular health health it's actually important for gum health in your mouth but it also reduces naturally your blood pressure so if you are killing the gram-negative bacteria in your mouth you are stopping the natural pathway from nitrate to nitrite to nitric oxide and if you're on blood pressure medication and you're not getting the nitric oxide that is natural being produced then your blood pressure will go up and that's why the cardiologists warn their patients or other cardiologists to make sure their patients that are on blood pressure medication are definitely not using an antimicrobial mouthwash every day