Mar 24, 2020

6 Natural Ways to Improve Bad Breath (Hint: Stay Away from Gum and Mints!)

essential oils for bad breath

We all wake up with a hint of morning breath. That’s to be expected after eight hours without a sip of water! But bad breath all day long is a separate issue.

Are you constantly reaching for breath mints and gum to mask rancid breath? Do you avoid face-to-face conversations, so that nobody else has a chance to catch a whiff of your breath? Does brushing seem ineffective against your mouth odor?

If so, you have a larger oral health problem to solve. A healthy mouth nurtures fresh, pleasant breath, which means the opposite is also true. Putrid breath is like a blinking neon arrow pointing to a mouth in desperate need of an oral care makeover.

Fortunately, bad breath isn’t beyond repair. Armed with a better understanding of the best natural remedies for bad breath, you can quickly transform your oral environment to support fresh breath. It’ll finally be time to have long overdue, up-close-and-personal conversations with total confidence.

What Is Bad Breath?

Bad breath, also known as halitosis, is defined as “an offensive odor originating from the oral cavity.” Up to 50% of adults in the U.S suffer from embarrassing (offensive?) bad breath, so if you’re among them, you’re in good company!

But misery loves company, and wouldn’t you rather not be miserable from halitosis? At its core, bad breath is an undeniable signal that your mouth isn’t healthy. Ignoring bad breath means ignoring the overgrowth of bacteria in your mouth, leading inevitably to cavities, gum disease, inflammation, and a laundry list of other serious complications. Diabetes. Alzheimer’s. Obesity. Nothing that you want documented on your medical charts!

Causes of Really Bad Breath

Nearly 85% of all halitosis is caused by unhealthy conditions inside the mouth. The other 15% can be traced back to tobacco use, pharmaceutical side effects, and underlying medical conditions.

What has to go wrong inside your mouth to cause such unpleasant breath?

It’s all too easy to head down the slippery slope of poor oral health without even knowing it. The entire process starts and ends with bacteria.

It’s easy to believe that oral bacteria is Public Enemy No. 1 since it leads to plaque, tartar, cavities, and decay, but not all oral bacteria is dangerous! A healthy mouth contains billions of productive bacteria that resist colonization of pathogens, fight inflammation, and support a strong immune system. In fact, the mouth houses the second most diverse microbial community in the entire body.

Unfortunately, poor dental habits and dietary choices encourage destructive bacteria to overpower good bacteria, leading to the development of plaque. To make matters worse, standard fluoride toothpastes and mouthwashes kill the good bacteria in your mouth along with the bad bacteria. This means that even if you think you’re improving your dental health by brushing, you’re compromising the healthy oral bacterial balance.

As soon as bad bacteria gets the upper hand over good bacteria, unwanted side effects become harder and harder to ignore. Dominant bad bacteria encourage the development of plaque and tartar, which accumulate along and within the gum line.

If you notice any of the following symptoms, chances are that they’re related to your bad breath:

Bright red and painful gums
Bleeding from the gums
Increased tooth sensitivity
Development of cavities
White coating on the tongue

These are all clear signs that pathogens have taken over your mouth, triggering really bad breath and other dangerous oral health problems. But it’s not a lost cause! As long as you take action to reverse the damage, it’s easy to improve your bad breath and save your mouth from the fate of gum disease.

Natural Ways to Improve Bad Breath

Gum and breath mints aren’t your best solution to improving bad breath. Actually, they’re not a solution at all! Gum and breath mints make halitosis worse by throwing more sugar and bacteria into the mix! Besides, you want (and need!) more than a temporary mask over bad breath; you’re looking for a permanent solution.

The following six tips show you exactly how to improve bad breath with simple, sustainable changes to your oral care routine.

1. Detox with Clay Toothpowder

Think of how your body feels after splurging on rich foods and desserts during the holiday season. By January, you’re ready to swear off everything but broth and lettuce, whatever it takes to get rid of that stuffed, bloated feeling.

If you have bad breath, your mouth is begging for the same type of detox! But instead of pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce, and mashed potatoes, your mouth desperately needs to eliminate the accumulation of plaque, tartar, bacteria, and chemicals that’s been building for years.

There’s no better way to help your mouth detox than by switching from fluoride toothpaste to clay tooth powder. Especially a blend of three different clays with baking soda, like Dirty Mouth Toothpowder. It may sound really out there to brush with earthen clay, but clay offers the best natural way to destroy bad bacteria, break down plaque and bacteria, and zap bad breath at its source.

