Stop bad breath at the source

Worrying about bad breath can have a huge impact on your social life and how you feel about yourself. Unfortunately it’s a concern for a lot of people, affecting approximately 43 percent of people over age 60.

The good news is it’s an easy fix…

Where does it come from?

There are several things that can cause halitosis. But the biggest contributor to the problem starts in your mouth.

You naturally have an abundance of bacteria in your mouth, which are there to aid in digestion and help protect you from infection. These bacteria feed on food particles along with epithelial cells in drying saliva to produce bad breath.

The approximately nine main gram-negative anaerobic bacterial strains responsible for bad breath produce gases such as hydrogen sulphide (H2S), sulphur dioxide (SO2), ammonia (NH3), methyl mercaptan (CH₃SH), dimethyl sulphide (CH₃)₂S, and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs). These same bacteria are behind infection of your teeth and gums, called periodontal disease.

Periodontal disease is highest in people with high stress, malnutrition, poor oral hygiene, smokers, and those with systemic diseases (listed in the next section). Not only can it damage your oral health and produce bad breath, but a study shows that women with periodontal disease are more likely to develop breast cancer than women who do not. There is also a link to Alzheimer’s disease.

The bacteria behind periodontal disease can produce smelly gases from one or more of the following mouth locations:

• The sticky film containing bacteria on your teeth, called plaque. Tooth pastes are not generally very good at “fighting” this for very long.
• Pockets of infection between your teeth and in your gums called periodontitis. You can’t brush away periodontitis, as it is too deep for a tooth brush to reach, but dental flossing can do a lot to drain these and help gum tissue heal.
• The bio-film of gas-producing bacteria coating your tongue

Obviously, brushing, flossing, and scraping your tongue consistently will dramatically cut back on bad breath. However, your dietary habits play a huge role in determining the levels of gas-producing bacteria that grow there, which cannot just be brushed away completely, because they are colonized in the outer skin layers of all your mouth.

Bad breath from other causes

Halitosis comes from other areas besides your mouth. Did you know that your breath also comes from your nose, lungs, and stomach? In all these tissues, you have plenty of bacteria too, largely determined by what you eat. These contributors include:

• Smoking and other tobacco products is a sure source of bad breath, in addition to its higher risk of periodontal gum disease
• Medications contribute to bad breath by either causing dry mouth or metabolites that make their way to your skin mucus membranes of lungs, stomach, throat and nasal passages. There is an entire list of medications that contribute.
• Certain foods will cause residue odors that can be unpleasant. Coffee, garlic, onions, alcohol are the most common ones.
• Chronic allergies cause mucus to form in the nose, sinuses or throat — mucus where bacteria grow and manufacture gases.
• Helicobacter pylori “infection” of the stomach (often implicated as a contributor to acid reflux, but not proven to be causative of this) gives a nearly 3-fold risk of halitosis.
• Chronic illnesses such as cancer, kidney diseases, liver failure, diabetes mellitus, pancreatic insufficiency, and other less common illnesses. These each have their characteristic metabolic byproducts that make their way to skin of the respiratory tree and digestive tract… and into the breath.

What you can do about it

Your first best approach is to make sure you are cleaning teeth well by brushing and flossing. From personal experience, I highly recommend an electric toothbrush, well worth the investment! My former teeth flossing consistently caused blood and malodor until I started using an electric vibrating brush. Tongue scraping (don’t just use your toothbrush for this) is another important habit, using chemicals shown to be superior at reducing mouth odors.

Safe chemicals to rinse or brush with include:

• Chlorhexidine (Hibiclens) 0.2% solution is the most efficient molecule against dental plaque with 80% reduction of bad breath when used twice daily. Hibiclens 4% is over the counter, so you could dilute 20 parts of water to 1 part of Hibiclens to make a 0.2% solution.
• Hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) 3% (which is how it is sold over the counter) can result in a 90% reduction of bacterial odors after 8 hours.
• A rinse mixture of 0.3% zinc acetate and 0.025% chlorhexidine showed a “clear and durable effect on intra-oral halitosis which lasted at least 12 hours, both during the day and overnight.”
• Essential oils provide only limited reduction in mouth bacteria and for only 3 hours.

