Or maybe controlling bad breath really boils down to diet and lifestyle issues. Don’t eat garlic and onions. Chewing garlic and onions and eating other stinky foods are what causes odors in your mouth.

Or maybe it’s really all about oral hygiene. Make sure to remind your dentist and dental hygienist to remove scale and plaque to stay on top of all the symptoms of tooth decay and damage. Clean your mouth to keep your gum tissue in good health. Avoid periodontal diseases by seeing your dentist twice a year, or at the first sign of bleeding gums. Stop smoking tobacco in any form and especially don’t let cigarette tar accumulate on your tongue and teeth, avoid tongue piercing and keep sinus infections under control.

But sometimes the real cause of overwhelming mouth odor isn’t any of these things. It can be a medical condition for which medications don’t really provide a good solution. There isn’t a nutritional supplement that works very well, either.

Sometimes the cause of bad breath is not periodontal disease or particles of food you don’t wash away. Really difficult halitosis is often caused by tonsil stones. And the world might not know this except for the extended efforts of a blogger and lay expert named Meghan Swann.

All through her childhood Meghan Swann suffered recurrent colds, and flu. She had so many bouts with sore throat she lost count.

But one time when she was a teenager her sore throat felt different. The back of mouth was sore, but the pain seemed to be coming from inside the deep tissue of her throat. It was something more akin to a muscle ache than to strep throat. She had a feeling that something was stuck in her throat, but coughing didn’t bring relief.

So Meghan pressed hard on the back of her throat and sulfurous, smelly mass passed out. It was about the size of a small pebble or a piece of gravel and it smelled terrible. Ms. Swann developed a personal ritual that anytime she felt a “sore throat” coming on, she’d take a cotton swab and press out the debris. But her condition continued for years and years.

A couple of years ago, when Meghan had reached age twenty-five, Meghan’s mother commented that she had heard of a something like Meghan’s condition called tonsillolithiasis, which is a technical term for tonsil stones. These are collections of dead cells and mucus that accumulate in crevices in the back of the mouth.

Bacteria feed on the dead cells and the process of digestion gives rise to a quite noticeable bad smell. They accumulate pockets of debris and digestive waste products that start smaller than the size of a pin and that can grow from the size of a pencil eraser to about 1 inch (25 mm) across. The decay process can be aggravated by eating lots of sugary foods and by diabetes.  But before Meghan started searching on the Internet, she did not know that she was not the only person who had the condition.

A typical posting on a site for rare conditions like wrongdiagnosis.com might read, “Whew. So I’m not the only person on earth who gets rocks falling out of the back of her throat. I’m not such a weirdo after all. Finally I know what caused and continues causing my fearsome halitosis.” Another poster might write, “I thought I could have cancer, but I really had bad breath!” The fact is, tonsil stones are getting more and more common.

Until about 1980, it was common for children who got recurrent sore throats to have operations to have their tonsils removed. Now, under the pressure of insurance rules and risk of malpractice liability, it’s rare for a child to undergo the operation.

Doctors prefer to handle sore throats with antibiotic treatment, even when breathing and swallowing are impaired. And antibiotic drugs are a “whole body” remedy, with various potential side effects in lungs, liver, and kidneys. In children, antibiotics frequently cause skin reactions. In women, how well antibiotics work may be influenced by hormone levels. One of the side effects of antibiotic therapy for tonsillitis, however, is the formation of tonsil stones.

Antibiotics dry out the mouth, creating tiny crevices in which dead cells can accumulate and from which infection can spread to living tissue. And even otolaryngologists often fail to realize that the stinky smell in the bad of the mouth isn’t the due to the decay of particles of yesterday’s cold pizza left behind by poor oral hygiene, it’s actually a tonsil stone. That’s despite the growing number of reports about tonsil stones in the medical literature, including a study reported in 2008 from the Brazilian state of Minas that found that 75 per cent of children and teens who have tonsillitis that has not been treated by surgery have bad breath caused by tonsil stones.

Tonsil surgery, of course, gets rid of this kind of bad breath for good. You don’t get tonsil stones if you don’t have tonsils. But nobody likes to go under the knife. For his patients who wish to avoid (or cannot have) surgery, Dr. Lee A. Zimmer of the University of Cincinnati recommends this simple tonsil care regimen anyone can do at home:

1. Rinse twice a day with a mouthwash that does not contain alcohol (because alcohol dries out the mouth and causes cracks), and

2. Rinse the back of your mouth at least once a day with a cleaning jet of high-pressure water from oral irrigation products such as a WaterPik.

