Stinky Breath And What To Do With It. (1 of 2)

Hey everybody,

This is the first of many blogs from Canaan Dental to you. The first topic we will discuss will be regarding bad breath!

Image result for dinner dateSo here's a scenario: Imagine you were on a blind date and your date is the man/woman of your dreams. She is beautiful, intelligent, and shares the same hobbies as you. You guys go to an amazing modern restaurant in San Francisco. Dinner goes well and you two just have so much in common.  As the two of you get to his/her apartment, you bring up the courage to go in for the first kiss. As you finish the kiss your date gives you this slightly nasty look and goes in without inviting you up. Was it the kiss? Was it too soon? Was it my breath? 
We can not improve your kissing skills, however we can talk about how to fix that breath. 

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Bad breath (aka) halitosis is every young adult's nightmare. Bad breath is very multi factorial, but we will discuss things we can change for the better. Of course as dentist we will first talk about your oral hygiene. Most of you have walked through a hot spring of some sort and smelled that nasty rotten egg smell. That smell is caused by sulfur. This sulfur is produced by the bacteria that are metabolizing the sugars and nutrients. 

 I will always remember in dental school when my attending doctor was fighting with a patient about the cleanliness of his exam gloves. The doctor points to the patients mouth then points to his butt and says "your mouth is just as dirty as my butt". While this was highly inappropriate but what my attending said has validity. We have same amount of micro bacteria and viruses inside our mouth as we do in our butt. The organisms between the two orifices are different, but the truth is the mouth is a dirty place because so much foods and liquids pass in and out of area. Our body lives in a balance with the natural bacteria that is found in this world, but what we don't want is to offset the balance.


 When a patient has poor oral hygiene he/she is allowing certain harmful bacteria to over grow and over metabolize which is the cause of gum disease and cavities. This will also allow the bacteria to metabolize more sugars and create more sulfurs causing a mal-odor

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When I ask patients about how they manage their bad breath, they tell me that they just use their mint or mouth-rinses. Mouth washes claims to kill 99% of the bacteria but it doesn't solve the problem. While Mouth washes is not lying about its ability to kill bacteria; however, Mouth washes can not differentiate between the bacteria that is good and bad so they tend to kill both the bacteria we need and the bacteria we don't need. This does not reset your system because if the same dirty bacteria are still stuck to your teeth during the re population of the bacteria you will still have an excess of bad bacteria. 


 Also if you constantly lower the bacterial population you will develop infections from opportunistic bugs like fungus. So when you pull out that Mouthwash next time remember its great as a quick fix in a dire situation but after about 30 minutes you will have the same bad breath which can sometimes be even worse. 

So how do we fix it? Stay tuned for the next blog.


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