Visit Our Laurel Dentist Office if You Want Better Smelling Breath

In our Laurel dentist office, we work with a lot of patients that complain of bad-smelling breath. This can be caused by several things with everything from last night's dinner to the health of your gums contributing.  In order to get to the root cause, we recommend scheduling a dental exam.  We may start by learning more about your daily hygiene routine.  You should be brushing your teeth two to three times a day, using a soft toothbrush and fluoride toothpaste.  This must be combined with flossing a minimum of once a day.  Even if you don't like this step, it is critical to good health and good breath because when plaque and food particles become trapped, they will produce an odor.  Additionally, you can use a tongue scraper to remove the bacteria and smells that can gather on your tongue.  After using it, we recommend that you rinse with an antiseptic mouthwash to eliminate the bacteria that it brings up.  If you aren't doing this routine at home – you should start.  If you are, then it is likely a health problem that is causing your bad breath.

Very often, bad breath is caused by gum disease.  There are other signs you can watch for including gums that start to appear very red or are irritated.  Additionally, your gums may start to bleed when you brush your teeth.  As gum disease worsens, the gums will begin to recede, and your teeth may appear longer or larger. Severe gum recession leads to pockets being created in the gum tissue.  Bacteria and plaque can gather here which can lead to your tooth being attacked, resulting in bone loss and eventual tooth loss.  While the symptoms associated with gum disease are vast, if you can identify the condition when your gums are red, or your breath stinks, it can be far better.  After all, gum disease can often be treated with a simple deep cleaning.  By removing plaque and tartar from under the gums, we can eliminate the irritant so that your gums can be restored to good health.  If, however, you wait to treat the condition until your gums have receded, the health risks are increased, and the procedure to treat the gums is more intensive.

Bad breath may also be a sign of an infected tooth.  We want you to schedule a dental exam if your breath has increasingly gotten worse so that we can identify any area of tooth decay or infection.  In our dentist's office, we can treat the infected tooth and restore it to good health using a variety of methods, including a root canal.  With the infection or decay eliminated, your breath should start to smell better, and you should feel better as well.  In general, cavities and infections do cause discomfort so there will likely be other symptoms in combination with bad breath.

In addition to examining and treating your teeth, we will also clean them during your dentist appointment.  By removing the plaque and food particles that have become stuck in between your teeth, we can also cause your breath to smell better, making this an important appointment to have every six months.