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Everyone has bad breath occasionally. Depending on the where you look, you will find that at least 65% of us have bad breath occasionally. A smaller percentage have chronic bad breath. If you hang around garlic eaters or sleep with your mouth open and wake up with a coated tongue and morning mouth, you may believe that everyone has bad breath all of the time. So what's a person to do? Do you listen to the ads and spend a lot to get rid of your bad breath, or can you do something at home that costs nothing and is still an effective bad breath remedy.

What Causes Bad Breath 101

First off, if you really want to understand what will really get rid of bad breath, you should get clear on what causes bad breath. Without getting fancy, here are the basics. Bad breath is caused mostly by the rotten egg smelling sulfur compounds that are created by bacteria living in your mouth. Not to get too excited here. There are bunches of bacteria living in your mouth and everybody has them. It's normal and it's natural. The bits of food you have left in your mouth, along with things like sugars, post nasal drip mucus, and proteins are the food that these bacteria digest and turn into volatile sulfur compounds. The bacteria that we are concerned with here live in oxygen free places in your mouth like the plaque on your teeth and at the gum line and at the base of the papillae on your tongue. In order to keep bad breath under control, you need to remove as many of those sulfur compounds as possible and to keep the bacteria population low. So long as you keep eating and breathing, this will be an ongoing process.

Bad Breath Remedies 101

What are the real basics of taking care of bad breath? The number one method for keeping fresh breath is to have good daily oral hygiene habits. Brush your teeth at least twice a day for a couple of minute each time. Take time to floss carefully. Both of these habits will reduce the plaque on your teeth and at the gum line. Next is to clean your tongue. That white coating on your tongue is a biofilm made up of a lot of things, including those sulfur compounds. Remove it faithfully and you will get rid of a lot of bad breath problems. By cleaning your tongue, you will also make it easier for oxygen to reach the bacteria on your tongue. Remember that oxygen will reduce the numbers of bacteria that need an oxygen free environment. Fewer bacteria, less bad breath. You will never get rid of all of them, but you can keep their numbers down.

What Is the Best Bad Breath Remedy

This is one place where buying the right products can make a big difference in how well you get rid of bad breath. If you wash your dirty clothes just with water, you will get them pretty clean, but if you use laundry products, you will do a lot better job. It's the same with halitosis. It is important to get the newly formulated products that are out there and not the old standbys. Almost all of the standard commercial products use ingredients that are either not great for your mouth, like sodium lauryl sulfate, or that encourage the growth of bacteria, like alcohol and sugar. The new products that have come out contain chlorine dioxide and other ingredients that are helpful and promote oral health. They leave out the harmful ingredients. These new products create more oxygen in your mouth and will actually reduce the number of bacteria for up to 20 hours. Combine carefully selected oral hygiene products with a regular routine of brushing, flossing and tongue cleaning, and then you have a winning bad breath remedy that will keep your breath fresh all day.