It is always a good feeling waking up after a good night’s sleep. Our body feels regenerated, and we are full of energy to start the day. However, after you wake up, you suddenly notice the unpleasant smell. Upon checking, you found out that the odor is coming out from your mouth – this is what we call the morning breath.
We can say that morning breath is pretty common to some people, and it is sometimes a result of poor hygiene and other medical conditions. There are several underlying factors contributing to morning breath, and the most common is the lack of saliva production.
Bad breath caused by the lack of saliva
Try to observe your breath during the day. Your saliva production is more active, especially when you are talking most of the time. You may still have a bit of bad breath at the end of the day, but the odor is not as strong as when you wake up in the morning. It explains why we sometimes have bad breath when we keep our mouth shut, and a neutral smell when we are chewing something – like chewing gums. It is because when we are eating or chewing, our salivary glands produce more saliva, which helps us in breaking down food particles when eating. At the same time, saliva not only breaks down food particles, but it is also responsible for removing bacteria in our mouth.
Our mouths are home for bacteria, and these bacteria produce volatile sulfur compounds or VSC’s, which is responsible for the strong odor inside our mouth. Without saliva, the bacteria inside our mouth will continue to grow and produce VSC’s, which typically happens when we are asleep.
Other factors of bad breath, and how to avoid it?
Another main factor for having an awful breath in the morning is when you sleep at you back and snore. Laying on your back and snoring, highly contributes to drying our mouths, and with dry mouths, it is apparent that our mouth will be prone to bacteria. However, if we come to think of it, having dry mouths or bacteria build-up is quite inevitable when we are asleep since our body is at rest, and we do not wake up every hour just to moisten our mouths.
That is why we also need to make sure that we have proper hygiene all the time, even before we sleep. It is a common practice to us that we need to brush our teeth after we eat, and we learned this in school when we were still kids. We can also brush our teeth before we go to bed, and keep in mind not to eat anything after brushing. However, cleaning our teeth may not be enough, since food particles sometimes get stuck in between our teeth after we eat. Aside from this, we also have leftover food particles on our tongue, which can cause bacteria build-up. Because of these, it is no surprise that we have bad breath when we wake up in the morning. One way to avoid morning breath is to brush our teeth before bedtime and follow it up with flossing in between our teeth, and then gently scrape our tongue. Lastly, we can use an antibacterial mouthwash to remove bacteria in our mouth altogether, which sometimes could take effect for up to twelve hours.
Medical conditions that cause morning breath
These are some of the common reasons why we have bad breath when we wake up in the morning. However, other factors remain to be the reason why we have morning breath. If you are a person who has pretty decent hygiene but still has a strong odor in your mouth when you wake up, then it could be a result of a medical condition. One of the best things to do is to have a medical checkup to see the root of the problem. Having bad breath, not only in the morning, could be related to various diseases and health conditions – mainly tooth problem, bronchitis, acid reflux, diabetes, liver disease, and several other medical conditions. All of these conditions contribute to having bad breath, and it is best to seek medical attention because some of these problems could not be treated overnight and would need expert help.
With all of these factors, we can make sure that we maintain a pleasant breath in the morning. It is always better to have proper hygiene to start our day after a good night’s sleep. Following the above tips will help us in achieving the adequate hygiene that we want.