Bacteria – The Number One Bad Breath Cause
Chemicals with aptly chosen names like cadaverine, putrescine, and skatole are generated by bad breath bacteria that live in your mouth. And these aren’t even the worst of the chemicals that bacteria generate to cause bad breath.
How Bacteria Cause Bad Breath
In addition to cadaverine, putrescine, and skatole, many of the bacteria that live on your gums and tongue produce hydrogen sulfide, which is the odor associated with rotten eggs, dimethyl sulfide, which is the odor belched out of the ocean floor when oil rigs dig down, and methyl mercaptan, which is better known as sewer gas. This sulfur-laden compounds almost smell like sewage, and in a way they are. They are formed as byproducts of bacterial digestion of proteins inside your mouth. The stinky odor generated by bacteria in your mouth is the odor of their own excreted waste.
Not every kind of bacteria in the human mouth generates odor. The offending species of bacteria are mostly Gram-negative, that is, they can be identified under the microscope by their failure to absorb a dye. Gram-negative bacteria either don’t need or can’t tolerate oxygen, so they flourish in the tiny nooks and crannies and crevices that form in the lining of your mouth when your mouth dries out. Harsh detergent toothpastes made with sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS), mouthwashes that contain high amounts of alcohol (usually enough to dry out your mouth but not enough to kill bacteria), and breathing through your mouth can create the dryness that creates the cracks that gives bad breath bacteria a home.
There are many different kinds of Gram-negative bacteria that can cause bad breath. The list includes but is not limited to Bacterioides loescheii, Centipeda periodontii, Eikenella corrodens, Enterobacteriaceaea, Fusobacterium nucleatum, Prophyromonas gingivalis, Prevotella intermedia, Tanerella forsythensis, and Treponema denticola. These bacteria like your mouth but they don’t like each other, so you may have large numbers of one strain but small numbers of other strains in your mouth at any one time. All of these strains, however, can give you bad breath.
Even if you have bad breath bacteria in your mouth, they don’t necessarily cause bad breath. Odors usually result when bacteria digest so much more protein that they have an excess of the amino acids cysteine, cystine, and methionine. These amino acids are converted by enzymes already in your mouth and enzymes released by bacteria into the sulfur compounds that cause bad breath odor. Bacteria fed excesses of certain fatty acids can produce butyric acid, which has a rotten butter smell—but which also protects your digestive tract against certain forms of cancer.
You don’t need to avoid feeding yourself to try to starve out your bacteria. They would just feed on your own tissues. And the good news about bad breath bacteria is usually there are not enough bacteria in your mouth for you to know they are there. And there are things you can do to get rid of bad breath bacteria are so obvious that they are often overlooked.
Getting Rid of Bad Breath Bacteria the Easy Way
It does not have to be hard to get rid of bad breath bacteria. After all, they are teeny tiny organisms with teeny tiny anchors in your oral tissues. It’s not like you need a jackhammer to pry them loose from your tongue and gums.
Just rinsing your mouth with water gets rid of some bad breath bacteria. Scientific studies have found that rinsing your mouth with water is as beneficial for reducing bad breath as brushing your teeth. (You still need to brush your teeth to prevent cavities, but you can sip water many more times a day than you brush your teeth.) You can get rid of still more bad breath bacteria by sipping whole milk, but not everyone can drink milk, and it’s not a low-calorie or low-fat food.
Getting Rid of Bad Breath Bacteria the Not-So-Easy Way
An even better way to get rid of bad breath bacteria is to scrape your tongue. You absolutely do not want to scrape your tongue raw so that it bleeds. This will increase bad breath. You just want to remove the brown, yellow, or gray film on your tongue that “glues” bacteria in place on your tongue.
Research studies have shown that you remove about 33% of bad breath bacteria if you scrape your tongue with your toothbrush and you remove about 42% of bad breath bacteria if you scrape your tongue with a plastic tongue scraper. Either way, it takes more than one scraping to give you lasting fresh breath. Usually bad breath is not brought under control until the tongue has been scraped, or brushed, every day for two weeks.
Brushing your teeth reduces bad breath for about an hour. Flossing your teeth is useful for the kind of halitosis you have 24 hours a day, but it does not have an effect on morning breath. About 30% of bad breath bacteria lie on the surfaces of your teeth, another 30% are in the sulcus or crevice between your gums and your teeth, and about 40% live on your tongue. It’s necessary to treat all three areas to get rid of bad breath bacteria for good.
What About Mouthwash?
The most successful chemical mouthwash is 0.2% solution of chlorhexidine. It kills bad breath bacteria on contact, and it continues to sweeten the breath for about 3 hours after you use it. It doesn’t kill all your bad breath bacteria, however, and it’s necessary to use it once or a twice a day to keep halitosis bacteria partially under control.
Chlorhexidine is not without its drawbacks. It can cause a change in the way food tastes, or a burning sensation in the tip of the tongue. In about 4% of people who use it, this mouthwash ingredient can kill gum tissue and cause it to slough off—creating new homes and new food supplies for bad breath bacteria. There are similar problems with alcohol and essential oils used in mouthwash—only they are worse.
So what is the solution for bad breath? Getting rid of bacteria is not the whole job. You also have to take care of your teeth and gums.
