How to Keep Your Breath Fresh and Avoid Bad Breath

Find out the best remedies against bad breath and how to keep your breath fresh that you could do in the comforts of your home.

Tonight is New Year’s Eve and I know there’s always this traditional midnight kiss, may it be in New York Times Square or in Eiffel Tower, but what makes it special is that comfortable and pleasant feeling when you are about to kiss your loved one.

Sometimes we could smell it ourselves, or worst others smell it, but they don’t say it out of courtesy. Instead of waiting that moment of embarrassment of being told how deadly it is once you open your mouth, not because of the words that come out of it, but of that air from the mouth which might contribute to the air pollution on our planet nowadays. 

Before we talk about how we could avoid this, let us know first what bad breath is and its causes. 

What is Bad Breath?

Bad breath has its medical term called halitosis and if we use halitosis it doesn’t only mean a temporary bad breath brought by what we have eaten like foods with garlic or onions.

Halitosis is a chronic bad breath and cannot be simply solved by brushing our teeth, sometimes there’s a more serious reason behind it like other health problems.

Surveys show that one in four people in the world is affected by halitosis. 

When the mouth is too dry it also predisposes to mouth odour. Excessive drinking of tea with tanning agents and coffee or alcohol and even smoking causes the mouth to dry.

Bacteria between the teeth are one of the most common reasons why one has bad breath. Dental diseases like tooth decay and periodontitis also lead to halitosis. Aside from dental diseases, nasopharyngeal diseases and medications affect the normal flora in our mouth. 

Here are the tips on how to keep your breath fresh

1. Use an interdental brush and dental floss

No matter how modern and polished your toothbrush is, it doesn’t really reach all parts of your teeth especially in between. It is advisable to clean our pearly white with an interdental brush every day. Even dentists and dental hygienists recommend this kind of toothbrush to accomplish the proper way of brushing.

With the help of dental floss, you’ll get rid of the food debris and plaques that are stored between the tooth gaps. Here’s my recommendation for an interdental brush, you could buy it here and a dental floss here.

2. Tongue must be brushed too

Like our teeth, our tongue should be brushed every day too. A flat tongue brush is better than a scraper when you clean your tongue and it is better to do it with a normal toothbrush. Sometimes we have this urge to gag whenever we clean our tongue with a toothbrush. What you could do best is close your eyes while you do it, or if you like you could also use antibacterial gel when you clean your tongue. You can check out the tongue brush here.

3. Rinse mouth thoroughly

Normally we rinse our mouth with a mouthwash with chlorhexidine gluconate, but it is only good for short-term use. You will get brown stains if you continuously use this kind of mouthwash although it is effective when one has gum diseases.

This type of mouthwash supposedly causes also bad breath. If you are unsure and hesitant about using a commercial mouthwash, you can always apply substances that you could find at home and make a DIY mouthwash.

It is cheap or affordable and healthy. On top of my recommendation is the use of salt with water. Rinse your mouth thoroughly with lukewarm water with salt in it. 

Another homemade mouthwash would be the use of the Aloe Vera plant. Boil some water and add Aloe Vera gel in it after cooling it. You could also add essential oil to it like peppermint or lavender oil.

Prevention is always better than cure. Before you catch this bad breath syndrome, assess yourself or go to your doctor to determine if you have underlying digestive or nasopharyngeal diseases which could lead to halitosis. A reminder for everyone, always drink water. Poor hydration or dry mouth is one of the reasons for having foul breath. Instead of using water solely, you could mix it with oil and rinse your mouth for 20 minutes and spit it afterwards. 

If you read this article after New Year’s Eve and were not able to prepare properly for that best midnight kiss, don’t you worry, there’s Valentine’s Day and every day is a health care day. 

I want to hear your thoughts about it. How’s your preparation for New Year’s Eve? Looking forward to the coming of the new year and a new beginning? Share your story. I would love to know every single thing about you. 😉