Home Remedies to Cure Bad Breath (Halitosis)

Most bad breath is caused by bacteria that live in the mouth. You can keep these bacteria in check with good oral hygiene (daily brushing and flossing) and salivation, which helps wash malodorous products of bacterial metabolism out of your mouth.

There are a number of things you can do at home to cure bad breath, from lifestyle choices to improving your hygiene habits.

Home Remedies for Bad Breath

• Don’t smoke. Tobacco causes bad breath.
• Rush to brush. Brush your teeth at least twice a day, and floss at least once, advises family practitioner Anne Simons, M.D., an assistant clinical professor of family and community medicine at the University of California’s San Francisco Medical Center. “Don’t just wave the brush around your mouth,” she says. “Brush thoroughly, especially around your gum lines. Floss thoroughly as well.”
• Target your tongue. Dr. DeBoever recruited 14 people with severe, chronic bad breath and taught them how to scrape the backs of their tongues. They also used a prescription antibacterial rinse (see below). After one week, their bad breath disappeared. Tongue scrapers are hard to come by. If you can’t find one, Alan Brauer, M.D., director of TotalCare Medical Center in Palo Alto, California, one of the nation’s oldest clinics to combine mainstream and complementary medicine, recommends using a toothbrush.

  Philadelphia periodontist John Richter, D.D.S., suggests using a cheap metal spoon bent to increase the angle between the handle and bowl. To be effective, you have to brush or scrape the very back of your tongue. Unfortunately, this may cause gagging. “But with a little practice,” Dr. Brauer says, “you can overcome your gag reflex.” Tongue scraping may be new to Western oral hygiene, but India’s Ayurvedic physicians have recommended it for centuries. “It’s very helpful,” Dr. Brauer says, “but few people do it.”

• Open wide. Have your teeth cleaned professionally at least annually.
• Disinfect dentures. If you wear removable dentures or any other dental appliance, clean it daily and soak it in a disinfectant overnight..
• Chew gum. It doesn’t have to be special breath-fresening gum, Dr. Simons says. Chewing any gum gets your saliva flowing, which helps eliminate bad breath.