9 Great Tips On How To Combat Bad Breath

Susan Jan asked:

Millions of people all over the world suffer from bad breath or halitosis. Bad breath can badly affect your social life, your career prospects and even your self-esteem.

The main cause usually stems from poor dental hygiene, and also from bacteria that comes from left over food particles in the mouth. Strong smelling foods or items such as garlic and onion, alcohol and smoking, also contribute to bad breath.

Conventional remedies for halitosis include:

Brush and floss your teeth at least twice a day. Make sure to also brush the gums, the tongue, roof of the mouth, and inside of the cheeks. After you eat, make sure to rinse out left over food particles in your mouth. Avoid strong smelling items such as coffee, alcohol or smoking.

Other than these common remedies, natural remedies such as a well balanced diet also helps, as a healthy digestive system reduces the level of odor-causing bacteria in your body:

Gum disease causes bad breath. Taking vitamin C helps protect and heal your gums from damage and disease. Vitamin C is plentiful in strawberry, cabbage, orange, red pepper and kiwi fruit. Eating food rich in acidophilus such as yogurt helps to balance the bacteria in the intestine to a healthy level and thus reduce halitosis. Eating food that fights plague build-up also helps fight foul breath, such as cheese, peanut, celery and carrot. Eating less meat and more fiber such as vegetables and fruits help temporarily mask bad breath. Snack on fresh raw vegetables and fruits such as parsley, celery, carrot apple and pear. Parsley is effective because it contains chlorophyll, a chemical found in plants that is considered to be a natural breath freshener. Eat food rich in fiber to fight constipation. Your body absorbs a large amount of bacteria from a meat-laden diet. Fiber helps promote regular bowel movements that remove these toxins from your body that cause bad smelling breath. Food rich in fiber include pea, dried bean, brown rice, prune, fig, and wheat product. Drink a lot of liquids, at least eight cups of water each day, to keep your mouth hydrated, as saliva is a natural antibacterial and helps flush down food particles in your mouth.

Thus, maintaining a balanced diet is an effective way to ensure good bodily health, helps eliminate bad breath and keeps your breath smelling sweet.

Some Simple Bad Breath Remedies

Jeff Clare asked:

If you’re looking for a remedy for bad breath, you’re not alone. More people suffer from bad breath, or halitosis, than you may think. The first thing yopu should do is clean and floss your teeth at least twice per day. You should also use a non acidic mouthwash regularly.

There are a number of other things that you can do in order to make sure that your breath stays fresh all day; and some of these ‘tricks’ are simpler than you think. Here are some ideas for creative and all-natural bad breath remedies that have been known to work for many people.

Eating foods that are high in fat and low in fiber could be the cause of your bad breath problem. When the Atkins Diet was at it’s most popular the number 1 side effect was that followers suffered from bad breath. If your diet consists mainly of meats, fats and sodium (salt)-filled seasonings, increasing the fiber in your diet will help you to eliminate toxins from the body quicker, which means the bacteria in the mouth will be reduced-which means fresher breath all day long. Eating a balanced diet with fibre and carbohydrates as meat and fats (fat free can be bad for your health) is probably the easiest way of reducing or eliminating a bad breath problem.

You should also try a few natural remedies for bad breath. Often, intestinal problems can be the cause of bacteria buildup in the mouth. If however you are constantly ridding the body of impurities, you will be able to maintain fresh breath all day without using gums or mints in excess.

Squeezing a lemon wedge into some distilled water and sipping on it throughout the day will help to cleanse the colon, and will give you fresher breath (though don’t have too much lemon as it will make the water acidic which can damage your teeth). Chewing parsley after a meal is also a good idea if you are trying to keep fresh breath throughout the day; the chlorophyll and fiber in parsley help to remove bacteria from the mouth and give your mouth a minty fresh feel.

In addition to these things, you can also be sure to have few sugar free mints or sticks of gum with you throughout the day in order to have a definite fresh scent in your mouth. You can find mints that have natural peppermints or lavender oils in them, so the scent will last longer, and you should stay away from mints or gums with an extremely high sugar content as once the sugar is dissolved in the mouth, it becomes food for all those pesky bacteria which are a major cause of bad breath in the first place. To much sugar can also it can give off a sour smell.

As I said at the beginning of this article brushing your teeth after every meal is also a great way to make sure that your mouth is pleasantly scented after you’ve eaten, paricularly if you’ve eaten something with a strong scent. Drinking more water intake is also a very good way to remedy bad breath