3. Chew gum. The saliva released by chewing gum, especially gum sweetened with xylitol, flushes bacteria away.

Oxygenating sinus sprays and mouthwashes may also prevent problems, since the bacteria that cause the odor are killed by exposure to oxygen. All oxygenating remedies will probably help.

It’s always possible that surgery would be the best way to handle this problem. As of the date of this article, however, Meghan Swann is still getting good results from her tried-and-true oral health maintenance routine: When you feel the stones, push them out.

Click here to learn how a simple $2 mouthwash of safe, common ingredients made right from your own home can eliminate your bad breath in 90 seconds flat and leave your breath smelling fresh all day…

The problem you might have already noticed is that despite the volume of products that are being advertised as effective remedies, there are still millions of people suffering from chronic bad breath or halitosis.  In many cases, the commercially available products are simply not as effective are you’re led to believe.  They fail to address the underlying causes.  Instead, they are used as band-aids, providing temporary, surface relief.

Such products use a strong taste and odor to overpower the bad breath.  Naturally, the effects wear off given a certain amount of time.  The nasty smell may return only a few hours later.  Again, you’ve masked the bad breath odor.  You haven’t targeted the root problem.  The answer to this was to create products that actually target the bacteria that cause the bad breath in the first place.  The best treatments, even among commercial products, will be those that eliminate the offending bacteria while leaving beneficial microorganisms in place to keep the mouth in good shape.

Products containing the additive chlorhexidine offered the first targeted approach to killing bacteria, but still fell short in the minds of many critics.  Most products containing the additive required continual rinsing to maintain bacterial protection.  It is this failure of man-made materials that may have prompted many to take a second look at natural remedies to cure bad breath.

It may be that natural treatments for bad breath offer the best results when compared to commercial remedies.  Some approaches involve reintroducing oxygen back into the mouth so that the anaerobic environment that bacteria thrive in is destroyed.  It would have to be maintained but rather than killing the bacteria after the fact, you are actually preventing them from growing in the first place.

Your natural approach to curing bad breath could be simply drinking more water to keep the area flushed out.  Then again, there are herbal approaches that also provide relief of bad breath. Have you ever chewed on mint or cinnamon?  These herbs can help defeat bad breath naturally.

Another more recent approach uses olive oil like a rinse.  The idea is based on the fact that bacteria will actually stick to oil droplets.  This means that they are washed away by the adhesive action of the olive oil. Yet another bad breath remedy involves the use of probiotics.  This type of medicinal approach introduces beneficial bacteria into the mouth with the hope that more of one type will eventually decrease the population of the harmful bacteria causing the odor.

If you want to know other remedies for bad breath, you should find many out there on the market.  All it takes is a little research to uncover a whole selection of excellent even natural products that can help you cure bad breath once and for all.

Depending on the oral health expert who is doing the counting, from 30 to 95 million Americans have halitosis. Often worse in the early morning, a mere breath mint or mouthwash is not enough to keep others from recoiling on close contact or standing at a distance during conversation.

Bad breath has Americans spending up to $3 billion a year on sugar-free gum, toothpaste, mouthwashes, and other remedies that they hope will keep treat the conditions causing halitosis and breath fresh. But dentists and other bad breath experts say that most of these purchases are a waste at best. In fact some supposedly healthy treatments for bad breath can even make the problem worse. Even the semiannual trek to the dentist the scrape away plaque and treat gingivitis-affected gums will not necessarily prevent or stop the condition.

Dr. Walter Loesche, an expert on bad breath and cavities who teaches dentistry and microbiology at the University of Michigan says that many more people think they have bad breath odor than actually do. Some people he treats are actually at risk of suicide.

The rest of are more accurately described as self-conscious worriers. The best way to find out if you have bad breath, Dr. Loesche says, is to ask a child. Children are less likely to be concerned about the social implications of honesty on this issue. Another way to determine whether you have bad breath is to lick your wrist and sniff.

