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How To Cure Bad Breath
Bad breath, medically called halitosis, can result from poor dental health habits and may be a sign of other health problems. Bad breath can also be made worse by the types of foods you eat and other unhealthy lifestyle habits. You can take steps to prevent and treat halitosis, at home and with the help of your dentist or doctor.
how to cure bad breath
If you don't brush and floss teeth daily, food particles can remain in your mouth, promoting bacterial growth between teeth, around the gums, and on the tongue. This causes bad breath. Inflammation of the gums (gingivitis) from poor dental hygiene can also cause bad breath.
Persistent bad breath or a bad taste in the mouth may be a warning sign of gum (periodontal) disease. Gum disease is caused by the buildup of plaque on teeth. Bacteria cause toxins to form, which irritate the gums. If gum disease continues untreated, it can damage the gums and jawbone.
The medical condition dry mouth (also called xerostomia) also can cause bad breath. Saliva is necessary to moisten the mouth, neutralize acids produced by plaque, and wash away dead cells that build up on the tongue, gums, and cheeks. If not removed, these cells decompose and can cause bad breath. Dry mouth may be a side effect of various medications, salivary gland problems, or continuous breathing through the mouth. In fact, morning breath is worse for people who sleep with their mouths open.
Your dentist will likely smell both the breath from your mouth and the breath from your nose and rate the odor on a scale. Because the back of the tongue is most often the source of the smell, your dentist may also scrape it and rate its odor.
To reduce bad breath, help avoid cavities and lower your risk of gum disease, consistently practice good oral hygiene. Further treatment for bad breath can vary, depending on the cause. If your bad breath is thought to be caused by an underlying health condition, your dentist will likely refer you to your primary care provider.
If chronic bad breath is due to an underlying health condition, then there may be some trial and error to figure out what works for you. Your healthcare provider may need to try different medications or change your dosages. Or they may ask to run more tests to determine the exact cause.
Go nose-to-nose with your sleeping cat and give her a loving sniff. If it's not sweet kitty breath that you know and love, but a stench that makes you wince, something may not be right. Just as the eyes may be windows into the soul, a kitty's breath may hint to her health.
"A healthy cat's breath should not be offensive," says Eric Davis, DVM, a fellow of the Academy of Veterinary Dentistry and former director of the Dental Referral Service at Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine.
Many Different CausesBad breath, in fact, may indicate conditions from periodontal, kidney, respiratory or liver disease to diabetes, skin disease (involving tissue around the lips) or oral trauma, such as electric cord injury."However, by far, the most common problem associated with bad breath is periodontal disease," says Dr. Davis. "Just think how your breath would smell if you didn't brush your teeth for a week, months or even years."
Another common cause of bad breath, however, is something caught in your cat's teeth or under her gums," says Dr. Davis. "Food or a strand of hair or string, for example, can get lodged in the little nooks and crannies between teeth and can decompose, soon infecting the surrounding tissue."
Bad breath can also be a sign of diabetes if the breath is sweet, kidney disease if it's urine-like, or liver disease or an intestinal blockage if it's foul (see sidebar). Bad breath can also be the result of a mouth ulcer, mouth sores or even cancer.
To prevent most cases of bad breath, brush your cat's teeth - ideally, every day - using tooth gel for felines. "Link the brushing to a treat, such as drinking water from a dripping faucet or a favorite canned food," advises Dr. Davis. "Just before the treat, you can apply a tiny amount of the gel onto a finger and gently apply it to the cat's teeth. Most cats will forgive your foolish human behavior to savor their desired food or beverage.
Occasional Halitosis is OkayNot all cases of bad breath, however, indicate a health problem. Food smells that are repulsive to you - but gusty to your cat - can be harmless. Your cat's breath may be pretty pungent, for example, after she chows down some smoked oysters or canned tuna.
"Nevertheless, consistent bad breath should be checked by a veterinarian," states Dr. Davis. "Halitosis is a common complaint of cat owners and veterinary examination is usually necessary to identify the cause.
Halitosis (bad breath) is mostly caused by sulphur-producing bacteria that normally live on the surface of the tongue and in the throat. Sometimes, these bacteria start to break down proteins at a very high rate and odorous volatile sulphur compounds (VSC) are released from the back of the tongue and throat. Halitosis is not infectious. About 2.4% of the adult population suffers from bad breath.
