"How to Naturally Treat Tongue Coating- Associated Halitosis (Bad Breath)"
The word halitosis is derived from the Latin and Greek terms
for abnormal or diseased breath,
though it may be less of a medical term
and more of a marketing term,
as it was supposedly coined by the Listerine Company.
Halitosis is commonly referred to as bad breath,
though medical and dental professionals often use
instead of bad breath, the less judgy term, breath odor.
As described in the Journal of Breath Research,
halitosis has been classified into four types.
There is genuine halitosis, either transient or chronic,
which is contrasted with pseudo-halitosis,
when someone thinks they have bad breath,
but it’s evidently all in their head, and
halitophobia, where they start out with genuine halitosis,
but then they treat it, and get rid of it,
but still think they have it. These are rare, though.
The vast majority of cases are IOH, which stands for
intra-oral halitosis, bad breath arising from inside the mouth,
as opposed to lungs or stomach,
and not just anywhere in the mouth, but specifically,
in most cases, apparently coming off the coating on the tongue.
Most people have a tongue coating, a grayish-white deposit
on the tongue, which is the main cause of bad breath.
Now, there are pathological conditions like black hairy tongue,
whose symptoms may include an unattractive appearance
of the tongue, which can be caused by certain drugs,
but the normal tongue coating is just a thin, slightly moist,
whitish substance across the upper surface of the tongue
composed of sloughed tongue cells, bacteria,
seepage from our blood supply, and secretions from our gums
and postnasal area, like mucus discharge from our sinuses
dripping onto the back of our tongue.
Those with gum disease tend to have four times as much coating,
in terms of the wet weight scraped off the tongue
due to the migration of white blood cells from periodontal
pus pockets onto the tongue surface,
but even in people with perfect dental hygiene,
food particles can get trapped between all the little bumps
and cracks on the tongue and form a thick bacterial biofilm coating.
If we eat the right foods, though, our mouth may be self-cleaning.
Just the act of chewing and swallowing foods
that actually need chewing can cleanse off the tongue,
leaving you with just the normal, thin layer of coating,
but fast food is engineered to be eaten fast.
It’s soft, you can just gulp it down and consequently,
the thickness of the tongue coating might increase,
and that could contribute to bad breath,
but you don’t know... until you put it to the test.
“The effect of a chewing-intensive, high-fiber diet on oral halitosis,”
a randomized clinical cross- over study, in which subjects
were examined over a period of 2.5 hours
after consumption of a high-fiber vs. low-fiber meal
using an organoleptic assessment of halitosis.
Although a few electronic bad-breath detectors have appeared
on the market, organoleptic scoring is still the ‘gold standard,’
which is just a fancy name for when dentists or doctors
just give your breath a sniff.
Here’s the ratings they use: no halitosis detected
even up close and personal,
or yeah, bad breath but only up to about 4 inches away,
or out to a foot, or all the way out to more than a yard.
We know halitosis is reduced by eating, due to the “self-cleaning”
of the mouth while chewing food, and it seems obvious
that foods that need to be chewed more intensively
have a stronger self-cleaning effect than foods
that require less chewing,
but whether this is actually the case
had never been examined... until now.
The participants were randomized to a high-fiber, high-chew meal
with a whole grain roll with jam and a raw apple,
versus a low-fiber, low-chew white bread roll with jelly
and a cooked apple and, the result, a significantly
lower bad breath score immediately after the high fiber meal
and then two-and-a-half hours later compared to the low fiber meal.
The researchers conclude that a chewing-intensive, high-fiber meal
led to a greater reduction of halitosis.