When we were living on our little sailboat, I suffered a night of pure agony from an abscessed wisdom tooth.
I'd read about oil pulling to help this sort of thing and all we had on the boat was sunflower oil. Pulling that through my teeth did give some relief but when we were able to get to a store I bought a jar of coconut oil.
The difference was amazing. After a couple of days the pain was gone and my whole self felt improved.
I still got the tooth extracted eventually but continue to use coconut oil for pulling.
Is there any science to it? No idea, I just know what works and for me that is coconut oil.