What causes bad breath to smell like rotten eggs?

If your bad breath smells like rotten eggs, you should be alert to some oral diseases. The most common ones are gingivitis, periodontitis and other diseases. Inflammation causes bacteria to grow, thus emitting unpleasant odors. When this symptom occurs, the first thing to do is to pay attention to oral hygiene. You can brush your teeth with warm salt water, which has a certain inhibitory effect on bacteria. In addition, you must pay attention to your diet and avoid eating spicy and irritating foods.

Rotten egg smell indicates oral disease

Most people are usually embarrassed to directly tell others that they have bad breath, and most of them will just dodge, hold their breath, and end the conversation hastily. As a result, many people are unhappy at work or even fail in blind dates, but they don’t know what’s wrong with them. It’s only after a while that close friends and relatives tell them that it might be their “bad breath” that’s to blame. But some people have severe bad breath, and can even smell it when they speak.

Some bad breath odors are temporary, such as after eating strong-flavored foods such as garlic, leeks, onions, curry, etc. As long as you avoid them before important occasions or brush your teeth more often after eating, the odor will most likely decrease or disappear and will not cause too much trouble.

There is also temporary bad breath caused by physiological reasons. Some people will find that their mouth has a stronger taste when they wake up in the morning, but it usually returns to normal after brushing their teeth. In addition, some medications can also cause changes in the smell of the mouth, such as some alcohol-abstinence medications or medications with the side effect of dry mouth. After taking them, the oral environment changes due to reduced saliva secretion, which may cause bad breath. This condition can be improved by simply stopping the medication. In addition, alcohol, amphetamine abuse, smoking and other factors are also causes of bad breath.

Bad breath is mostly caused by oral diseases

But for some people, bad breath is caused by illness. If not properly treated, the problem of bad breath will persist. According to foreign statistics, 85% to 90% of bad breath is caused by dental or oral diseases, 5% to 10% is caused by nose-related diseases, 3% is caused by tonsillitis, and another 1% is caused by diabetes, kidney disease, upper respiratory tract diseases, etc. Therefore, once you have bad breath, the most important thing is to find out the cause behind it, and checking the condition of your oral cavity is the first step.

There are at least 700 kinds of bacteria in the human mouth. Even if you brush your teeth thoroughly every day, it is difficult to achieve a "sterile state". What’s more, many Chinese people are afraid of going to the dentist and ignore oral hygiene, so there are many people with cavities in their mouths. It has also been found clinically that most patients with bad breath have periodontal disease of varying degrees.

The tongue can also harbor dirt

Another possible source of bad smell may be the tongue. The surface of the tongue is uneven and not smooth, especially the back of the tongue, which is easy to "hide dirt and grime". Therefore, patients with bad breath must brush their tongue coating when brushing their teeth, which can often improve the smell of bad breath. A report pointed out that after scraping the tongue coating, 75% of bad breath can be improved, while brushing teeth can only improve it by 30%. Therefore, for those who suffer from bad breath, it is more important to remove the bacteria on the tongue.

The smell of bad breath is a little hard to describe, it is a bit like rotten eggs, or ammonia, sulfur, etc. Although there are instruments abroad that can analyze the volatile gases in the mouth, or specialized doctors ask patients to exhale and confirm with their nose for one minute, and the doctors rate the smell from 0 to 5 points to determine bad breath, in China, most patients seek medical treatment because they feel something is wrong and tell others about it. Doctors do not perform relevant tests in outpatient diagnosis.

Bad breath often puts people in an embarrassing situation, so some people chew gum violently and spray mouth spray constantly, for fear that their breath will not be fresh enough when they come into close contact with others, giving people around them a bad impression. In the outpatient clinic, we occasionally find some people who are overly worried about bad breath and the impact on their interpersonal relationships. No abnormalities are found in any examination, but they always feel that there is a smell in their mouth. They have even been to several hospitals and found nothing unusual. This is often caused by the patient being too nervous and neurotic.