Common Bad Breath Problems You Should Know
Bad breath is almost always socially awkward. While there really is classic Japanese poetry about the maiden’s love for the samurai that was so great that she came to love the smell of his rotting teeth, and it’s also a matter of historical verity that absolute rulers of despotic monarchies could neglect oral hygiene and get away with it, you and I have to have fresh breath to keep all but the most devoted friends. The problems is knowing how to treat it.
Bad Breath Caused By Onions or Garlic
Probably the most basic bad breath problem is bad breath induced by the foods we eat. Onions and garlic contain volatile sulfur compounds that are activated by chewing. These two foods produce a distinctive odor that most of us recognize almost at once.
Other foods can leave us with stinky breath, too. Limburger cheese, for example, isn’t just odoriferous on the plate. It is also smelly on the breath. Pickled fish, especially if it has been sitting in a jar or barrel for several months, fish sauce (which many Asian languages call “rotted fish”), oyster sauce, smoked fish, fermented meats, coffee, and tea, can all cause bad breath problems. Fortunately, these bad breath problems are usually very easy to fix.
Rinsing the offending food from the mouth gets rid of almost all of the odor of onions and garlic. Brushing and flossing your teeth gets rid of the rest, although garlic and onion odors may still cling to your hands, your clothes, your hair, or your skin. If you can’t brush and floss after your meal, you can at least rinse your mouth with warm water to minimize onion and garlic breath.
Other odor-inducing foods can be harder to handle. Stinky cheeses both cause less breath odor and more persistent odor. The fat in cheese, fish, or fermented meat traps odors inside, but these odors are eventually released as the fat particles left in the mouth on the teeth and tongue begin to decay. Rinsing the mouth with water still helps, but a mouthwash with alcohol (something we usually do not recommend) is best for getting rid of the fat that holds the odor in your mouth.
Bad Breath Caused By Disease Conditions
Sometimes bad breath is a signal of a serious disease. A smell that is often described as a weird combination of nail polish remover and cheap wine can be a signal of a potentially deadly condition called diabetic ketoacidosis. A whiff of rotten fish odor can be a signal of kidney failure. Breath that smells like bowel movement can be an early warning sign of a colon blockage.
More often, however, bad breath is a sign of chronic infection of the sinuses, tonsils, or throat. The immune system fights infection with inflammation. Inflammation kills tissues in the lining of the respiratory tract. These tissues provide food for bad breath bacteria that breaks down some of your protein into the sulfur-bearing amino acids cysteine, cystine, and methionine. These amino acids quickly become methyl mercaptan, the most prominent odor in sewer gas, and hydrogen sulfide, the odor of rotting eggs.
Or sometimes the problem is mouth breathing. The sinuses or the nostrils or the tonsils get so swollen that breathing through the mouth is impossible. Inhaling air through the mouth doesn’t provide an opportunity for air to be warmed and moistened in the sinuses. Dry air dries out the mouth, and kills tissues in that become food for bad breath bacteria.
The best way to treat bad breath that is caused by chronic illnesses is to treat the chronic illness. In the meantime, you can mask the problem with mouthwashes that contain a combination of small amounts of both chlorhexidine and cetylpiridinium chloride. These two chemicals together remove up to 5 times more of the volatile sulfur compounds that cause stinky breath. They do not cure bad breath, but they may control it well enough to help you or your child have a normal social life.
Bad Breath Caused by Bad Breath Bacteria
Most of the time chronic bad breath is not associated with any kind of dire medical condition or chronic infection. It’s just a matter of too many bad breath bacteria in the mouth breaking down too many proteins and releasing too many sulfur compounds.
About 60% of all the bacteria in the mouth that can cause bad breath are found on the surfaces of the teeth (where you can brush) or in the gap between your gums and your teeth. Another 40% of bad breath bacteria live on your tongue. Just brushing your teeth gets rid of a little less than 1/3 of bad breath bacteria, oral irrigation (squirting water into the sulcus, or gap, between gums and teeth) gets rid of a little less than another 1/3 of bad breath bacteria, and scraping the tongue does the rest. But there are right ways and wrong ways to do this kind of oral hygiene.
- Brush your teeth front and back. It is best to hold your brush at a 45-degree angle, on the diagonal, rather than brushing your teeth up and down. Brushing your teeth at a 45-degree angle keeps bristles from getting stuck in your gums and keeps food particles from accumulating at the gaps between your teeth nearest to the gums.
- Floss your teeth back and forth rather than up and down. Flossing is all about getting particles off your teeth, not off your gums.
- Oral irrigation devices like Water Pik, Hydrofloss, and Oxycare work well when the tip is pointed at your gums. They don’t do any good if you just squirt water against the surfaces of your teeth that you can reach with a brush.Â
- A plastic tongue scraper can get the 40% of bad breath bacteria that live on your tongue. The idea is to scrape off bacteria, not the lining of your tongue. If you can’t find or don’t want to use a scraper, brush your tongue the same way you brush your teeth—gently–and be sure to rinse your brush before you use it again.
