Travels and Engagements

Good Afternoon All! I was reading over some new dental information released recently and came across something I HAD to talk about! Its called Triclosan, you may or may not have heard of it. Its typically found in household cleaners as an antibacterial agent and a dental study recently bragged about its antibacterial characteristics for mouths. Sounds like a good thing right? Wrong, I did a little research on this stuff and evidence has mounted that it is contaminating people and the environment, and could result in a new breed of deadly 'super bugs' (bacteria capable of resisting antibiotics). The environmental regulatory agencies in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark have all voiced concern about the chemical. And the United Kingdom is having it removed from their shelves indefinitely. Canada is currently working on getting legislation passed to have it removed as well.
Now let's weigh in on the all natural alternative, Xylitol. Xylitol comes from cornstalks and birch trees and has been around for over 100 years, you may recognize it as one of the ingredients in your chewing gum. Xylitol helps prevent cavities in two ways. The first, it prevents the acid producing bacteria(that break down tooth enamel) from adhering to the teeth. As a result the bacteria move down the digestive tract and out of the body. The second, the bacteria that remain try to ingest the Xylitol, but get indigestion (for lack of a better term), and some starve as a result.
I've read some concerns about Xylitol being 'toxic for dogs, so what's it doing to me' scenarios. Since it seems to be publicized more and more, I'll address this as well. Dog's livers aren't 'built' to process sugar alcohols like Xylitol, consequently they may go into hypoglycemic shock as their body pours insulin into their blood stream to manage the five carbon sugar alcohol. A simple analogy is that dog's digestive tracts cannot handle the variety of items that we consume just as we cannot eat the same things that they consume.
So it looks like this was a 'knock-out' fight with Xylitol as the Xlear(clear, the industry's known Xylitol Expert) winner.