At my annual physical, my doctor asks about my diet, sleep, and stress levels.
When most people go to the dentist, they get asked—mostly—if they’re flossing.
For forty years, I’ve watched dentists (myself included) focus almost primarily on mechanical cleaning—brushing, flossing, fluoride—while completely ignoring the environment those teeth are sitting in all day!
We treated the mouth like a sink that needed scrubbing. But your mouth isn’t a sink. It’s an ecosystem. And just like any ecosystem, it thrives or struggles based on the conditions you create for it.
One of the most overlooked factors is hydration and electrolyte balance.
Thirty years ago, I wouldn’t have believed I’d be writing about electrolytes and oral health…don’t we all associate electrolytes with body builders and marathon runners?
But here’s what I’ve learned: the health of your saliva determines the health of your oral microbiome. And the health of your oral microbiome determines almost everything else.
Most people think saliva is just water. And yes, it’s 99% water—but that other 1% is doing some seriously heavy lifting.
That 1% includes:
- Electrolytes (sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, bicarbonate, phosphate)
- Antimicrobial proteins
- Enzymes
- Antibodies
- pH buffers
What surprised me most: the viscosity of your saliva—how thick or thin it is—directly impacts which bacteria can thrive in your mouth.
Think of viscosity like this: honey is thick and moves slowly (high viscosity). Water is thin and flows fast (low viscosity). Your saliva needs to be right in the middle—not too thick, stringy or ropey, and not too watery.
When you’re properly hydrated and your electrolytes are balanced, your saliva has the perfect consistency. It’s not too thick, not too thin. This allows the mucin proteins in your saliva to expand and create a protective coating over your teeth and gums—a biofilm, but the good kind.
When you’re dehydrated, the entire system shifts…
Your saliva gets thicker and stickier. Flow rate drops. The antimicrobial proteins can’t do their job as well. And suddenly, the bacteria that shouldn’t be there start taking over.
Studies on patients with dry mouth (xerostomia) show clear shifts in their oral microbiome—more pathogenic species, fewer health-associated species. The same pattern shows up in people who are chronically dehydrated, even if they don’t feel “dry mouth.”
The Dysbiosis Cascade
When your saliva flow decreases and its composition changes, you enter what researchers call “dysbiosis”—an imbalance in your microbial ecosystem.
Here’s what happens:
- Beneficial bacteria (like Streptococcus salivarius) decline
- Pathogenic bacteria (like Porphyromonas, Fusobacterium, Prevotella intermedia) increase
- Biofilm architecture shifts from protective to inflammatory
- Your risk for cavities, gum disease, and even systemic inflammation goes up
This can happen even if you’re brushing and flossing perfectly.
I’ve seen it hundreds of times. Patients who were meticulous about oral hygiene but still struggled with cavities, bleeding gums, or chronic bad breath. When we dug deeper, the issue wasn’t their brushing technique. It was their internal environment.
You can brush and floss every day—but these are all things that support the oral microbiome only when your saliva has the right viscosity. Without that foundation, your mouth is in trouble.
Not to mention…most toothpastes dehydrate and dry your mouth—like most soaps dry your skin.
Your salivary glands need electrolytes to produce healthy saliva.
Specifically:
- Bicarbonate acts as a pH buffer, neutralizing acids that cause cavities
- Calcium and phosphate support remineralization of tooth enamel
- Sodium and potassium regulate fluid balance and saliva flow
- Magnesium supports enzyme function and mineral absorption
When you’re low on electrolytes—whether from dehydration, poor diet, excessive caffeine, or chronic stress—your saliva composition shifts. Bicarbonate drops. pH becomes more acidic. Mineral content decreases.
And just like that, you’ve created an environment where cavity-causing bacteria thrive.
If you’re low in electrolytes, you tend to lose moisture and are more likely to get dehydrated.
If you don’t have enough electrolytes outside your cells, water gets pulled into the cells and away from your tissues and blood, dehydrating you; if you have too many, water gets pulled out of the cells, making you hypertonic—so the balance of electrolytes is what keeps your body’s water in the right place.
We get too few electrolytes today because modern diets are low in mineral-rich whole foods, our water is stripped of natural minerals, and stress, sweating, caffeine, alcohol, and medications all increase electrolyte loss.
You may be dehydrated and low on electrolytes if you notice fatigue, headache, dry mouth, brain fog, darker urine, muscle cramps, or feeling thirsty even after drinking water.
This is why I began paying closer attention to electrolytes in my daily routine. I am loving these ones.
While electrolytes create the physical foundation for a healthy oral microbiome, green tea polyphenols create the biological foundation.
The main polyphenol in green tea—EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate)—has been shown to:
- Disrupt pathogenic biofilm formation (specifically the “bad” bacteria like S. mutans)
- Reduce bacterial adhesion to teeth
- Shift the oral microbiome toward health-associated species
- Lower inflammation in gum tissue
But here’s what makes green tea so elegant: it doesn’t kill bacteria indiscriminately like antiseptic mouthwash does. It selectively disrupts the biofilms of pathogenic bacteria while allowing beneficial bacteria to thrive.
Even better is that green tea acts as a prebiotic—it feeds the good bacteria you want while starving out the bad ones.
This is exactly what you want. You need bacteria in your mouth. You just need the right balance of bacteria.
This realization eventually informed the creation of a prebiotic toothpaste company I co-founded. Most toothpastes focus on killing bacteria. Fygg focuses on feeding the right bacteria while rebuilding enamel with nano-hydroxyapatite.
I’ve been drinking this green tea for the past twenty years or so, and I’ve noticed a measurable difference in my oral health. Less plaque buildup. Cleaner-feeling teeth. And my hygienist has commented that my gums look better than they have in years.
If you’re dealing with:
- Recurring cavities despite good oral hygiene
- Bleeding gums
- Persistent bad breath
- Dry mouth
- Tooth sensitivity
…your dentist should be asking about your hydration status, your electrolyte intake, and what you’re drinking throughout the day.
Not to mention—if you’re drinking green tea, then you’re displacing other seemingly-healthy drinks that wreak havoc on the oral microbiome—Ollipop, kombucha, etc.
Green tea’s pH is slightly acidic, but nowhere near soda or juice territory.
If you’d like to keep learning, check out my interview with Organic Olivia, “Holy Spit.”
Hope you have a great week,
Mark
P.S. Unfortunately, most of the dental field isn’t thinking this way yet. But that’s changing. Functional dentistry is finally catching up to what the research has been showing for years: your oral health is inseparable from your systemic health.
If you want to find a dentist who gets this, check out my Functional Dentist Directory.
These are practitioners who look at the mouth as part of the whole body, not just a collection of teeth to clean.
>> If you’re a dentist or hygienist who’d like to join us, hit reply—I would love to hear from you!