Bad breath is also called halitosis. In kids, poor oral hygiene habits often cause halitosis, and other common causes of this condition include dehydration, eating certain foods or having medical conditions that make kids susceptible. Parents are often concerned by bad breath, and for teenagers, discussing the topic can be embarrassing. If you are aware of the common causes, you can help alleviate many of the stresses associated with halitosis.
Poor oral hygiene is one of the leading causes of bad breath in toddlers. The most common places in the mouth for smelly, halitosis-causing debris to hang out are between teeth and on gums and the tongue. The debris is known as plaque and gathers when food particles and bacteria sit on the teeth, causing an odor.
It is important to make sure the proper techniques are being used to adequately remove all the plaque that causes bad breath. For example, slant the toothbrush bristles towards the gums at a 45-degree angle. The gumline is commonly missed when you brush, which can cause a buildup of odor from the plaque.
Breathing consistently through the mouth can be drying and result in poor saliva production. This issue creates the same problems with bacteria overgrowth as dehydration. Mouth breathing could be a sign of an underlying condition.
Lastly, certain medications can also lead to a decrease in saliva flow, which can lead to bad breath. If your child is taking medications daily due to a specific medical condition, it is important to know that their saliva flow may be less. It is often best to increase water consumption to offset the decreased flow of saliva.
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However, cleansing the tongue can be uncomfortable and may cause gag reflex. For this reason, the easier use of generally accepted mouthrinses has led to the development of a large number of commercially available products as a popular way of dealing with bad breath.[2,6]
On the morning of the appointment, the volunteers were instructed not to practice any oral hygiene and to use one product after breakfast according to the recommendations of the manufacturers. When oral care had to be performed by brushing the teeth with toothpaste, the volunteers were permitted to brush their tongues with the toothbrush's bristles but without using the toothbrush's scraper. Each product was used once for 1 day per week (15 mL for 1 min in the case of the mouthrinses and ten strokes from the back to the tip of the tongue for the tongue scrapers).[3,10,11] The breath of each volunteer was examined at the following time intervals:
Although CPC (A) increased the breath scores immediately (P = 0.003), the levels returned to the baseline in the first hour. No significant difference was found after 1, 2 or 3 h when compared to the baseline.
CHX (B) was also able to increase the breath values immediately (P = 0.0005). However, there was a significant reduction in bad breath (compared with the baseline) only at the end of the second (P = 0.004) and third (P = 0.017) hours.
The toothbrush's scraper (C) decreased the breath scores immediately (P = 0.0049), and this decrease continued until the second hour (T1-P = 0.031; T2-P = 0.0008). However, the breath score was not significantly different from the baseline at the end of the third hour.
Immediately (in T0) after the single use of the products, CPC chlorhexidine and the positive control (brushing with toothpaste) were able to raise the breath scores as a side-effect of detachment, disintegration and flotation of desquamated epithelial cells, food waste and defense cells.[13,14]
CPC increased the breath scores immediately but did not reduce bad breath in any of the periods studied (P > 0.05). CHX also increased the scores immediately after use but was able to significantly reduce the breath scores at the end of the second hour; this effect lasted up to the third hour. These results show the superiority of CHX over CPC in reducing bad breath for a longer period.
The toothbrush's scraper was able to reduce bad breath immediately after its use, an effect that was observed for up to 2 h. The third-hour breath scores did not differ from the baseline. The conventional tongue scraper also reduced bad breath, but not significantly. This demonstrates the superiority of the toothbrush's scraper to reduce bad breath when compared with the conventional scraper, but only for up to 2 h. Tongue scraping appears to be an important hygienic procedure to reduce morning breath in periodontally healthy individuals, and should therefore be incorporated into daily oral hygiene procedures.[17]
Although mechanical cleaning of the tongue can reduce its bacterial load, this effect is transient. Some authors[15] report such a decrease to last for up to 100 min, similar to our findings. This could be because the tongue has a large surface area and its papillary structure represents an anaerobic niche in the oral cavity, favoring the accumulation of debris and microorganisms responsible for the formation of VSCs. Mechanical methods show short-term efficacy in improving morning breath in studies on persistent or chronic halitosis.[4,18] 041b061a72