The Embarrassment of Bad Breath

Balancing Your Mouth’s Ecosystem Key to Controlling Bad Breath

Brushing, flossing and using mouthwash are not enough to eliminate some cases of bad breath. That, my friends, is not headline news for those who battle chronic halitosis. For those who endure the daily struggle with bad breath, it’s no shocker to learn that what is considered basic dental hygiene doesn’t eliminate – or even tone down – their bad breath.

Recent studies back up what halitosis sufferers have known all along: brushing, flossing, visits to the dentists, mouth washes and breath fresheners simply may not be enough to combat the root cause of bad breath.

Researchers have found that the most effective treatment for bad breath is to adjust the ecological system of bacteria in the mouth, restoring the ratio of health and unhealthy bacteria to equilibrium.

The study, published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology found that all mouths have the odor-causing bacteria. People with bad breath actually have an imbalance of healthy and unhealthy mouth bacteria which leads to an overgrowth of the germs that cause bad breath.

“The results of this investigation clearly demonstrate that oral malodor is a symptom based on the characteristic occupation of indigenous oral bacterial populations, rather than solely on bacterial overgrowth due to poor oral hygiene,” say the researchers.

In other words, making the assumption that bad breath is the result of poor oral hygiene is like making the assumption that dandruff is caused solely by not washing hair.

One of the best ways to remedy this imbalance is to introduce native oral care probiotics into the mouth. These beneficial bacteria compete with harmful bacteria for space and nutrients in the mouth. The end result is fresher breath.

Tipping Our Cups To Green Tea

Green Tea Aids Weight Loss, Fights Gum Disease & More

For the past 4,000 years, green tea has been used in China to address a long, long list of what ails us, from aches and pains to depression to improving digestion and regulating body temperature. Here are some of the things research has proven about this delicious beverage.

Lowers Cholesterol

Research shows that drinking green tea lowers total cholesterol while raising HDL (good) cholesterol. It also lowers triglycerides. Researchers have found that the polyphenols in green tea seem to block the intestinal absorption of cholesterol and usher it from the body. Other studies suggest that green tea reduces the blood levels of LDL (harmful) cholesterol.

Promoting Oral Health

Green tea’s antibacterial qualities make it very effective in preventing tooth decay, plaque formation and periodontal disease. Drinking three or more cups of green tea each day is a great way to keep harmful oral bacteria in check.
Another great way to balance the bacteria in your mouth is though the use of oral care probiotics. Probiotics, or beneficial bacteria, live throughout the body and fight daily battles to keep our health on an even keel. Oral care probiotics colonize on tooth surfaces and deep into the periodontal pocket, crowding out harmful bacteria while freshening breath and gently whitening teeth.

Helps Keep Those Extra Pounds at Bay

Green tea is full of catechin polyphenols, which increase fat oxidation and thermogenesis (fat burning). Green tea is especially good at promoting the burning of harmful brown fat cells (good fats in the body, like our brains, are made up of white fat cells). And, because weight gain can be attributed to the excess consumption of sugars, it’s good to know that green tea helps prevent the spikes in insulin caused by high sugar diets by inhibiting the movement of glucose in fat cells.

Dump out whatever is in your cup, and go brew yourself a cup of green tea. Its health benefits are too good to miss out on.

An Important Time to Take Care of Yourself

Oral Care During Chemotherapy

Those undergoing chemotherapy face many struggles, not the least of which is how to manage their oral care.

Because the body’s natural defense line (the white blood cells) is weakened by the medications used during chemotherapy, infections can crop up anywhere in the body. There are several ways you can avoid oral infections during chemotherapy.

See the Dentist

Your dentist will have many strategies to help keep your mouth healthy during chemotherapy. He may even suggest a dental cleaning before your chemo starts to ensure your teeth and gums are as healthy as possible before your treatment begins.

Clean Your Teeth Every Day

Because your gums may be very sensitive during chemotherapy treatments, special care is recommended for keeping your mouth clean and healthy.

Gently brushing twice a day with a soft-bristled tooth brush or a gauze pad will help keep the surfaces of the teeth and gums clean. If your gums are too sensitive for daily brushing, call your dentist. He may want to see you in the office to check on the health of your teeth and gums.

If nausea and vomiting are an issue, brushing your teeth afterward is especially important. Brushing teeth after vomiting not only improves breath, it also removes the acids from the surfaces of the teeth. These acids wear down the surfaces of your teeth and put you at an increased risk for developing cavities.

