How to Treat Bad Breath

Do you have bad breath or know someone who does? Bad breath, or halitosis, as it’s called in the medical field, as a frustrating problem for people who have it and those they come into contact with. If you have bad breath, the first step to treating it is to understand the cause of it, then treat the bad breath. If you know someone with bad breath and you feel you are close enough to them to tell them they have this problem, you should do so tactfully and privately, and armed with helpful information about bad breath.

It is important to know that halitosis is not usually the persons fault. The root cause of bad breath is excessive bacterial buildup in the mouth. Every person has a bacterial buildup in their mouth, and this is why everyone should brush their teeth at least twice a day. However, persons with halitosis will find that brushing their teeth twice a day simply is not enough to counteract their bad breath odor.

The mouth’s first line of defense against bacterial buildup is saliva, which has the all important job of constantly removing bacteria from the mouth. Bacteria gets to the mouth through foods, so the presence of some bacteria is too be expected in every person’s mouth. If a person has “lazy” saliva, or saliva that only removes a portion of the bacteria that it should remove, then the person will experience an excess buildup of bacteria. Bacteria has an offensive odor, which means that any excess buildup will produce a strong offensive smell. People with halitosis often have lazy saliva and simply need to further assist their mouth with removing the excess bacteria with daily quality oral hygiene.

People with chronic bad breath odor should strongly consider brushing their teeth not only on awakening and before retiring to bed, but also after each meal. This will help breakup the bacteria so the saliva can remove it from the mouth. However, brushing the teeth doesn’t breakup all of the bacteria. Flossing breaks up bacteria that your toothbrush can’t get to, loosening the bacteria between each tooth.

Tongue scraping is a major help for sufferers of bad breath. Gently scrape the toothbrush from the back of the tongue to the front of the tongue. This will breakup the bacteria on the tongue, where a massive portion of the mouth’s bacteria lives. Scraping the tongue can dramatically reduce the presence of bad breath.

Once the bacteria has been broken up, it is the job of saliva to remove the bacteria from the mouth. However, since most sufferers of bad breath have less effective saliva, these people may find it very useful to use mouthwash for rinsing at the end of the oral hygiene session. Mouthwash is basically manufactured saliva, and it will help remove broken up bacteria. Antibacterial mouthwash will even help breakup some of the bacteria.
If you have bad breath or know someone with halitosis, go to www.bad-breath.org, the internet’s bad breath bible. There you will find a wide selection of helpful articles on treating bad breath, as well as links to many commercially available products that can help dramatically reduce bad breath odor.