Essential oils for bad breath

Dirty Mouth Toothpowder wields such power against bad breath and bacteria because it contains bentonite clay, French green clay, and white kaolin clay. These clays aren’t just skincare miracle workers, they’re also your mouth’s new best friends.

Bentonite Clay

Bentonite clay, a soft clay composed of aged volcanic ash, unleashes negatively charged molecules that attract positively charged toxins and heavy metals. As soon as they touch, bentonite clay latches onto those toxins and draws them out of the body. At the same time, bentonite clay replaces toxins with important minerals that your teeth and gums need to restore optimal oral function.

French Green Clay

The benefits of bentonite clay become even more impressive when blended with French green clay. This highly absorbent bio-mineral contains many minerals critical to strong oral health, including:

Magnesium
Calcium
Iron
Phosphorus
Potassium

French green clay molecules absorb toxins and impurities from your body while delivering essential minerals in return. This process also pulls blood toward the skin to boost circulation and helps your gum tissue bask in a rejuvenating supply of fresh blood circulation.

White Kaolin Clay

Meanwhile, white kaolin clay supplements this impressive formula with its rich array of nutrients, including calcium, silica, zinc and magnesium. White kaolin clay also offers disinfectant properties that remove disease-causing bacteria from even the darkest nooks and crannies of the mouth.

Brushing with clay tooth powder creates an unfavorable environment for the bad bacteria and plaque responsible for halitosis. Brush for two minutes, twice a day to ensure these rich clays nurture your oral tissues round the clock.

Here’s an extra pro tip: Once you’re done brushing, dip your finger in your tooth powder or paste and spread a thin coating along your gum line. Leave it there to dissolve and destroy any remaining bad bacteria that may be lurking around.

2. Try Oil Pulling

Oil pulling is a relatively new trend with ancient roots. Known as kavala graha in Ayurveda texts, the practice of oil pulling began nearly 5,000 years ago as a way to manage oral cavities, plaques, and infections. In fact, Ayurvedic medicine credits oil pulling with the ability to cure 30 systemic diseases ranging from diabetes to migraines.

This natural detoxification technique has surged in popularity over the last ten years, and it’s easy to see why when you look at the benefits of oil pulling:

Stimulates antioxidants to damage and kill microorganisms
Purifies gum tissue of toxins
Inhibits bacteria responsible for cavities, gingivitis, periodontitis, and bad breath

The process behind oil pulling is simple: swish with one tablespoon of coconut, sesame, olive, or sunflower oil for 15 minutes each day. As you swish the oil around your mouth, it activates salivary enzymes to release the chemical, bacterial, and environmental toxins from your gum tissue and bloodstream. These toxins are pulled into the oil and removed from the body, effortlessly removing the pathogens that cause bad breath and gingivitis.

It’s best to perform oil pulling before brushing your teeth in the morning. Never ever swallow the oil after you swish, since it’s saturated with all the toxins you want to remove from your body. Just spit it right in the trashcan, where it belongs.

3. Use Essential Oils For Bad Breath

Essential oils for bad breath, as their name suggests, are the “essence” of a plant. They’ve been distilled and extracted from seeds, bark, stems, roots, leaves, and flowers since ancient times to serve important therapeutic purposes. It’s easy to see why: essential oils are so potent that one batch of oil can equal the power of hundreds of pounds of its flower or leaf!

Every oil serves different purposes, from increasing blood circulation and soothing the skin to killing bacteria and boosting immune strength. This makes essential oils for bad breath the ultimate oral care hack.

Research shows that the potent elements of essential oils interfere with bacterial cell activity to slow bacteria’s ability to reproduce and spread disease. Research proves that tea tree oil, clove oil, peppermint oil, cinnamon oil, lavender oil, and eucalyptus oil all exert consistent antibacterial, antimicrobial, and anti-inflammatory action against bacteria in the mouth.

Whether you use essential oils for bad breath in the form of a homemade mouthwash, natural gum serum, or xylitol-based chewing gum, halitosis doesn’t stand a chance.

4. Apply Gum Serum Daily

Gum serum is one of my favorite secret weapons. You might not immediately correlate a gum serum with the solution to bad breath, but by now you know it’s all related! The Primal Life Organics gum serum harnesses olive oil and 11 essential oils for bad breath to kill bacteria hiding along the gum line.

