Bad breath is a result of two things: oral hygiene and gastrointestinal health. The culprit in both cases is largely bacteria. Good oral hygiene, of course, is still the best way to keep your breath sweet. But some kinds of food and drink can actually fight bad breath. Go ahead and grab one of these five choices to freshen your breath between meals.

1. The essential oil in cinnamon kills a nasty type of oral bacteria, discouraging it from setting up house in your mouth. Sticks of cinnamon aren’t so easy to munch on, unless you like the flavour of bark. Cinnamon or mint gum is just as effective. If you pick a gum sweetened with xylitol, it will freshen breath and help reduce cavities.

2. The yogurt has a positive effect on the breath in that it promotes “good” bacteria to the detriment of “bad” bacteria (those that generate volatile sulfur compounds). You must, however, must choose plain yoghurt without sugar otherwise the negative effects of sugar will destroy the positive effects of yogurt.

(more…)

Thrush is actually a sort of yeast infection due to a bacteria called Candida. Thrush isn’t a serious problem, but if it is not treated, the symptoms can endure for up to months and some even years. Thrush can present on different parts of our body like vagina, mouth, penis, skin or even colon. If thrush is found on the mouth area, it’ll present symptoms like white or creamy coloured patches on the tongue, inside the cheeks, red spots can also be found on the tongue, gums or throat. Patients who are suffering from thrush will feel agonizing when they swallow food and they can feel burning sensation in their throat or mouth. All these symptoms will really cause bad breath too.

Folks who got oral thrush have a tendency to have extremely poor diet and also poor oral cleanliness. With the unsatisfactory diet that they are having, they could also have poor immune reaction that lead them to be susceptible to thrush.

(more…)

People who live a very healthy social life needs to keep their body healthy to keep them going with all their activities. If you are the type who likes to meet up and hangout with other people, getting an unsightly disease like angular cheilitis can drastically affect your social activities. This disease is not life-threatening, but its effect on the way you look is something that can put you in a very embarrassing situation. Symptoms include having cracks or fissures in the corners of your mouth, plus some redness due to swelling making it more visible.

In severe cases of angular cheilitis, bleeding in the cracks may occur leaving you with a more horrible appearance. The embarrassment from people knowing about it and actually seeing you having that condition will definitely affect your social life. Also, the pain associated with activities that requires you to open you mouth like speaking will also be affecting your day to day agenda.

(more…)

Dry mouth is a symptom that can have many causes. Two of the most prominent causes of dry mouth are certain medications and certain diseases. These two broad categories encompass many people and help to explain why dry mouth is so prevalent.

Dry mouth can be a probable side-effect of numerous medications. While not all people respond to drugs in the similar way, the wide number of medicines which have dry mouth as a likely side effect can be staggering. And the varieties of drugs that will produce dry mouth include a whole array of problems. Certain medications for high blood pressure can be one of the causes of dry mouth. The same holds true for various prescription medication given for anxiety and depression. Medications for every thing, from allergic reactions and weight-loss to Parkinson’s disease, plus discomfort can have dry mouth as a complication. Not all treatment for these disorders could do it, but quite a few can.

(more…)

It probably won’t make anyone feel better knowing that on an annual basis some 40 million people end up suffering from the painful and ugly condition of cold sores. Luckily, preventing an occurrence of cold sores and reducing the amount of healing time are within your ability to control by doing a few very simple things. If left alone, a cold sore will typically heal in about eight to ten days, but most people aren’t happy about waiting that long. If you want to find out ways to alleviate the pain and irritation of cold sores, keep reading.

Most of the time cold sores will occur in or around your mouth. Among the numerous factors that cause a cold sore eruption or increase your likelihood of developing a cold sore, a weakened or suppressed immune system is one of the highest. If you have too much stress, do not eat a well-balanced diet, do not get enough rest, or have an immune system being attacked by illness, you are at a greater risk of having a cold sore outbreak.

(more…)

Tonsillitis is quite a common infection suffered by many children at a young age but isn’t only limited to kids, adults can get it from time to time as well. Tonsillitis occurs when the tonsils (which are two glands at the back of the mouth) become infected trigger a bad sore throat as well as fever. Although tonsils can easily get infected and are a big nuisance, they play a vital role to one’s health, as we shall see further on in the article.

Common indicators of severe tonsillitis are really red or puss covered glands at the back of the throat. In such cases, tiny white spots can be fairly visible at the back portion of the mouth, and on the sides of the inner-mouth walls near the throat opening. The glands (also known as “lymph nodes”) become enlarged and cause eating difficulty (and in some cases trouble with breathing as well). Most children who suffer from tonsillitis may have their voices temporarily altered due to the swollen glands and also have restless sleep due to high fevers caused by the infection and also constricted airways. In some cases, breathing sometimes stops for a few seconds during sleep.

(more…)

If you want to know how to get rid of cold sore rest assured this can be done quickly. You probably already know that a cold sore is that tingling sensation on your lip and a hard concentrated area that is not visible. In just a matter of one day or two, red blisters start to show on your lip, and this is where it starts to get bothersome.

A lot of people look around for some tips on how to get rid of cold sore due to its uncomfortable symptoms. Cold sores are also referred to as fever blisters. While you can’t permanently get rid of or totally avoid cold sores, you can reduce their occurrence and curtail the length of the incidence.

(more…)

TMJ (which stands for temporomandibular joint, found in the jaw) disorder sounds like a pretty common enough condition. You hear a lot of people complaining about pain brought about by TMJ disorder–and “disorder” is the right term to use, because when you suffer from TMJ disorder, your jaw bones–the mandible and the upper temporal bone, to be exact–have been thrown out of alignment, and the effect of these misaligned bones radiates in the surrounding nerves, which in turn creates pain not just in your jaws, but also in your head, your neck, and your shoulders. TMJ disorder also tends to give you ear pain or cause ringing in the ears, because the TMJ is located so close to the ears.

(more…)