Why do I have bad breath

There can be many reasons why your breath is not as good as it can be. The obvious one is not brushing your teeth properly. If this is covered and you are still wondering why your breath is not great, then let's look as a few other reasons.

Having excess tarter in your mouth can give off a bad odour due to the bacterial build up around your gums. Tarter is what is removed off your teeth and gums when you have a clean at the dentist every 6 months. It's important that your dentist is spending time and giving you a thorough clean as tarter can get stuck under your gums and be harder to see and remove. This can lead to gum disease which is a big source of bad breath.

A cavity in your tooth can also give a foul smell from your mouth. There is a combined factor of bacteria inside a tooth which is causing the rotting and also food getting caught in your mouth from where the hole is. Food trapping on it's own is also a big cause of bad breath.

Sometimes people have all the above covered and still have bad breath. We then look for things like tonsil stones which are white lesions inside your tonsils in your throat. Being a mouth breather can also cause bad breath. Mouth breathing can cause a white coating on your tongue and excessive dryness in your mouth, both leading to bad breath.

Tongue coating can come about for other reasons such as systemic diseases and dietary factors. It is important to consider all these factors when trying to establish why someone has bad breath.

Beyond all this, what we eat alone can cause changes in our breath. When things are trying to digest in your stomach, the gases can come straight back up through your oesophagus and in your mouth. We see this at times when people start particular juice type diets where all of a sudden they notice bad breath even after having just been at the dentist.