But because so many people don’t ask a child about their breath (or test by a lick on their wrists), many people spend thousands of dollars at breath clinics all around the USA. According to Dr. Lawrence Meskin, who was editor of The Journal of the American Dental Association for many years, people going to these clinics spend huge amounts of money of what a dentist “can do” and “should do for less.” If you just make some simple changes in the way you brush your teeth and keep your mouth clean, and in what you eat and drink you may find the prefect—and effective—home remedy for the factors that really cause bad breath. Here are 10 tips providing the vital hygiene info you need to know to stop bad breath from coming back and live your life bad breath free.

1. Choices in diet are the top cause of bad breath, but bad breath caused by eating is temporary. The remedy for garlic breath, or onion breath is a quick rinse of your mouth with clean water. A few of the volatile oils from onion or garlic can survive digestion to be exhaled by the lungs, but these are less than 5% of all the odor causing compounds in this natural source of stinky breath.

2. Allergies can cause bad breath. The antihistamines you take to relieve allergies can make bad breath worse by drying out your sinuses so they provide a have for odor-causing bacteria.

3. Always make sure your toothbrush is clean and dry before you use it to brush your teeth. A wet toothbrush caked white with toothpaste is a bad breath germ factory.

4. Chewing sugarless gum keeps saliva flowing and sometimes can cure bad breath. Sugarless gum flavored with xylitol can also prevent ear infections in both children and adults.

5. Chronic bad breath can be a symptom of an illness centered elsewhere in the body, such as diabetes, chronic bronchitis, liver disease, kidney failure, or autoimmune disease. Certain abnormalities in the septum of the nose or in face bones can also cause bad breath.

6. Alcohol-based mouthwashes like Listerine usually don’t work for more than an hour or so. Worse the alcohol they contain can dry out the mouth and create new homes for bacterial infection.

7. Red lips, red gums, or a red tongue (unless it’s red due to piercing) that don’t change color when you put ice on them are a sign of serious infection that requires medical or dental attention right away.

8. Water softeners replace calcium ions (which can cause deposits that clog pipes and hot water heaters) with sodium ions, but the sodium can dry out your mouth. If you use a water softener in your home, drink bottled water.

9. When even careful attention to oral hygiene does not get rid of halitosis, sometimes tongue cleaning can make all the different. Dr. Erika Boever, also of the University of Michigan School of Dentistry, explains that the tongues of some people are coated with bacteria the feed on and ferment proteins. The process of fermenting food particles in the mouth produces fatty acids, ammonia, methylmercaptan (a chemical also found in feces), and hydrogen sulfide, the chemical that causes rotten egg odor. Gently scraping the tongue with a stainless steel instrument once a day sometimes eliminates bad breath odor when nothing else works.

10. The chemical chlorhexidine can kill bad breath bacteria. But because it can also kill your taste buds, you should not use it on a continuous basis.

Looking for more tips on how to keep bad breath gone for good? A great guide is this book, Living Bad Breath Free.

The dentist-researchers recruited volunteers who would agree not to eat any food, drink, floss, clean their gums or tongue, or brush their teeth from midnight of the night before their appointment until they came in to the lab. This was to make sure that the test was measuring the ability of the tested products to control “garden variety” bad breath, the bad breath caused by bacteria that are in the mouth every day.

The volunteers blew into a collecting device for a gas chromatograph calibrated to measure hydrogen sulfide and methyl mercaptan, two especially stinky chemicals that are associated with bad breath odor, rotten egg odor, and fecal odor. This chemical identification tool measured a baseline level and how much the concentration of the chemicals decreased—or not—at one hour intervals after using various breath fresheners.

The scientists made some interesting discoveries. For instance:

Breath mints never reduced the concentration of the two stinky chemicals in the air in the mouth at any time.

“A very popular parsley oil product” (Clorets) did not absorb any of the stinky chemicals at any time. After about 2 hours, mouth bacteria apparently started making hydrogen sulfide and methyl mercaptan out of the gum itself.

Chewing gum did not reduce the concentration of these two chemicals at any time.

Toothpaste absorbed a little of the hydrogen sulfide and methyl mercaptan for up to 2 hours.

Drinking green tea was a significant deodorant (it caused removal of half of these bad breath chemicals) for up to 2 hours, but not for longer than that.

What the science seems to show is that most of the things we take for bad breath don’t really get rid of bad breath. They only cover it up with other odors. However, everything about breath mints, chlorophyll chewing gum (Clorets, made with parsley oil), and toothpaste obviously isn’t bad! Here’s how these products help you get rid of bad breath over the long run.

