How to Prevent Bad Breath from Coming Back: Ten Things You Need to Know

Just about everyone has halitosis once in a while. More often than not the problem isn’t forgetting about brushing and mouthwash or eating the wrong foods, or failing to take care of medical and dental maladies, but the condition of your tongue. And taking care of the causes of common bad breath to get rid of bad breath for good may be as simple as adding tongue cleaning as an addition to your regular routine of brushing your teeth. If you’re looking to avoid regular bouts with bad breath the information in this article is bound to help.

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.