Have any of you gone out to a dinner with friends or with family and then you start noticing your friends and family start sitting further and further away from you.
Now, it could be, there are many reasons as to why, but maybe, just maybe one of the possibilities could be bad breath.
Now, what causes bad breath, I suppose in general? Look, bad breath can be, I guess you can boil it down to two causes.
- NON-MOUTH RELATED - medications, illnesses, infection in the upper respiratory track. Those things can cause bad breath. I'm not a professional in any other things apart from mouth so my suggestion is, so if you do feel like you suffer from any of the external mouth factors, do seek your local GP to find out more.
- MOUTH RELATED - When it comes to mouth related causes, it can be, mostly it's related to bacteria in the mouth. There was a recent study that shows that there's about a 10, I believe at 10 to a power of nine bacteria in your mouth at any given time so that's a lot, that's like one, zero, zero, zero, one in a million. There are so many zeros behind it, but I guess it comes down to three causes, but when it comes to the mouth.
- When it comes to teeth, could be holes in your teeth that's causing the bad breath, it could be decay, things are rotting in your mouth of course it's not going to smell that nice, and you've got food stuck in your teeth too, and you don't clean it out and, not only that causes holes, but also that would lead to the food rotting in there too and that could cause bad breath.
- When it comes to gums, the causes could be gum disease. Most cases look, one sure way of seeing if you have gum disease or not is I normally say, it's like when you're cleaning your hands, if you're cleaning your hands and you start seeing blood come up from under the nails, you know something's not quite right there. It's the same thing for your teeth, if you're brushing your teeth, you start seeing blood come up from under the nails then that might be a sure sign of you having some gum disease.
- Now, saliva is very important, it's dentist's best friend because saliva contains antibacterial properties in it and if you don't have enough saliva in the mouth for whatever reason, maybe medications can cause that, maybe even some illnesses or sicknesses you're suffering from that can cause dry mouth too and when there's dry mouth there's more bacteria because there's less antibacterial stuff in there so they're having a party in there, of course, it's going to start smelling.
SOLUTIONS
When it comes to teeth, I talked about how holes, decay and food getting stuck in there, look then, the logical thing would be to patch up the hole, and there many ways of doing that, you can do fillings, crowns, moving teeth to close the spaces up too if food keeps getting stuck in between teeth.
When it comes to gums, your six monthly maintenance cleans can sort that out too but in some cases where it's too severe, you may require more regular cleaning around your gums.
And I guess with low saliva flow if it's that, saliva substitutes like Biotene which you will find that will help quite a fair bit.
So, yes, I hope you've enjoyed this video about what might be causing bad breath and what are the general ways to address bad breath. I hope this has helped you in any way and big or small, and until the next video.
Kindest Regards,
Dr Jolvin Lee
Tooth Heaven
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