Breath mints don’t have a big effect on the odors in your mouth, although if you use a breath mint, other people probably won’t smell those other odors at least for a while. What breath mints do for you that reduces halitosis is they reduce the likelihood you will burp up obnoxious gases released from the digestion of garlic, onions, smoked fish, and cheese. Breath mints can also “trick” the nose so other body odors are not noticeable.

Chlorophyll chewing gum and other sugarless chewing gums don’t deodorize, but they do stimulate salivation. If you can keep your mouth and tongue from getting dry, there will be fewer tiny cracks to provide halitosis bacteria with a home. These products don’t get rid of bad breath right away, but they do keep it from developing later. And chewing gum flavored with xylitol can also prevent ear and sinus infections.

Toothpaste isn’t a deodorant, either. But a daily brush with peroxide toothpaste really can help prevent gingivitis and other forms of gum and tooth decay capable of causing overwhelming odors. Be sure to rinse your toothbrush after you use it.

And what the research reports don’t make clear is that all forms of green tea are not equal when it comes to halitosis care. Green tea you make the Asian way, by putting finely ground green tea directly in the cup and covering with hot water, is an excellent breath freshener and an important aid to oral hygiene. Green tea you make from tea bags, not so much. White tea has similar properties, but the bagged form is not best.

There are times, of course, that additional effort is necessary for controlling bad breath. Certain medications, like the drugs used to treat irritable bladder disease, depression, or Parkinson’s disease, are especially drying to the mouth. Any infection that causes bleeding or that makes the gums or tongue red is likely to cause bad breath, and getting a dentist to look at it should be a top priority. Person-to-person transmission of cold and flu germs will also result in halitosis about a week later, even if other symptoms are not all that rough.

Just be careful about the mouthwash you choose. Any product that contains alcohol, Listerine, for instance, can dry out the mouth and over the long run cause a bad breath problem as bad as the one it cures. At the top of your list of mouthwash selections should be alcohol-free herbal mouthwashes such as Sarakan and Astring-O-Sol.

Click here to learn how a simple $2 mouthwash of safe, common ingredients made right from your own home can eliminate your bad breath in 90 seconds flat and leave your breath smelling fresh all day…

What if your reoccurring morning breath is more than a slight unpleasant experience?  What if it is telling you that you may have something more serious wrong with you?  Okay, that’s enough of the questions.  You know what you need to do.  You need to understand what the underlying causes of the bad breath are and then start investigating your own case.  Once you do know something, then you can seek the proper solution and treat your bad breath.

First, there are a number of potential causes that could be underlying serious bad breath.  If you eliminate the obvious, non-medical one—namely bad oral hygiene—then you have a list of medical conditions to contend with.  They could be oral-centered ones like periodontal infections and gum disease.  Then again, you might have a serious or chronic sinus infection that you cannot cure.  Other things like smoking, drinking, poor digestion, as well as constipation, liver disease, kidney problem, and diabetes are all possible contenders.

If you really want to cure bad breath and any of the various diseases or disorders that could be behind it, you should take the issue seriously.  Ignoring such a warning sign could have harmful consequences down the road.  Why risk it?

The more informed you are about all of the factors behind bad breath, the better your chances are of finding real answers.  If you’re the sufferer, then the stakes are much higher.  Why risk your health?  Of course, you could be one of the many that had no idea that bad breath could be signaling that something else is wrong with you.

There is no reason to be ashamed of not knowing more.  Better yet, consider yourself informed.  Now, you have no excuse not to find out what you can about your particular case of halitosis.  It may mean far more than curing a simple case of stinky breath.  It could mean your life.

There’s one thing that you’ll know for sure if you read more about the topic: Just as there are many causes of bad breath, there are also many solutions that are currently on the market for treating extreme bad breath.  Both synthetic medical approaches as well as herbal remedies exist in abundant supplies for solving bad breath problems.  You will have to determine for yourself if there are proper treatments available for different diseases that will also positively impact the quality of your breath.

There is no reason that chronic bad breath will automatically be the result of some larger, undiagnosed medical issue in your life.  Still, there is reason to be aware that this could be a possibility.  Final word: Stay informed!

