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Dry Mouth |
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Dry Mouth is
one of the classical signs of bad breath
and sour bitter metallic taste. The more dry your mouth, the more chance you
will have bad breath. It has to do with the amount of oxygen available
in your saliva. The bacteria that cause bad breath, thrive in an anaerobic
(no oxygen) environment. When your mouth gets dry, your saliva disappears or
gets thicker, representing the reduction of Oxygen. When the bacteria senses
this difference, they start to produce Volatile sulphur Compounds. Most
people with dry mouth also report a metallic taste in their mouth as well as
having a slight filmy coating on their tongue.
Continued
speaking during the day, causes your saliva to thicken,
representing the onset of more dry mouth. This eventually leads to bad
breath production. By the way from the age of 25 on, we all begin producing
less saliva. It goes downhill from that point on, so there is always a
greater chance to produce more bad breath as we all get older.
Drinking
water is very important. It
usually takes 6-8 glasses of water per day in order to replenish your fluid
loss due to normal activity. This water intake is also needed to produce
enough healthy saliva to ward off bad breath. It still amazes me, the number
of people who think that fluid intake such as soda, juice, milk or even diet
soda can substitute for the necessary water. This is not true. Only water
can replace water loss.
Smoking
is a major factor in dry mouth.
When you smoke you are effectively starving the mouth of oxygen, thus
promoting the overgrowth of anaerobic bacteria that create the smelly
sulphur products. Unfortunately smoking is addictive and therefore not easy
to cut down or quit. Smoking effectively raises the ph level of your mouth
and dries your oral tissues.Consider
that if you smoke you need to be paranoid about your breath. It is therefore
essential that all smokers use some form of breath system as well as breath
chewing gum during the day to help keep adequate supply of saliva and oxygen
to the mouth. I feel that the breath systems we recommend best meets these
needs, and that RECALDENT Chewing Gum is the best on the market today.
Alcohol
causes dry mouth. Alcohol
can turn occasional bad breath into horrible bad breath and lousy taste. It
doesn't matter if the alcohol is wine or beer, or even in mouthwash, that
can be bought over the counter. Alcohol makes the mouth extremely dry very
rapidly, and this can lead to instant halitosis. Did you know that some
commercial mouthrinse contain up to 26% alcohol whereas wine only contains
11%
Eating foods
like carrots and celery stimulate saliva production
and therefore help get rid of bad breath. Also you can keep your mouth moist
by chewing SUGAR-FREE GUM (see our recommendations on our Links
Page.
Chewing Gum helps generate saliva. Do so for short periods as chewing over
long periods of time may encourage TMJ problems.
If you snore,
or mouth breath, you are making your mouth, tongue and throat very dry
during the evening. This is when most sulphur compounds are produced.
Because mouth breathing dries off the tongue, it can also be a serious
initiator of bad breath.
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