Halitosis: 10 Reasons – and Remedies – for Bad Breath | Health and Fitness

Are you constantly failing the "sniff test", in which you sneakily breathe between your hands in section to check if your breath is stinking?

(Tip: If you can smell it, your breath is absolutely harmful, as most of us can not say for ourselves, say dentists.)

If your mouth has trouble qualifying as a "foul stench", then you (and everyone around you) are suffering from halitosis, a breath that smells so loathsome that it could only attract the buzzards and flies.

You are not alone. According to the Academy of General Dentistry, nearly 80 million people suffer from chronic halitosis.

Besides the obvious impact on your popularity, bad breath can be a sign of diseases and conditions, some serious.

During your mint run, it may be helpful to know the top 10 reasons your breath smells bad and what you can do to fix it.

Yes, bad dental care is a leading cause of bad breath. When food gets stuck between the teeth and under the gums, the bacteria try to break them down, leaving behind putrid gases that smell like rotten eggs or worse.

According to the dentists, one way to find out if you have bad breath is to floss your teeth and then feel the thread. If there is a grade smell on the wire, you will know that your breath is poisonous.

The good news is that you can easily fix this bad breath problem by brushing your teeth with fluoride toothpaste twice a day and flossing regularly. While the brush is inside, do not forget your tongue and your cheeks; Studies show that brushing them can reduce bacterial load.

Dentists and cosmetic gums only temporarily cover the stench, warn dentists, because they do not reduce bacteria.

Coffee. Garlic. Fish. Eggs. Onions. Spicy food. The foods we eat can easily cause bad breath.

Many foods that contribute to stinky breath do so by releasing sulphides. As you know, sulfur smells like rotten eggs.

A mint or a piece of chewing gum can mask the stench, but be warned: some smells of what you eat can remain until food enters your system, even if you brush. According to the Academy of General Dentistry, the allyl methyl sulfide contained in coffee, onions and garlic can remain in your bloodstream and be expelled by breathing until 72 hours after its consumption.

Try to fight with other foods, such as lemons, parsley, crisp fruits and vegetables such as apples or carrots that stimulate saliva production, on which your mouth counts to remove impurities. Drinking water helps too! Caffeine, on the other hand, slows the production of saliva.

Before placing the next sweet candy, cake or cookie in your pie pan, listen carefully. You may hear the cheers of bacteria in your mouth. For them, sugar is a super food, and can I organize a party to engulf him, leaving behind a stench?

Dentists say that sticky candies such as jelly candies and toffees are the worst offenders; if you have to eat something sweet, they suggest (oh, joy!) dark chocolate. It contains less sugar than many other candies and dissolves more quickly in the mouth.

Eating a lot of protein and low carbohydrate forces your body to become ketosis, when your system starts to burn fat cells to get energy.

The process creates waste called ketones. Too many of them are not good, so your body has no choice but to turn you into a stinking house, excreting the ketone bodies through your urine and your breath. It's a grade smell, which many compare to rotten fruit.

Try to drink more water to eliminate ketone bodies from your body. If you use mints, sweets or gum, make sure they do not contain sugar.

At night, saliva production decreases, which is why many of us wake up with a rotten taste (and smell) in our mouth even after careful brushing and the use of dental floss .

Oral breathing or snoring, such as that caused by sleep apnea, further dries out your mouth, making your breathing even more foul. Called xerostomia, the dryness of the mouth is not only unpleasant, but potentially harmful. You may develop sore throats, hoarseness, difficulty talking and swallowing, problems with wearing dentures, and even a change in your sense of taste.

The solution: solve your breathing problems in the back of the mouth and correct them by drinking a lot of water and preserving your dental hygiene morning and evening.

Of course, dentists also suggest regular checkups. Do not be shy or embarrbaded. If you talk about your persistent problem to your dentist, he may be able to help you determine the cause.

Hundreds of commonly used medications can dry out your mouth, thus helping to rank the breath. Some of the most common culprits are drugs that treat anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, pain and muscle tension.

Check the list of side effects of the drug to see if it has dry mouth, then discuss with your doctor the possibility of switching to a drug that does not reduce saliva.

Do you have chronic sinus infections? Respiratory diseases? When your nose becomes clogged, you are more likely to breathe through your mouth, dry the tissues and reduce the flow of saliva.

If you have allergies, the fight to stop the constant treatment drip with an antihistamine can also lead to bad breath. Many of the prescription and over-the-counter medications used to fight colds, flu and allergies do not dry up more than the nose.

And all that postnasal drip can cause a stink by getting stuck in the back of the tongue, which is incredibly difficult to achieve with a toothbrush. Dentists recommend scratching the back of the tongue with a specially designed scraper and rinsing it with a mouthwash containing chlorine dioxide.

If you smoke, you probably do not know how the smell of tobacco hangs on your clothes, your stuff and especially your breath. The inhalation of hot vapors lessens your senses and decreases your ability to smell and taste.

Obviously, the hot air will also dry the mouth. The loss of saliva, combined with the smell of tobacco, creates the infamous "smoker's breath". Cottonmouth is also a typical side effect of smoking or weed ingestion, an expanding scenario across the country as more and more states legalize cannabis.

Chawing tobacky? It goes without saying that your teeth will stain, that your gums will suffer and that your breath will be stinking.

Yes, we are still talking about things that dry up the mouth. That, my wine-loving friends, drinking beer, soaking badtail, includes alcohol. Not to mention that the wine contains sugar, like many mixers used to create badtails. Cue the crowd of jubilant bacteria.

Fight with sugar-free sweets or sugar-free chewing gum as they both stimulate saliva production. Do not forget to drink water (this is also a good way to prevent a hangover), brush and floss as soon as you can.

But here's an irony: many mouthwashes and rinses contain alcohol. So if Hal. E. Tosis will not leave you alone. Discuss with your dentist the use of a therapeutic mouthwash designed to reduce plaque.

Do you have stomach burns, acid reflux or gastroesophageal reflux? The introduction of a little food or acid in your mouth can easily create bad breath. Do not write this as simply disgusting; Untreated GERD can easily become a serious disease, even cancer.

Bad breath can also be an early sign of an underlying disease that may not have external symptoms.

One of the signs of diabetic ketoacidosis, a life-threatening disease that primarily affects people with type 1 diabetes, is a fruity breath. This occurs because people with no or little insulin can not metabolize ketone acids, which allows them to accumulate to toxic levels in the bloodstream.

Odor breath in a person with type 1 diabetes should trigger a rapid medical action. In rare cases, people with type 2 diabetes can also develop the disease.

People with severe chronic kidney failure can breathe with an ammonia odor, which, according to the National Medical Library of the United States, can also be described as "urinary or fishy".

Liver fetor is a sign of liver disease, a strong musty smell on the breath. This occurs because a sick liver can not completely treat limonene, a chemical found in citrus zests and some plants. Scientists are trying to develop an odor-based breath test that can alert doctors to early hepatic cirrhosis, triggering treatment.