Probiotics and digestive health

The use of beneficial bacteria, a.k.a. probiotics, has been shown to be significantly effective in reducing the gas-producing bacteria of periodontitis and halitosis.

Probiotic blends will contain Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium species.

An important question to ask is this: What determines the bacteria strains that colonize your mouth, nose, throat, respiratory tree, and stomach tissues? This takes me to the importance of eating nutrient rich foods. But before this will have a profound effect, you will want to do a liquid cleanse…

Liquid cleanse

There are several possible reasons to go on a liquid cleanse: weight loss… detoxification… to break food addictions… and to reverse chronic illness.

In the process of cleansing physically, your mind and spirit are re-awakened too. The late Herbert Shelton, M.D. (1928-1981) supervised more than 25,000 patients with the most aggressive form of liquid cleansing, called the “water fast.” From reversing anxiety, depression and neurosis… to lowering high blood pressure and many illnesses in between, water fasting has had astonishing results. Similarly, the lemonade cleanse has profound results too.

The Lemonade Cleanse (follow link for detailed instruction) is something all of us can do. After the first three days your cells are ready to start to dump waste. That’s when you can expect to feel the symptoms of “detoxification” which may include increased sweating, urination, or diarrhea. You will probably also feel weakness, a change in breath odor, or some pain where your body has previous disease. Rest assured, you’ll feel less pains after the detoxification process. And your breath will definitely improve! But this effect will improve more over time, consuming predominately nutrient rich foods.

Tips on the lemonade cleanse: You will find that your hunger will decrease substantially after the third day. As you continue beyond the third day on liquids your liver starts to purge of its toxic chemical load, dumping it into the bloodstream.  This is where autoimmune inflammation decreases too. This may cause you to feel flu-like symptoms of nausea, diarrhea, joint and muscle aches, sore throat, chills, trembling or even increased respiratory rate. This is known as the Herxheimer reaction, or “healing crisis.” This is where you feel worse at first while your body detoxifies and releases chemicals…which must happen before you can feel better. Additional days in liquids will even take your cleansing further so that you get worse bad breath, body odor or skin eruptions as chronically stored chemical poisons leave your body.

Let me review the key important points about how to best end your liquid cleanse.  The usual indications for breaking the fast are first and foremost that your hunger returns; less importantly, your breath, which during all or most of the fast has been offensive, becomes sweet and clean; your tongue becomes clean from the thick coating you see on the fast; your temperature returns to normal; your pulse becomes normal; your skin reactions subside; the bad taste in your mouth goes away; your eyes become bright and eye sight improves; your stool loses its odor; your urine becomes light colored; and finally, a feeling of elation is an indicator that it is time to end your cleanse.

Dr. Shelton found it best for patients to end their longer water fast with fruit juice—usually orange juice—or tomato juice, watermelon juice, or vegetable broths—but just a half a glass to start. After an hour, another half glass.  Then, small amounts of juice every hour the first day. The second day drink more, and the third and fourth days to also eat the whole orange or grapefruit.  Then on the fifth day other foods may be added. Then for your next week off your liquid cleanse get ready for the “in-between” times when you are hungry and it is not meal time yet. Start placing raw food snacks in little plastic baggies in strategic places such as the trunk of your car, your carry bags and purses, your work desk drawers for examples.  I like almonds with craisins, whole apples or oranges, trail mix with nuts and seeds and dried fruits from the local health food store bins, and water bottles filled with my home-made lime-aide.

Eventually you’ll introduce bread, meat, eggs, starchy veggies such as potatoes, corn and beans, etc., yet noting how you feel with each. This is the most difficult part of returning to food, because you may feel fine with all of them if you introduce them rapidly. If you can introduce one type of food every 3 days, you will have a better chance at identifying food allergies.

To a sweeter breath and deeper health,

Michael Cutler, M.D.

Editor’s note: Ridding your body of toxic buildup increases energy, aids digestion, encourages weight loss, promotes a stronger immune system — and makes you feel better… lighter… refreshed! For the next level of cleansing, consider the salt water flush. Click here to get my guide…

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