1) Keep your tongue clean: Gently brush it with a soft nylon toothbrush after you brush your teeth.

2) Drink More Water!: The drier your mouth, the worse your breath gets

3) Keep Calm: Stress makes your breath worse!

4) Avoid breath mints and/or gum that contain sugar: These actually make your breath worse

5) Don’t try to kill the odor of bad breath with another odor: This is what most of the “Big Name” oral care companies would like you to believe works

6) Blow your nose more often: Your breath gets worse when you have a cold, allergies, or post-nasal drip

7) Don’t use mouth wash w/ alcohol or toothpaste that has sodium lauryl sulfate: Do you have any idea how many oral care products contain these two ingredients? Here’s a hint, just about all of them

8) Drink plenty of water when taking prescription medications: Many of these medicines make your mouth extremely dry

9) Stop Smoking: It will give you bad breath in a nanosecond, but may only take 20 years to kill you!

10) And finally, The Best Way to Eliminate & Prevent Bad Breath?: Use Clinically Proven Oxygenating Oral Products .

Important things you may not know about bad breath:

In most cases (about 90%), bad breath comes from the mouth itself.

– Despite public opinion, bad breath rarely comes from the stomach.

– Most people can smell other people’s breath, but have troublesmelling their own. So, if you think you have bad breath, you might or you might not. Bad taste is usually not a good indication. The best and simplest way to find out is to ask an adult in your family or a close friend.

– In the mouth, the most common source of bad breath is the very back of the tongue. Food debris, dead cells and postnasal drip can accumulate there, and the breakdown of the proteins by the resident bacteria causes foul odor. The second most important cause is bacteria breaking down protein between your teeth. By the way, the gases and other molecules that the bacteria produce are toxic and can harm your gums as well. Two good reasons to floss every day (if you don’t believe me, smell the floss)

– Bad breath usually increases when the mouth is dry. Chewing sugarless gum for 4-5 minutes at a time can be helpful.

– The generalization that mouthwashes work for only a few minutes is wrong. Try gargling right before bedtime for best results. Some researchers recommend alcohol-free mouthrinses.

– Eating a hearty and healthy breakfast cleans the mouth and back of the tongue, gets the saliva flowing, and is probably good for you.

– Some people (maybe 5-7% of the population) have experienced small crumbly “stones” in their mouths that have a foul smell. These are called “tonsilloliths“. They are partially calcified, full of bacteria and develop in crypts in the tonsils. They smell pretty bad, but do not always cause bad breath (again, you have to ask someone).

– In the large majority of cases, bad breath can be dramatically improved or eliminated.

– Children as young or two or three can have bad breath from postnasal drip, dental plaque and transient throat infections. However, if they develop sudden offensive odor that appears to come from all over their body, ask the physician to check whether they stuffed something up one of their nostrils.