Hi, my name is Dr. Mina Abalos, and I'm here with Sunbrite Dental, and today we're going to talk about bad breath.
What is bad breath?
It's exactly what it is. It's your breath when you breathe out. What makes it bad is if it's smelly, right? Oftentimes, we can't smell our own bad breath, but the people around us can. Usually, we're the last to know.
What are the most common causes of bad breath?
Number one, it's the food that we eat, right? I definitely will have bad breath when I get this nice garlicky dish at my favorite Cuban restaurant. I love this garlic chicken, but right after, my breath will be kicking with garlic. That's just because it's the food that we eat, and the smells from the food, and the breaking down of the food will stay around our teeth. That would be one major cause of bad breath, just based on the food that we eat.
The other cause, and it's more of a lingering cause or a chronic cause, is when patients haven't gone regularly to the dentist, so we can help our patients clean off whatever they may have missed while brushing or flossing. This is the number one question that I get every day from my existing patients and my new patients: "Doc, I don't get it. I brush my teeth every day. I use the Waterpik like you told me to, but every now and then, I will notice I have bad breath." I let my patients know. Here's my model. This is a picture of clean, healthy, bad-breath-free, right? Our teeth, if you want to think of them, are like dishes, right? We eat with them, and if we're cleaning them right away, then they're not that difficult to clean versus dishes that you've left in the sink for a few hours or a few days, right? Then they're a lot harder to clean because the food that we've eaten has an opportunity to just stick and get hard on the dishes. Just like those crusty dishes, it's very difficult to clean them with a normal sponge. You either have to soak them with super hot soapy water for a long time, which we can't do with our mouths, or you have to sit there and scrub what's hardened off of those dishes. That type of scrubbing would be equivalent to the professional cleanings that you would get here at the dental office. If you feel like you have a chronic condition of bad breath or another sign that I tell my patients is if you're talking and the people around you all of a sudden start touching their nose or make different nonverbal communication signals like this, then you might want to check real quick, cover your mouth, and try to smell your breath. That would be the rapid causes from what we eat that can cause bad breath. The chronic, more lingering cause that seems unable to go away would be just a buildup around our teeth.
The other cause would be something going on. That can range from your teeth starting to rot, crowns that have fallen off, or fillings that have fallen out, but you haven't gone to the dentist because it's like, "Yay, I know something's wrong, but at least it doesn't hurt." I hear that all the time. I've done that myself when I was in college. A filling fell out, and my tongue kept playing with it, and I thought, "Sweet, it doesn't hurt until it really hurts." That's when chronic symptoms, which could lead to bad breath, would be one of the signs of something that's just not right in our mouth. Come in, and we can check it out and let you know what's going on.
What is halitosis, and how is it different from occasional bad breath?
Halitosis is just a fancy professional word for bad breath, and it's more of a chronic bad breath. It could be caused by hardened plaque built up around our teeth, and when it gets underneath the gums, it's really hard to reach. It would be like those dirty nooks and crannies that can cause odor. Others would be a wisdom tooth coming in, but it hasn't fully come out. Part of the tooth is exposed through the gums, very hard to reach, but food and bacteria can get up and underneath. That can cause bad breath. Other causes of halitosis, which again would be long-term conditions causing bad breath, would be tooth rotting. There's a hole in the tooth. All those things can cause halitosis. If you feel like you may have halitosis or are just constantly dealing with bad breath, come in, and we can take a look and let you know what's going on.
Another sign I've had patients ask me is that they feel the need to constantly either chew gum or get those Listerine strips that dissolve on their tongue. If you feel like you constantly need to pop in mints or gum to mask bad breath because you notice people around you are just touching their nose or doing this, or you're constantly feeling the need to check your breath, then there's an underlying cause that we can easily remedy so you don't feel self-conscious about it and feel the need to just constantly chew gum.
Is it normal to have bad breath after a tooth extraction?
Yes, it is within normal conditions, especially if it was a gnarly wisdom tooth extraction. One, it's all the way back there, it's difficult to clean, and it just takes a lot longer to heal, especially from a wisdom tooth extraction. Prolonged bad breath is normal because the healing time after a wisdom tooth extraction is typically 7 to 10 days. That's how long it takes for the gums that are separated to heal and fuse together. Once the gums have healed and fused together, the cause of bad breath is no longer there because food and bacteria will no longer get trapped in this hole since it's nicely covered up and healed. If you have that concern, please don't wait. Please don't think, "Oh, it's okay. It doesn't hurt." There's a reason why you have that concern. Just get it checked out. Come in.
What are some signs that my bad breath might be chronic rather than just occasional?
Usually, we get occasional bad breath depending on the food that we eat. If it's spicy, if it's flavorful, those flavors have odors that smell really good when the food comes out, but it doesn't smell good once we've eaten them and it's stayed in our mouth. That can be quickly remedied by chewing gum because that helps us produce saliva. One of the main jobs of saliva is to wash food that's sticking around our teeth, right? Or brushing or flossing right away. Then you'll see that the bad breath is gone.
If it's chronic and it's staying around longer, again, one of the common signs, and I'll have patients come in and tell me, I just have the constant need to chew gum, to rinse, or they'll say, you know, I feel like no matter how hard I brush or how often I brush or rinse with mouthwash, I feel like it's still there. I can still smell my breath. Or another common comment that I'll get from my patients is that my wife or husband tells me all the time that my breath stinks, which is very hurtful because that's not what we want to hear from our loved ones, right? If you are experiencing any of that, it would be best to come in and go to a dentist and have that checked out so they can truly take care of the root cause of that chronic bad breath, versus just continuing to try to mask it with either gum chewing or constant rinsing of mouthwash.
What kind of mouthwash or toothpaste do you recommend for treating bad breath?
I like Closys. It's a mouthwash called Closys. You can get it at your local drugstore, and it's different from all the other mouthwashes because it actually comes in a box and it also comes with a small tube, and you can control how much mint flavor because some patients don't like the minty taste, and then some patients seek out a lot of minty taste. That's another thing I like about Closys is that you yourself can control how much or how little mint flavor the mouthwash has.
What dental treatments are available for bad breath?
The answer is so varied because I need to see what the root cause of it is. It could be gum disease. It could be caked-on buildup on your teeth. It could be your tooth rotting. It could be a wisdom tooth trying to come in, but it just can't come out because it's growing in a different way, and it's collecting or acting as a food trap. There could be a lot of reasons why a patient would be dealing with bad breath. The best and quickest answer is to just go in and get checked out because then we can truly get to the root cause of that problem and eliminate it once and for all.
Is it possible to get rid of bad breath permanently?
Yes and no. Yes, it is possible to get rid of chronic bad breath because there is an underlying cause of that chronic bad breath. Again, it could be your tooth rotting. There can be a lot of buildup on your teeth. It could be gum disease. Dental treatment, if done properly and executed in a timely manner, can get rid of those root causes of the bad breath, and then the bad breath is eliminated. The reason why I say no is that unless you're planning on not eating, then bad breath is hard to avoid. That's just because the food is so good. When we eat certain foods with spices or garlicky foods, that will stay, but that is just a temporary bad breath that could be eliminated by either rinsing quickly with mouthwash, brushing, flossing, and/or using a water pick.
I hope this video helped answer some of the questions that you may have regarding bad breath. If I wasn't able to answer any of the questions that you still have, please feel free to reach out to me. You can reach me at (702) 819-0866, and you can find me at Sunbrite Dental. Bye.