And go figure, all of the essential oils included in Boost Gum Serum are shown in research to improve oral hygiene! Lavender, cinnamon, clove, peppermint, tea tree, and eucalyptus weren’t chosen at random! These essential oils fortify the mouth with potent constituents shown to target the real root causes of bad breath. Now that's something to smile about!

essential oils for bad breath

5. Learn to Love Flossing

You can brush six times a day if you want, but that still won’t remove the bacteria hiding in the dark crevices between your teeth. Since brushing only removes plaque from the visible surfaces of your teeth, flossing is a vital addition to your oral care routine.

However, less than 20% of Americans claim to floss regularly, leaving the other 80% vulnerable to bad breath, cavities, and gingivitis. The bacteria and plaque that accumulate between the teeth can quickly spread and cause a domino effect of decay, bleeding gums, and bad breath. So, whether you like it or not, it’s time to make flossing your friend!

Instead of fighting with a long string of floss that wraps itself around your fingers and cuts off circulation, try using nurse-designed dental floss picks instead. These picks use soft, textured dental floss made with organic peppermint essential oil and activated charcoal bamboo floss.

Activated charcoal is a powerful natural whitener and so much more! This substance traps toxic molecules and ions to remove them from the mouth and body. Not only does this help brighten your teeth, it also eliminates the bacteria causing plaque, inflammation, and bad breath. In this way, activated charcoal paves the way for a cleaner, calmer mouth protected from bacterial overgrowth.

The organic peppermint essential oil added to this bamboo floss also does more than offer a pleasant aroma. Peppermint essential oil is an analgesic and anti-inflammatory, meaning it soothes your angry, irritated gum tissues while you floss and helps reduce the pain caused by all that stubborn plaque.

Dirty Mouth Floss Picks make it easy to floss, even if you really hate flossing. It only takes a few seconds to work the floss pick between your teeth and remove the sneaky bacteria contributing to your chronic bad breath.

Plus, here’s a pro tip to maximize results: Dip your floss into gum serum to coat the interior surfaces of your teeth with essential oils for bad breath.

6. Begin Tongue Scraping

We’ve talked about your gums, teeth, and oral care products, but there’s one more critical part of your mouth we can’t overlook: your tongue. That white coating is nasty bacteria that you need to get rid of pronto.

Luckily, tongue scraping is one of the easiest bio-hacks out there. You only need to scrape your tongue once a day to remove harmful bacteria and stop rancid breath at the source. Try this copper tongue scraper for best results.

What Else Can You Do To Improve Bad Breath?

If you follow the six tips outlined above, you can wave bad breath a final farewell because you’re not merely hiding bad breath under a mask of minty gum; you’re addressing and removing the root causes of bad breath altogether.

With that said, there’s always more you can do to ensure your breath remains naturally fresh all day long. These extra tips will help you maintain breath that you want other people to notice.

Stay Hydrated

I could write an entire novel on the importance of keeping your body hydrated, but for now I’ll just remind you that hydration is vital to a happy, healthy mouth. The simple act of drinking water keeps your saliva flowing, which is the key to washing away food residue and bacteria after you eat.

Without the steady flow of saliva, sugars and acids have the chance to get cozy with your teeth and gums, triggering the bacterial overgrowth that leads to bad breath, inflammation, and decay. Of course, water also refreshes your mouth, washes away food particles, and leaves your breath feeling fresh.

Eat Foods That Produce Saliva

Water isn’t the only part of your diet that can improve saliva production. Try choosing crunchy foods known to stimulate the salivary glands to produce saliva, such as apples, almonds, celery, and carrots. This type of clean eating diet is an essential cornerstone of strong, lasting oral health.

Commit to the 21-Day Oral Detox

If you want to escape the humiliation of bad breath forever, you need more than a temporary solution. You need to press the “reboot” button on your oral health and start fresh. This is exactly the opportunity that the 21-Day Oral Detox Kit offers.

A combination of gum serum, tooth powder, charcoal toothbrush, copper tongue scraper, and activated charcoal floss will keep your mouth healthy and better equipped to fight bacterial and viral invasions. It’s so sustainable that you can continue this oral detox routine after 21 days for lasting daily maintenance.

No more embarrassment, no more bad breath, no more anxiety at the thought of social situations. The 21-Day Oral Detox efficiently revitalizes your oral health to help you feel more confident in your smile (and breath) than ever before.

Say good-bye to bad breath forever with our Fresh Breath Program: 21-day Oral Detox Kit and our LED Teeth Whitener 👇

Resource Links:

https://www.thieme-connect.com/products/ejournals/pdf/10.4103/1305-7456.178294.pdf
https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2016.865
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5632318/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160111121446.htm
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3131773/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5198813/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4606594/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6434526/