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We all hate dealing with bad breath. Whether it’s our own or someone else’s, it’s never a fun experience. And even though you may brush, floss, and use mouthwash everyday, you still find that your breath can become rather nasty by the end of the day (or less fortunately, the middle). Great oral hygiene is a start to combating bad breath, however, sometimes our bad breath is directly related to the food we do (and don’t) eat. There are plenty of foods that cause bad breath, and some that help fight the awful smells. Here’s our list of the top foods for each.

The Worst Foods For Your Breath

Garlic
No one should be surprised to learn that garlic is tough on breath. Though extremely healthy for you, it’ll leave you mouth steaming with funky smells. This is because, not only is it a hard smell to wash out of the mouth, garlic is absorbed into the bloodstream by a chemical known as allyl methyl sulfide. As it travels through your blood, it makes it to your lungs and pushes out of you like smoke out a chimney. Brush your teeth all you want, it can’t save you from the power of smelly garlic.
Onions
Similar to garlic, onions contain an amino acid known as allin. Once cut, the amino acid turns to propenyl sulfuric acid, the chemical responsible for making you tear up when cutting this veggie. And if you think it smells bad when cutting, just imagine how your friends feel when they have to hold a conversation with you. Eating raw onions can send your breath down a slippery slope from bad to so much worse, so we recommend cooking onions before eating, at least for the sake of your friends.
Coffee
Can something that smells good give you bad breath? Coffee is your case and point. The acidity of coffee can linger inside your mouth for a long time, making saliva its sour friend. As well, the acidity from the coffee can neutralize the acid in your stomach allowing gastric juices to make an appearance out of the mouth. Not good for breath… Not good for anything.
Curry
The mother of all bad breath inducers, Indian curries are a mix of onion, garlic, fennel, and other spicy ingredients that will send anyone in a 3-foot radius of you running for the hills (if they don’t pass out first).

The Best Foods For Your Breath

Crunchy Fruit and Veggies
To combat all of these breath-killing foods, you need a defense strategy, and first in line are crunchy fruits and vegetables. Apples, carrots, celery and other fiber-rich fruits and veggies are your natural toothbrush. Their fibrous texture is able to push plaque and nasty food stuck in your teeth out of your mouth. As well, they increase saliva production, which helps rinse out the mouth.
Yogurt
Yogurt is truly an amazing food. It’s made of probiotics, bacteria that’s good for you. When consumed, it’s able to reduce the level of hydrogen sulfide in the mouth (that’s the stuff that makes your breath bad in the first place). Of course, make sure you’re choosing the right yogurt, the kind with active cultures. Avoid any yogurt that has too much sugar or is over-processed.
Vitamin C-heavy Fruits
Fruits high in vitamin C such as berries, oranges, and melons can help reduce the amount of bacteria growth in the mouth. High in vitamins and acidity, it’s able to keep bacteria at bay along with helping prevent periodontal disease.
Fresh Herbs
For those of you still wondering what that little green piece of grass on your dinner plate is, here’s your answer: parsley. A natural palate cleanser, parsley contains chlorophyll which helps reduce bad breath smells, as well as makes your mouth lose the taste of all the food you may have eaten. But don’t stop there; many herbs can help fight breath including coriander, spearmint, tarragon, and rosemary.
Water
Of course, the simplest food of all is one of the best to help cure bad breath. Much of the time, bad breath is caused by food that’s just stuck in your teeth and gums. Water helps flush out the mouth and gets it to a point of freshness. It’s like putting your dishes in the dishwasher. They don’t just sit there with the hopes that all the food stuck on the plate goes away. They’re bombarded with water splashing against them so they can be clean and clear. The same goes for your teeth, the more water you drink, the fresher your mouth will be.
Though some foods cannot be avoided and will give you harsh breath from time to time. Most of the time, the best way to keep your breath fresh and healthy is by drinking lots of water, then brushing and flossing after every meal. Don’t wait too long afterwards because that’s prime time for bacteria to build up and make a home. If you want fresh breath proper oral hygiene will go a long way.
 

Painful and intrusive, the canker sore is a annoyance that no person ever wants. Between the ages of 10 and 20, you have a high probability you’ll get a few canker sores a year that will last up to a week at a time. For adults, complex canker sores are always a possibility, though more rare. So what are canker sores, why do we get them, how do we find ourselves some relief?

Also known as apthous ulcers, cankers sores will appear on the inside of the mouth either on the tongue, soft palate, or inside your cheeks. Canker sores look like a shallow white and red bump which, after a day or two, can break and leave a white wound, similar to a blister. Though it can be an irritating situation, generally, a person with a canker sore will not receive any other symptoms.

How Do Canker Sores Happen?

There are several reasons scientists believe we get canker sores. Vitamin and nutritional deficiency is believed to be linked to canker sores. Reason being most trouble with the outermost layers of the skin in the human body is caused by vitamin deficiency. It is recommended that anyone who gets canker sores often should try to take more vitamins, especially B-12 which can help reduce soreness.
Stress and injury can also cause painful canker sores. If you may have eaten something that could burn or scrape against the lining of your mouth, or perhaps had an intense visit to the dentist, a canker sore can appear after the fact. Brushing too hard or using harsh mouthwashes can also cause stress in the mouth, which can lead to canker sores.
Though it’s good to eat lots of fruits and vegetables, sometimes a citric, highly acidic, fruit like a lemon or grapefruit can cause irritation that leads to a canker sore. Though fruits are not the actual cause of a sore, they can easily irritate and worsen an area, which can then cause the stress that leads to canker sores.
Last, a poor immune system can drastically affect the amount of time you have a canker sore. With a weak immune system, your body cannot repair the area of canker sore quickly. The more time the canker sore is an open wound, the more chance of irritating and elongating the sore.

