Bad Breath Got your Tongue?
Bad Breath Got your Tongue?
You can brush your teeth three times a day and still have bad breath. Did you ever wonder why? The reason is because just brushing your teeth is not enough.
You also need to brush your tongue. The reason why is because bacteria could form on your tongue from food residue that is stuck on it. Along with brushing your tongue, you need to brush your gums and the sides of your mouth. This is the most effective way to clear bad breath off not only your tongue but also the rest of your mouth.
This may sound a bit disgusting or unorthodox, but one way to check to see if there is any food film on your tongue is to take a clean finger, with a clean and sanitized fingernail and scrape it across your tongue. If you see white buildup caught in bottom side crevice between your fingernail and your finger, then you know that you have food stuck on your tongue. If this is the case, you should reach as far back with your toothbrush as you can and brush a few strokes at a time while rinsing your toothbrush off in between, preferably with warm water.
In order to be sure that you can brush every area of your mouth including your tongue properly, you should change toothbrushes as often as possible. Usually it is recommended to change your toothbrush every three months. Changing toothbrushes often will lessen the chance that bacteria will develop on it. No bacteria on your toothbrush mean that you will have a less of a chance of bad breath forming.
If you are wondering whether or not using the same toothbrush for brushing your tongue as you do for brushing your teeth is acceptable, Dr. DNA from mydna.com is one person who says it is. He does not say much more than that for the answer to this question, but common sense would tell a person that rinsing the toothbrush quite often as described above helps as well. Dr. DNA does express the importance of brushing your tongue however. He says that there are more bacteria on your tongue than on any part of your mouth combined.
Knowing how important brushing your tongue is, it should be the first thing besides your teeth that you should brush. Brushing your tongue can greatly reduce or eliminate the cause of bad breath. It should be brushed as often as possible, preferably after every meal.
If you need to know when to replace your toothbrush, you can either replace it every three months or when you notice the bristles starting to wear down and lose their firmness. Some toothbrushes even have lines marked on the bristles and once the line disappears this is an indication that you need to buy a new toothbrush.
Another tool that can be used to clean the tongue besides a toothbrush is the tongue cleaner. It is a u-shaped scraper that you can place with the small end into your mouth, and you can hold it on both sides. One tongue cleaner is made from copper and glides very gently over your tongue while scraping off excess debris. It is recommended to use the copper tongue cleaner, or tongue cleaner that is made from other alloyed metals versus ones that are made of plastic.
The use of above described tongue cleaner is supposed to be even more effective against removing bacteria of the mouth than regular tongue brushing. You can search the Internet by the use of phrase referring to tongue brushing or scraping in order to find these. Health and Yoga.com is one great place that offers plenty of alternative resources to better your health. They also have complete oral hygiene kits for people to use as well. This is only one place you can find tongue cleaners. If you want to find others, you can search the Internet as described above.
Another great resource for knowledge regarding home teeth and tongue cleaning equipment is by consulting your dentist. If you want to get rid of bad breath your dentist can answer all the questions you have about oral hygiene and all the tools you can used to keep your mouth clean.
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