Do Mints Really Help Bad Breath?

Vancouver Dentist Dr. Ed Lowe is the Editor of the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry Journal. For over 20 years Dr. Lowe has been practicing Dentistry in the Downtown Vancouver area. One of the things many of us can be very embarrassed about when visiting the dentist, or just speaking to the person next to us, is bad breath, and as a result pound back the breath mints, so we just had to know: Do Mints Really Help Bad Breath? Dr. Lowe has the (rather fascinating) answers:

Here’s the Transcript in case you missed it:

Do mints really help bad breath?

Dr. Ed Lowe: “Halitosis or bad breath is pretty easy to explain; and I’ll explain how the breath mints help with that. When you wake up with “jungle mouth”, we call it, you know overnight. What happens is the bacteria in your mouth which normally breaks down sugar, it eats what you eat, it runs out of the sugar and it starts to break down the proteins in your gum tissues. You know that when bacteria breaks down sugar it makes acid, it makes wholes in your teeth. Well now when it converts to breaking down proteins in your gums, what happens is, it gives off high sulphur compound. Which is the bad breath. So when you go take your Tic-Tacs or Clorettes, and you pop them in your mouth, it’s not actually the mint that’s doing the work but the sugar, because the bacteria go:”Oh! We got our favourite food back again!” And it converts back to sugar, and the bad breath begins to go away.”