To cure bad breath through scientific treatment is the stated goal of clinics that have been around for several years.  In a number of instances, the success rate in finding a solution to a patient’s halitosis reached almost 99%.  This alone is astounding when you consider the methods being employed.

What most of these bad breath clinics do is develop a targeted approach that combines effective diagnosis and treatment for individual client needs.  It is remarkable considering the fact that such treatment options for chronic bad breath or halitosis were unheard of even twenty years ago.  The process of addressing such a broad public concern was surprisingly slow in development.

Pioneers like the San Francisco-based Center for Breath Treatment have had outstanding success rates in treating all manner of bad breath conditions.  Other clinics have followed the example of the CBT and developed their own brands of treatment options to ensure similar levels.

For such clinics, the ideal approach is for patients to visit their centers in person to receive an accurate diagnosis and allow professional staff to treat the bad breath conditions using various methods.  Yet, this is not always an option.  Clinics and centers alike have sought to address the needs of those who are not able to visit their offices in person by providing comprehensive home testing kits that help you determine the level of halitosis you have.  Even such home packages offer the tools you need to diagnose and eliminate bad breath.

You will probably encounter those clinics that operate using strictly medicinal solutions as well as those that mix standard medicine with herbal remedies.  Obviously, what approach you take for treatment is entirely up to you.  Making a decision about this requires a little investigation on your part into the types of medicines that are being offered as well as the sort of procedures that have the highest levels of success.

Again, be sure you’ve taken the appropriate steps to cure bad breath for good.  Don’t stop short of the goal.  It can be difficult to implement the changes prescribed by an oral health professional, but there is no genuine substitute for following through with whatever treatment is required.

Choosing a professional bad breath treatment option is like making other important decisions.  You need to take every factor into consideration as they all play a role in the outcome.  Just remember to spend some time researching different services and examining what is offered and at what price.  With such a socially-effecting condition, it is tough to be sober-minded, but if you want to make the smart decision then keep focused.

But if you grew up in the United States in the 1950’s and 1960’s, you probably remember that bad breath was a much more common occurrence than it is now. That’s because the little green chewing gums didn’t really work.

The information available at the time had been something like this. Bad breath is caused by bacteria. They don’t like chlorophyll. Parsley is loaded with chlorophyll. If you chew a bunch of parsley (the nineteenth century remedy) or you chew a gum like Clorets made with a lot of chlorophyll, then your bad breath would go away.

Only it didn’t.

Everything about chewing gum for bad breath isn’t bad. Chewing gum encourages salivation, and saliva washes food particles off the tongue. If you chew enough gum, you could get rid of bad breath in a day or two, provided you don’t eat anything else. There has to be a better way.

And there is. Medical care is almost never necessary. Check out these 10 home remedies for this embarrassing problem that really work, some of which you probably haven’t thought about before.

1. Don’t bite your nails.

And don’t use a toothpick to clean your teeth, either. Both practices can injure gums and create places for bad breath bacteria to grow. Floss by wrapping the floss around each individual tooth and pulling side to side, not up and down. Flossing up and down won’t work, because it can trap particles between teeth.

2. Brush your teeth, but don’t brush your teeth more than 3 times a day.

Toothpastes that contain sodium lauryl sulfate or sodium laureth sulfate can dry out your mouth, gums, and tongue. The drying creates tiny cracks that host halitosis-inducing microbes.

3. If you have a problem with tooth decay or gum decay, use hydrogen peroxide as a cleaning mouth rinse.

Just be sure it’s diluted hydrogen peroxide, usually a 3% solution. A sign you need to stop using hydrogen peroxide is “cotton mouth,” a lack of normal salivation.

4. Avoid doughnuts, cookies, cakes, and pies.

Sugar is food for bacteria, but it is starch that is the culprit causing sugar to stay in contact with your teeth and gums. If you can’t avoid sugar altogether, at least avoid foods that combine sugar and flour.

5. Consider herbal toothpastes and mouthwashes.

The North American herb bloodroot contains chemicals known as benzophenanthridine alkaloids. These are a kinder, gentler approach to controlling bad breath that does not kill bad breath germs, but keeps them from forming colonies in the mouth. This allows them to be rinsed away by drinking water, or, even better, green or white tea.  Bloodroot or “sanguinarine” products for oral health won’t cause drying or cracking in your mouth the way alcohol-based mouthwash can.

