If you think bad breath is normal, it’s never okay if you deal with it every day. It may even ruin your image, damage your social life and relationships, and make you unpopular.
Bad breath is a sign that you have poor dental hygiene. Even if it can be caused by various underlying health problems and some factors, bad breath happens when a person isn’t taking proper, basic dental hygiene, like regular dental visits or brushing teeth. Moreover, bad breath also denotes the type of lifestyle and eating habits people have.
Fortunately, no matter what causes your bad breath or you don’t know the reasons behind it, as enumerated here https://www.familydentalhealth.com/5-reasons-you-might-have-bad-breath/, here are some tips to reduce bad breath:
- Flossing and Brushing
One of the tips to reduce bad breath is to improve your dental hygiene through flossing and brushing regularly.
Regular flossing and brushing help get rid of the trapped food that the odor-producing bacteria want to feed on, and it can also lessen the bacteria in your mouth. In addition to that, it can be beneficial to use a mouthwash.
But, be careful not to use a mouthwash that contains alcohol as it could make your mouth dry, worsening your bad breath. A good alternative is to use a mouthwash that contains oxygenated products, like sodium chloride or chlorine dioxide.
- Eat Healthy Food
Even if found in many recipes, garlic and onion cause bad breath. This is because they contain allyl methyl sulfide, which is a sulfur-based compound. It can be sticky, which causes it to linger for a long period of time in your mouth. So, after eating meals with onions or garlic, see to it that you chew some gum or brush your teeth.
Food that’s high in protein, including fish, meat, and dairy items also affects your breath since odor-producing bacteria in your mouth can break down the protein.
It’s a great idea to wash such food down with lots of water or brush your teeth after eating.
- Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle
One of the reasons why bad breath happens is a poor, unhealthy lifestyle, like smoking, which stains teeth, causes loss of taste, and irritates gums. Drinking alcohol also worsens stale breath.
Aside from that, trying to slim down through fasting, crash dieting, and eating a low-carb diet isn’t good either. The reason behind it is that extreme diets cause the body to break down fat, which produces ketones – chemicals that cause bad breath, too.
So, maintaining a healthy lifestyle is the key and can make a huge difference to ensure good dental health.
- Keep Your Mouth Hydrated
Dry mouth can be more common as people age. This can make your breath smell because saliva helps wash away the food particles and the bacteria that causes odor in your mouth.
For you to keep your mouth hydrated, you should drink a lot of water throughout the day. It can be also beneficial to chew a sugar-free gum, which may trick your body that you’re eating. This will stimulate the production of saliva. If dry mouth persists, it’s essential to speak to your doctor or dentist.
Coffee has a diuretic effect, which slows down the saliva production and makes a good environment in your mouth for odor-producing bacteria to feed and live. So, it’s crucial to ensure that you drink a lot of water to combat such beverages’ diuretic effects.
See to it that you give your tongue and teeth a good scrub before you pop into bed every night and once you get up the next day, most particularly after drinking all night.
Dry mouth can also be due to particular medications and other long-term health conditions, like Parkinson’s and diabetes. If you’re suffering from dry mouth, talk to your dentist to help you.
- Consider Using a Mouth Rinse
Take note that if the dental problem is due to chronic bad breath, using a mouth rinse will just mask the odor and won’t cure it. In other cases, mouth rinses can worsen your concerns on the bad breath by irritating your oral tissues.
To freshen up quickly, use a quick rinse with some drops of peppermint oil and water. You can also rinse your mouth with green or black tea to suppress bacteria buildup, which can cause mouth odor.
- Clean Your Tongue Regularly
It’s very important to clean your tongue. You can purchase a good quality toothbrush that comes with a tongue cleaner to clean both your tongue and teeth.
After brushing your lower and upper teeth using an antibacterial toothpaste, you can use the tongue cleaner of your toothbrush to clean the tongue’s posterior region and move it forward to your tongue’s anterior section. Once you’ve scraped this part of your tongue, rinse your tongue with warm water to get rid of any bacteria that cause odor.
- Visit Your Dentist Often
A good way to reduce or cure bad breath is by visiting your dentist often. If you have serious bad breath, you must visit your dentist first instead of trying various treatments or medications. The reason behind it is that your dentist can help you rule out your dental problems.
In case your problem is due to an internal source, like an infection, your dentist can refer you to another specialist or physician to treat the main cause of your health problem.
- Maintain Good Dental Hygiene
Based on a research, bad breath happens because of having poor dental hygiene. The key to maintaining a healthy mouth is to prevent the buildup of plaque. With this in mind, you must brush your teeth using the best fluoride toothpaste at least two times a day for 2 minutes. Preferably, do it every morning and night time.
Others find that brushing after meals is necessary to prevent bad breath and decay. To prevent bacteria due to food stuck, you should floss at least once daily. Bacteria also accumulates on your tongue, which can cause a foul smell. Tongue scraping is a practice to help you get rid of the film’s thin layer.
With the use of your specialized tongue scraper or toothbrush, scrape or brush your tongue once daily.
- Chew The Right Thing
If you want to make your mouth flush out food particles and bacteria naturally, you should chew sugar-free gum after you eat, freshening up your breath, and will surely keep your saliva flowing. Gums with 100% xylitol also help lessen cavities.
If possible, avoid mints because it’ll just mask your bad breath and these will just load your mouth with sugar, which can cause problems to your teeth.
- Stop Smoking
Smoking stains your teeth, damage your gums, cause cancer, and give you bad breath. OTC nicotine patches may help tame your urge.
If you need help, make appointments with your doctor to talk about prescription medications or go to smoking programs that’ll help you eliminate tobacco for good.
Home Remedies To Prevent Bad Breath
There are various home remedies you can try to prevent bad breath. You can combine the following remedies with the above tips for best results:
- Pineapple Juice – Some think that pineapple juice is the most effective and quickest treatment for bad breath. While there’s no scientific evidence to back it up, other people say it works.
Just drink a glass of pineapple juice after meals or chew a slice of pineapple for 1-2 minutes. It’s also essential to rinse your mouth after drinking pineapple juice or eating pineapple to wash away the sugar in your mouth.
- Parsley – It’s a famous remedy to beat bad breath. The high content of chlorophyll and fresh scent of parsley can have a deodorizing effect.
To use it effectively, just chew on some fresh parsley leaves after every meal or purchase a type of parsley dietary supplement.
- Yogurt – It contains lactobacillus, which are the healthy bacteria that can help prevent bad bacteria in your gut. Research shows that yogurt can minimize bad breath. The probiotics found in yogurt are effective in lessening the bad breath’s severity.
To get the best results, eat a serving of plain yogurt at least once a day.
- Orange – An orange isn’t just a healthy fruit, but it can also improve your dental hygiene.
A lot of people deal with bad breath because they’re not producing enough saliva to wash away the bacteria that causes the foul smell. By eating oranges, these can boost your saliva production, which gets rid of bad breath while providing you some vitamins.
- Milk – Based on research, it shows that milk can reduce bad breath, especially after eating meals with garlic. Just drink a full- or low-fat milk after or during a meal that contains strong-smelling foods, like onions and garlic.
Conclusion
With the above tips, you’ll be able to reduce bad breath. However, if your bad breath isn’t going away or gets worse even if you try those above tips, it’s important to speak with your dentist who can provide you the right treatment or medication suited for your condition.