Add Oral Care Probiotics

Oral care probiotics, like EvoraPlus, can help support tooth and gum health even if your brushing and flossing habits are lacking during chemotherapy. These beneficial bacteria help keep the bacterial balance in the mouth in a healthy ratio. This is especially helpful if your daily oral care routine is interrupted during treatment.

Oral care probiotics support tooth and gum health year-round, not just during chemotherapy treatment. Taking care of your teeth and gums is a good way to take care of your overall health.

Address Ulcers

Mouth ulcers are very common during certain kinds of chemotherapy. These ulcers, which can occur on the lips, gums, insides of the mouth or tongue, often can be prevented by cautious and careful oral hygiene.

Taking care of oral health during chemotherapy is very important. Be sure to share your oral-care concerns with your doctor and your dentist, and do your best to keep your mouth healthy while undergoing treatment.

Ouch!

Tooth Sensitivity? Try Chewing Sugarless Gum!

If you’re one of the hundreds of thousands of people who suffer from tooth sensitivity, relief could be just a stick of gum away.

Researchers who performed a study recently published in the British Dental Journal were looking for ways to relieve the temporary tooth sensitivity experienced by those who have undergone in-office tooth-whitening procedures. They found that those who chewed gum after the procedure had significantly less tooth sensitivity than those who didn’t.
While the study was aimed at helping relieve those with tooth-whitening related sensitivities, researchers found that the simple act of chewing serves as a “Lamaze technique for the teeth,” noting that chewing gum is an extremely cost-effective way to deal with tooth sensitivity.

Products developed with the aim to reduce tooth sensitivity generally work to remineralize the teeth. This study shows that for a short-term solution to tooth sensitivity, such as pain caused by tooth whitening or even tooth pain caused by sinus inflammation, chewing is a simple, non-prescription way for patients to overcome pain.

While chewing things other than gum, such as food, might help relieve tooth pain, sugar-free gum carries the addition feather in its cap of helping fight cavities. Noshing on food to ease your tooth pain may have exactly the opposite effect.

The next time you feel that familiar throb of tooth sensitivity, try reaching for a stick of sugar-free gum before you reach for the phone to call the dentist.

Say Good-Bye to Bad Breath!

Oral Care Probiotics for Fresher Breath

If you’ve ever had bad breath – and who hasn’t? – you know how embarrassing it can be. Sometimes just brushing your teeth helps, if you have a toothbrush and sink handy, that is. Sometimes a stick of gum can help. Sometimes a mint will make your breath better for a few minutes.

But really, most known solutions for tackling bad breath are temporary, topical solutions. After all, once that mint dissolves, your breath is generally no fresher. Same deal with a stick of gum. Once the flavor wears off, your breath is back to where you started.

Bad breath is caused by volatile sulfur compounds (VSCs) released by the bacteria that inhabit the mouth. These VSCs can’t be curbed by the use of plain breath mints, breath strips or even gum, which only mask the foul smells. To truly control bad breath, the bacteria responsible for the smelly VSCs needs to be dealt with.

Oral care probiotics are a great way to deal with bad breath. Probiotic mints flood the mouth with beneficial bacteria that crowd out the bad-breath causing bacteria and their VSCs, leaving your breath fresh enough to skip the breath mints, gums and mouth rinses.

In fact, using oral care probiotics can also put an end to one of the most annoying and most difficult-to-control types of bad breath – morning breath!

If you struggle with bad breath or morning breath, skip the gums, mints and mouthwashes, and give EvoraPlus Oral Care Probiotics a try. The only thing you have to lose is your bad breath.

Affordable Dental Care

Website Shows Facilities That Provide Low-Cost Dental Care

With the economy in a serious slump, many families have found themselves cutting back on spending the past couple of years. Car and home sales have slumped, holiday sales have led stores to cut back on inventory and staff and still many continue to look for ways to cut spending.

Families have cut back on all the extras – gifts, travel, vacations, dining out and then some.

No Expense Spared

One expense that families absolutely should not skimp on, however, is regularly scheduled dental care. In fact, keeping teeth clean and maintained is actually more cost effective than skipping a regular cleaning and potentially risking having a serious problem, like a cavity or early stages of periodontal disease (or gingivitis) going undetected while treatment is easier and more cost effective.

And the reasons for keeping those twice-per-year appointments with the dentist don’t end there. With the many diseases that are now being connected to good oral health, including heart disease, kidney failure, diabetes and more, the importance of regular dental maintenance is becoming even more clear.

Making Dentistry More Affordable

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has created a database to help consumers find dental clinics whose fees are based on a sliding-scale structure. To find a dentist near you whose charges are based on how much money you make, visit http://findahealthcenter.hrsa.gov/.