6. If you have to get fillings, ask your dentist for alternatives to silver-mercury amalgam.

Faulty fillings create a breeding ground for the bacteria that cause bad breath. Overhanging margins accumulate plaque and shelter bacteria. Mercury-based fillings deplete antioxidant enzymes in small areas of the gums, exposing the matrix of the gums to bacterial attack. Other dental polymers are much less likely to cause this problem. Even if you don’t have cavities, see your dentist at least twice a year for cleanings to remove plaque.

7. If you take a daily vitamin and mineral supplement, make sure it contains no more than the RDI of molybdenum.

Molybdenum is essential to the process of sulfoxidation, the metabolic step in which the sulfur found in foods such as garlic is converted to sulfates and sulfides and combined various mineral ions. Molybdenum activates the enzyme sulfite oxidase, which is important for your entire body, but a cause of halitosis. Bad breath is a more commonly recognized problem in countries in which the diet contains high amounts of molybdenum. You can get too much molybdenum if your diet is high in liver-based products.

8. Consider using a tongue scraper.

That yellowish film on your tongue is a reservoir for bad breath germs. The best way to get rid of it is to scrape it off. You just want to be sure that the scraper doesn’t break while it is in your mouth. Stainless steel is breath. Gentle scraping is sufficient. Scraping so hard your tongue bleeds can cause problems of its own.

9. Try green tea toothpastes and mouthwashes.

Oral care products made with green tea provide a variety of antioxidants with tongue-twistingly technical names such epicatechin gallates. These chemicals are a kindler, gentler herbal approach to treating the bacteria that cause halitosis. They aren’t quite as efficient at stopping colony formation by bacteria as the products that contain bloodroot or sanguinarine, but they are better at relieving gum irritation and canker sores. These products also provide a small amount of vitamin C, several of the forms of vitamin E, zinc, manganese, selenium, and chromium.

10. Drink black, green, red, or white tea daily.

Black, green, and white tea, as well as red or rooibos tea, drunk up to 4 times a day, all provide tannins. These naturally occurring compounds “tan” the lining of the mouth and tongue so that they do not crack and fissure and give bacteria a place to grow. Common conditions that result in bad breath, such as Sjögren’s syndrome, getting over the flu, or treatment for irritable bladder or Parkinson’s disease, respond well to drinking tea.

Whether you put ice in your tea or drink it hot, you still get the benefit. The best time to drink tea is in the morning, so the tannins protect your mouth through all your meals and snacks.

If you have dry mouth, a combination of drinking tea or water and chewing sugar-free gum flavored with xylitol can keep saliva flowing to keep your mouth moist. The xylitol in the gum will also help prevent middle ear infections.

Garlic and onions are overrated as bad breath foods. If you eat garlic and onions, or if you take garlic supplements to prevent heart disease on the advice of your doctor, the good news is that a simple rinse of your mouth gets rid of up to 45% of the sulfur compounds that cause bad breath odor. And no matter what you do, six hours after your eat, almost no stinky breath caused by foods remains. A breath mint, however, only masks certain food odors, and can make others worse.

What about that old standby, Listerine?

There’s no doubt that Listerine can temporarily mask and improve bad breath. The problem is, it can cause bad breath, too.

The alcohol in Listerine is drying. As the lining of the mouth and tongue dry out, they crack, providing a new home for bacteria. An ironic side effect of using Listerine to control bad breath is that now for nearly 150 years it has caused bad breath.

Click here to learn how a simple $2 mouthwash of safe, common ingredients made right from your own home can eliminate your bad breath in 90 seconds flat and leave your breath smelling fresh all day…

The internet has made it possible for people find the information they want on every conceivable topic.  If you want to cure bad breath, then look no further than your own computer.  A quick search will turn up hundreds of pages relevant to the topic of bad breath.  The only question is which page I should turn to for help.  What can you do to maximize your success in locating the appropriate solution to bad breath?

The types of sites that provide information on treating bad breath vary.  You can find anything from official oral health sites to blogs offering a free bad breath cure e-book you can download.  Dental professionals and special clinics generally offer some information whether it is an article or an FAQ to those interested and willing to search their site listings.  In fact, it can be overwhelming when you see just how many varied sources there are for bad breath treatment right now.  How do decide which one?