Is There Any Relief?

Canker sores generally will last about a week with two of the days the most irritable then lessen for a few more days. Most canker sores will be gone within a week.
If a canker sore does not diminish and continues to irritate you, a dentist can prescribe an antimicrobial mouth rinse or ointment that can help reduce the pain. It’s also recommended to avoid acidic foods, consume more B-12 vitamins, and brush your teeth gently to keep pain to a minimum.
A natural remedy that often offers pain relief from sores is to apply a mix of hydrogen peroxide and water to the canker sore with a Q-tip. Then, use a small amount of milk of magnesia and cover the sore. This will soothe the painful area and help speed the healing process.
For the most part, canker sores are an inconvenient waiting game, and there is little to do about them. Much like a 24-hour flu, the best medicine is time.
If you have any more questions about canker sores, do not hesitate to contact Water Tower Dental. We are more than happy to assist our patients with any of their questions.

Sometimes we find home remedies and new tricks to cleaning your teeth incredibly interesting, and potentially helpful. Oil pulling has been around for thousands of years, yet has only sparked the attention of many of our patients just recently. So what exactly is oil pulling and can it help keep your teeth is top health?

Oil pulling originally comes from Indian folk remedies to help clear the mouth of harmful bacteria. Not until the ‘90s did oil pulling start to emerge as a healthy practice in America. A medical doctor, Dr. F. Karach, was the first to introduce oil pulling to his patients in the United States. After finding the remedy a successful tool for lowering harmful bacteria levels, oil pulling began to grow in popularity.
As bacteria build up in your mouth, it creates plaque so it can adhere to your teeth and cause as much harm as it wants. Brushing, flossing, and visits to your dentist all aim to remove the plaque that the bacteria are harboring on. Oils such as sesame, sunflower, and coconut oil, when used properly, can help pull these bacteria off of the teeth for a cleaner, healthier mouth.
It’s rather simple to do, just use a tablespoon of oil and swish it in your mouth like mouthwash for 20 minutes. Once the twenty minutes are complete, spit into a trash can. Twenty minutes is the instructed amount of time because it allows enough time for bacteria to be pulled off the teeth and into the oil without allowing them to be reabsorbed into the body.

Does Oil Pulling work?

There is much debate as to the effectiveness of oil pulling and what it actually can help. In a study conducted in 2008, 20 adolescent boys were instructed to either perform an oil pulling procedure, or to use Chlorhexidine to reduce the amount of streptococcus mutans- one of the main bacterias that can cause plaque build up and tooth decay. After two weeks, the boys who used oil pulling had significantly reduced the amount of streptococcus mutans in their mouth, however not as much as the patients using the Chlorhexidine. That does not mean oil pulling does not work, only that it is slightly less effective than the harsh chemicals of Chlorhexidine.
A similar study was conducted to test oil pulling’s effect against gingivitis causing bacteria alongside Chlorhexidine. In this study, both the oil pulling and mouthwash were equally effective against the bacteria.
And last, a final study showed that oil pulling is significantly effective in reducing bacteria that cause halitosis, or more commonly know as bad breath.
While oil pulling may not be recommended by every doctor, we find it to be a more natural way to help clean your teeth and keep your gums healthy.
If you have more questions about this home remedy or many others that are often discussed on this blog, please contact Water Tower Dental, would be happy to help answer any of your questions.

Water Tower Dental is committed to staying at the forefront of technological advancements in the field of dentistry. One of the most exciting advancements in the last few years has been the introduction and updates of the CEREC, a software innovation that allows dentists to digitally design all-ceramic crowns and porcelain veneers in just one visit.
CEREC offers a metal-free alternative to crowns. Rather, CEREC uses all-ceramic crowns to cover your tooth and protect it from more damage. The best yet - your crown can be completed in one day!

Why Would You Need CEREC and a Crown?

Before understanding what CEREC does, it’s best to understand why you would need a crown. Crowns come into play when an old filling or tooth becomes cracked or broken. When this happens, your dentist must remove the filling and compromised areas, and place a crown or cap over the tooth.
Crowns are typically made from a combination metal, porcelain, or ceramic. A crown procedure starts with your dentist shaving down your tooth so a crown could be placed atop of it. Next, they would take a wax molding of the shaved tooth and its surrounding neighbors that will help create a crown. Then, either the dentist or a separate lab would need to create the porcelain crown from the wax mold provided. Once it is created (which can take weeks) the crown is placed over your tooth and adhered tightly to protect your tooth from any further damage.
The trouble with this method can be the amount of time it takes from when your dentist prescribes a crown and when you actually receive the crown. The time in between can be uncomfortable, as well, as you have to make several visits to your dentist to finish the procedure. With CEREC you can avoid these inconveniences and receive a metal-free crown within one visit.

How Does CEREC Work?

The beginning of the crown process is the same. First, your dentist will shave down your tooth to prepare it for a crown. However, rather than a wax mold, your dentist is able to use the CEREC scanner to make a 3D image of your tooth and the surrounding area. The image is uploaded to a design unit with uses CAD/CAM software to create a 3D model of the new crown.
Once a crown is designed, your dentist will use an onsite-milling machine to create the crown from a block of high quality ceramic. Once it is made, your dentist will use polish and stain to make the color of the crown match that of your teeth. Once you and your dentist are happy with the look of the crown, it is placed over the shaven tooth and adhered with cement. Simple as that.
CEREC’s technology can be used for any crown or cap and is a great advancement within dentistry. Same-day technology is making it easier for patients and doctors alike. If you would like to more about this great technology, or are interested setting up an appointment with Water Tower Dental to help crown a tooth, contact us today, we’d be happy to help.