A Little Extra Support

Adding an oral care probiotic like EvoraPlus to your regular brushing and flossing schedule can go a long way toward supporting your tooth and gum health. By creating a basecamp of beneficial bacteria on your teeth and below your gum line, oral care probiotics crowd out harmful bacteria normally found throughout the mouth. EvoraPlus offers the added benefits of freshening breath and gradually, safely and 100% naturally whitening teeth.

Paying a little extra attention to the health of your teeth and gums can actually save you money in the long run.

What Happens When Gum Infection Sets In?

Picturing Periodontal Disease

There is much to be said about periodontal disease. This disease, which affects millions of adults, not only threatens the health of the mouth, but also increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and even premature birth.

Watch this video to learn what it means to have periodontal disease, and how a simple gum infection can progress to the point that teeth are lost and the body’s overall health can be compromised.

There is much to be said about periodontal disease. This disease, which affects millions of adults, not only threatens the health of the mouth, but also increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and even premature birth.

Watch this video to learn what it means to have periodontal disease, and how a simple gum infection can progress to the point that teeth are lost and the body’s overall health can be compromised.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO_sIPTgYf0

Give Your Sweetie a Sweet Kiss

Fresh breath for that Midnight Kiss

You’ve tried mouthwashes, every toothpaste on the shelves, breath mints, breath strips, breath sprays and all the old wive’s tales, and still, your breath just smells bad. For millions of people, halitosis, or bad breath, is a terrible burden.

Bad breath can be caused by many things – post-nasal drip, sinus problems, acid reflux, diabetes and even organ failure. For most, however, bad breath is simply indicative of having eaten foods with a high sulfur content, such as onions, garlic, alcoholic beverages, dairy, meats, sugars  and many other foods you wouldn’t suspect.

Another prime culprit for bad breath is rotting bits of food lodged between teeth. Yuck, right? That’s one of the many reasons dentists recommend daily flossing. Flossing may seem like a hassle, but it is well worth the benefits.

The most common cause of bad breath is Volatile Sulfur Compounds (VSCs) released by harmful bacteria that inhabit the mouth. Once again – Yuck. The entire human body is a breeding ground for bacteria, which is not as gross as it sounds. Bacteria can be totally inert (meaning it’s just hanging out in a place it can thrive, causing no harm and no good), harmful, or beneficial.

In the mouth, there are a few bacteria that can cause real harm, like one called S. mutans. Fortunately, scientists have isolated a few really beneficial bacteria.

One Florida researcher, Dr. Jeffrey Hillman, has blended those beneficial bacteria (or probiotics) into an easy-to-use probiotic mint. Simply allow the mint to dissolve in your mouth twice daily after brushing, and you could combat those bad-breath-causing bacteria around the clock!

Imagine my excitement when I learned that People Style Watch ran an article listing its top picks for Whitening Your Smile on the Go and they listed EvoraPlus Oral Care Probiotics as its top recommendation for on the go whiteners in its October 2009 edition.

Oct 2009 Issue People Style Watch - EvoraPlus Featured

The first thing I did when I heard the news was run to my computer to try to find the article online. We searched and searched, and, as it turns out, People doesn’t post its Style Watch articles online.

Probiotic Mints for Tooth Whitening?

Not only did the awesome feature include our Oral Care Probiotic mints as a good solution for on-the-go whitening, it also mentioned one of the other cool benefits of EvoraPlus – that our probiotics blend is beneficial for tooth and gum health.

In addition to its tooth and gum health benefits and safe, gentle and natural tooth whitening qualities, EvoraPlus also gets to the root of bad breath by crowding out the harmful bacteria responsible for bad breath.

Easy to use on-the-go

What the People Style Watch article pointed out is one of my favorite features of EvoraPlus Oral Care probiotics – that twice daily use is as easy as popping a simple mint. No messing with messy whitening strips or trays, and no worrying what the harsh chemical hydrogen peroxide in these products does to otherwise healthy teeth, like causing pits, cracks and roughening the tooth surface.

All of those negative side effects caused by other whitens can actually lead to increased staining and the need for more frequent use of harsh whitening products, which are generally not recommended for frequent use.

Because the probiotics in EvoraPlus naturally produce a low, safe and continuous dose of natural hydrogen peroxide, its whitening effect can be compared to writing on a white board. In one hand, you have your marker (tooth staining items, like highly pigmented foods, coffee, red wine) and in the other hand you have your eraser, EvoraPlus.