Admittedly, it is tough to determine which site is better than another.  You may have to investigate several and then compare the content.  Ask yourself if reading a few articles will be sufficient or if you might benefit more from resources such as FAQs or email Q and A with a dentist or oral health professional.  Then again, you might learn something relevant to your situation by reading a post by a blogger who has taken the time the research the topic of bad breath himself.  The web offers you ready access to a dozen different ways to cure bad breath.  What if you need something else?

If you’re not particularly internet-savvy, you might be looking for advice or solutions to your bad breath problems in a different form.  It could be that you will find something that does the trick in a book at the local library.  Even talking with a friend of loved one could yield a new method that you hadn’t tried before—one that might be more effective than what you’ve tried already.

There may come a time when you have to seek a trained professional’s help with your bad breath issues.  This is very true when bad breath doesn’t seem to be going away despite your best efforts.  You could have halitosis or chronic bad breath.  In some instances, only prescribed medicinal treatments administered by an oral health professional may achieve measurable results.

Now, you could always take a different tact and explore alternative or herbal bad breath treatments.  These do not necessarily require professional guidance—although, an herbalist could give you some direction in what mixture of herbs will do the most for you.

As you can see, the types of bad breath help you can use are nearly limitless.  The goal remains the same no matter which option you choose.  If you want to put bad breath to an end then you’ll have spend the time necessary to find the very best solution for your individual circumstances.

Scientists and researchers have established that the most common cause of halitosis is type of bacteria called Gram-negative anaerobic bacteria.   The word anaerobic is used to describe the fact that this variety of bacterium thrives in environments that have little or no oxygen content.  In fact, 85% to 90% of the people who have bad breath caused by of the activity of these microscopic pests.

Disgusting as it sounds, the odor you smell is actually the waste products of those bacteria.  They excrete a sulfur based waste, which explains that pungent aroma.  There are various naturally occurring sulfur compounds that produce similar unpleasant odors.  Hydrogen sulfide, associated with rotten eggs, methyl mercaptan from the barnyard, and dimethyl sulfide, which is commonly associated with the ocean, are all compounds that are produced by oral dwelling bacteria.

Since they are commonly found in the mouth dentists have classified these compounds and refer to them as volatile sulfur compounds or VSCs.  It’s their volatile nature, including rabid evaporation, which makes them immediate sources of bad breath odor.   Still other waste byproducts excreted by bacteria such as cadaverine, putrescine, isovaleric, and skatole add to the often-noxious smell of halitosis.  No one is left out.  Everyone has these materials present in their mouths.

The good news is that most of the time you may never know they are there.  It is only when the levels of these odor-causing compounds are elevated to the point where they are detectable by the human nose that you will have issues.

One of the reasons that such bacteria thrive is that conditions like plaque accumulation can create an oxygen-weak environment that drive up the levels of odor causing bacteria.  The more extensive the accumulation the larger your mouth’s odor-causing bacteria population will become.  This, in turn, leads to worse bad breath symptoms.

This information should make it clear that the way to cure bad breath is to attack the bacteria itself.  By driving down the levels of the bacteria population or eliminating them entirely, you have the basis of any effective bad breath remedy.  Remember to target the bacteria and you have found the source of your odor problem—in the vast majority of cases.

Now that you know the fundamental bad breath cause, you should be able to find the sort of resources and products you need to combat the problem at its root.  There is no reason to let halitosis win the battle.  If you’re willing to experiment to find the right mix of medicinal and natural means to fend off bad breath, then you will win.

Scientists estimate that about a quarter of the population has bad breath at any given time. It’s hard to tell if you have bad breath without someone else to give you feedback. That’s because we inhale and exhale vertically, while bad breath odors spread horizontally.

Certain stinky foods cause bad breath, but their effects are short-lived. About half the chemicals that cause garlic breath, for instance, can be removed from the mouth just by taking a few sips of water. The other half will dissipate in about six hours. There is no food that causes lingering bad breath, although if you are ill with certain digestive complaints (for example, the water-born parasitic disease giardiasis, which causes a particularly unpleasant symptom called “purple burps”) can cause release of unpleasant odors through the mouth.

