It’s time to mention our core strategy for the elimination of bad breath again: “… change the environment in your mouth from one that supports the growth of the VSC-producing bacteria to one that will not.”
The effect of tongue cleansing and the hydrogen peroxide mouth-wash is to introduce a higher level of oxygen into the living environment of the VSCproducing bacteria. However, you need to combine this oxygenation with a further reduction in the acidity of your mouth. Cutting out coffee will have already helped a lot but you still need to go that bit further: You can make your own acidity-reducing mouth-paste using a mixture of baking soda (bicarbonate of soda), common table-salt, and hydrogen peroxide.
The reasons for using hydrogen peroxide are the same as for the mouth wash. But why baking soda? When you were a schoolchild, did you ever experiment with mixing baking soda with vinegar? If so, do you remember what happened? The mixture bubbled, and popped, and frothed… some kind of a reaction was taking place – because vinegar and baking soda don’t mix very well together. Why? Because vinegar has a low pH (acidic) and baking soda has ahigher pH (alkaline).
The reaction you saw was both substances, in effect, balancing each other out. In other words, the baking soda acted to increase the vinegar pH towards neutral and the vinegar acted to decrease the baking soda pH towards neutral.
Using baking soda in this mouth-paste creates that same reaction on a much smaller scale (invisible to the naked eye); its alkalinity is balancing out the acidic environment in your mouth towards 6.5 pH, which, while being slightly acidic, is near to neutral (7.0) and is the normal pH for a healthy mouth.
The baking soda won’t hurt your teeth or gums; it won’t hurt even if you swallowed a spoon full… it’ll just make you burp!
The use of common table-salt is for a different reason: It’s a good gentle abrasive. Its use for cleaning teeth can be traced as far back as the Roman Empire (for exactly this reason). But, since it acts very gently, it’s also a good abrasive for cleaning the tongue, the gums, even the inside of the cheeks… in fact, the whole oral cavity.
Also, when in a solution where it can be tasted (like when mixed with your saliva), it becomes hypertonic, which means it will draw water from cells that are bathed in it. This is very useful; a hypertonic condition in your mouth will almost instantly make your salivary glands go into over-drive.
You won’t actually be swallowing any of this though, so it should be okay to use if you’re on a salt-restricted diet. However, please consult with your physician first to make sure.
Here’s how the mouth-paste is made:
Mix 3-teaspoons of baking soda with 1-teaspoon of table salt.
Add enough hydrogen peroxide to the mixture to form a thick paste. (You can add water, like in the mouth-rinse above, if the hydrogen peroxide feels too strong on its own).
That’s all you have to do.
As a time saving measure, you can mix up as much baking soda and salt as you wish at any one time and keep it in an airtight container (as baking sodagets ‘clumpy’ if it gets damp).
However, because hydrogen peroxide can degrade in effectiveness once opened if not stored in darkness and in its original container (buy the smallest bottles you can find!), only use it to make as much paste as you need for each individual brushing. The best way to do this is to pour a small amount of the baking soda/salt mix into the palm of your hand, and add just enough hydrogen peroxide (and water, if you want to dilute the hydrogen peroxide; it can be too strong and ‘stingy’ by itself for some people) to make just THAT amount into a thick paste.
The exact amount of baking soda/salt mixture you use is something that will have to be determined by trial-and-error: Some people’s mouths are larger than others. Some people just like to use less (or more) with each brushing. After using it 2 or 3 times, you should develop a good idea of how much is enough for
you.
Use this mouth-paste as you would normally use regular toothpaste, but make sure to gently brush all parts of your mouth: your teeth, your gums, your tongue, and even the inside of your cheeks (that’s why I call this a mouth-paste instead of just tooth-paste). You can even floss while the paste is still in your mouth to help get it between your teeth. (Quick Tip: Use dental tape, instead of dental floss; since it’s much thicker, it cleans a wider area, and won’t cut your gums as easily.)
It has been estimated that only about 2% of people brush for longer than one minute. Many people only brush for about 30 seconds. Some even less.
However, it is simply not possible to brush your teeth properly in that length of time: Proper brushing of teeth (both front and back; back teeth usually only get about one-fifth of total brushing time) will take a minimum of 2-minutes to be absolutely sure of covering all areas.
Therefore, since you are going to be brushing your entire mouth – not just your teeth – it’ll take approx. 4-minutes to cover everything thoroughly.
Don’t judge the time yourself; most people are really terrible at estimating short time spans, and many will insist that 4-minutes has long passed before even 2-minutes are actually up.
Get a clock or a stopwatch. Take your time; there’s no need to rush; 4-minutes isn’t that long. However, if you find it takes longer, then so be it but as long as you stick to a minimum time-period that will force you to give all areas ofyour mouth due attention, you won’t go wrong.
You should brush twice a day: in the morning and at night. If possible, brush after every meal too (although, in the real world, this isn’t always practical). That said, many people only brush once a day, which isn’t really sufficient but if, for whatever reason, you’re a once-a-day person, do it at nighttime before you go to bed – you don’t want to give the VSC-producing bacteria free-reign for 8+ hours when your saliva-production dips to its lowest point at night.
One final tip to boost the power of this method: When you rinse your toothbrush, use hot water, not cold! Hot water – which obviously shouldn’t be hot enough to burn – will shift mucus (and everything else) much better than cold.
Rinse your mouth out with hot water after brushing too. You wouldn’t wash dirty dishes with cold water… your mouth isn’t any different.
This mouth-paste shouldn’t cause problems if you have oral devices such as dentures, retainers, etc. but please check with your dentist first. If you use it with these kinds of devices, you do so at your own risk. |