Lasting bad breath is caused by bacteria that live on the back of the tongue, between the teeth, and in cracks and crevices caused by drying out the mouth or treating the mouth with harsh, alcohol-based mouthwashes, such as Listerine. If you have healthy gums and teeth, the place where the bacteria that cause bacteria are most likely to reside in your mouth on your tongue. If you see your dentist on a regular basis, simple dental hygiene will remove the plaque that forms a home for bad breath bacteria between your teeth.

Bacteria break down mucus and dead cells from your mouth and tongue, as well as tiny food particles left in your mouth after eating. As these bacteria digest protein, they produce two waste products, hydrogen sulfide (the chemical associated with rotten egg odor) and methyl mercaptan (the chemical associated with fecal odor). They can literally make your mouth smell like a sewer.

You can take products that cover up the sewer smell, or you can get rid of the bacteria and get rid of bad breath for good. If you take the second option, you need to be sure the product you take doesn’t also get rid of your taste buds (as prescription mouthwashes with chlorhexidine sometimes do) or cause tiny cracks in your mouth and tongue to create new homes for bacteria so have to keep using the product (as is the case with Scope and Listerine).

Here is the essential information for dealing with bad breath effectively.

1. Wash the odor away.

If the problem is garlic or onion breath, your best tip is that simply taking a few sips of water at the end of your meal will relieve a lot of the bad odor. Bad breath of any origin is relieved by drinking water regularly to keep food particles and bacteria from building up in the mouth. Green tea deodorizes the mouth for up to 2 hours. The kind of green tea you make with powdered tea over which you pour hot water is more effective than green tea made with tea bags. There is no top brand for this kind of tea, but powdered green tea is available in Asian markets everywhere.

2. Cover up the odor.

Mints and chewing gum don’t really get rid of bad breath odor. They just cover it up. Peppermint, however, can reduce the risk of burps (and flatulence) that also cause disagreeable odor emissions.

3. Let your saliva do the work.

Chewing gum stimulates the flow of saliva, which reduces the accumulation of bacteria and food particles in your mouth. You want to be sure to chew sugarless gum, of course, because sugar also feeds bacteria.

4. Kill the bacteria. Kill them all.

Alcohol-based mouthwashes like Listerine are designed to eliminate the bacteria that cause bad breath. Originally designed as an antiseptic for the walls of operating rooms and surgical theaters, Listerine contains over three times the concentration of alcohol needed to kill the bacteria in your mouth. (It’s about 54-proof.)

The problem with alcohol-based mouthwashes like Listerine and Scope is that they not only kill bacteria, they also kill tissue on the lining of your tongue and mouth. This creates new homes for bacteria that quickly find their way to your mouth. The more you use mouthwash, the more you need it. It’s no wonder people buy nearly a billion dollars worth of these products every year. Alcohol-based mouthwashes are no cure for halitosis.

If you have any questions about whether the product contains alcohol or not, just don’t use it. Your dentist can recommend an alcohol-free alternative.

5. Don’t kill the bacteria, just deprive them of a home in your mouth.

Another way to deal with bad breath bacteria is to prevent them from colonizing in your mouth. This is what mouthwash and toothpaste made with sanguinarine (bloodroot, in same dosages) does. The bacteria stay in your mouth, but they never attach themselves to your tongue so they can digest food particles (and dead tongue cells), so they never emit stinky sulfur compounds.

Some natural products, including the green, red, black, or white tea your drink, and the oral care products Sarakan and Astring-O-Sol, prevent the formation of bacterial colonies in a different way. These natural products provide tannins that literally “tan” the inside of you mouth and your tongue. Tiny cracks and crevices never form, so the bacteria that cause bad breath never form colonies and are easily rinsed away as you drink water and eat food.

Of course, brushing your teeth after every meal is important, but you don’t need to brush all day long. Too much brushing, especially with a harsh toothpaste, can wind up causing some of the same problems as using an alcohol-based mouthwash. Over-brushing doesn’t help halitosis. Dry mouth caused by drying toothpastes creates the same conditions that enable bacteria to thrive.

It’s also important to floss the right way. Floss side to side, not up and down. Loop dental floss around each tooth and loosen food particles. Pushing them up and down can trap them between your teeth, and the floss can injure your gums. Take good care of your oral health and hygiene, but let the right products do the work for you.

Click here to learn how a simple $2 mouthwash of safe, common ingredients made right from your own home can eliminate your bad breath in 90 seconds flat and leave your breath smelling fresh all day…