Hello Steemians,

Have you ever smelled your mouth in the morning? How does it smell's like.....? I know its pretty bad. Ever imagined what makes it smell so bad. After having brushed the tooth in the night, it smells in the morning. Its all because of Bacteria.

I just love to talk on the microbes, no matter what's my PhD topic now. I'm just fond of bacteria and always try of connect it to anything, wherever possibly I can. Working with microbes will make you love them actually. Well, they are also living, you can not name the individual one though. But growth of a slow growing bacteria.....when you see it coming after few day (A single colony on the agar plate). It's a joy and A Microbiologist only can understand that.

"Well, leave all that love for the microbe and starting over to the microbes which are present in the mouth and make your mouth stinky. Are they also causing any disease or there are some beneficial one too?" I'll try to cover whatever I can.

What makes it so smelly!

The microbial flora which are present in your mouth are Aerobic (need oxygen), Anaerobic (don't survive in presence of oxygen) and Obligatory Anaerobic (they can survive in less amount of oxygen). Aerobic are less in number, the main flora contains of obligatory ones. The Anaerobic bacteria, they are present in the cavities in your tooth and in the spaces between the gums. And during the night time they starts flourishing and while the time you wake they have increased there population size and started producing the byproducts also, which are basically the secondary metabolites. If in any case, you came across with the anaerobic microbe you will know about all the bad odor your body produces. Image Source

There is a simple process why your mouth stinks, while you are asleep your mouth get dried (you don't have larva in your mouth) and this dry condition makes bacteria go on increase their population and results in the bad odor production. This is a more frequent case where a person sleep with its mouth open or he/she snore during sleep. This only makes your mouth dry much faster. And their are some drugs and some food also responsible for making your mouth dry or increases Halitosis (Bad Breath). In the category of drugs and food item, I want to tell you about all the thing which makes you feel thirsty after consuming it, like coffee and tea. Mainly the smokers, they face it very much. You can add this to your one of the reason to quit smoking. Their are some allergies too which makes the mouth dry and if you want you can see it in the day time also. Because we have the flora within our mouth all the time. And just providing the optimum condition for their growth will let them flourish. Image Source

How to get rid of it?

Well, it is affecting about 65% population of America and the same goes for the whole world I guess. If you are one of them just remember these points, you may decrease it or even may get rid of it.

Brush your teeth properly in the night and do it at least for 2-3 minutes, don't just wrap it up in 40-45 sec. Let the microbial flora have a taste of your toothpaste, It may sounds funny to you but the science behind it is your toothpaste has chlorine in it which inhibits the electron transport chain of the bacterial species and results in death. So, do it for a while.
The most important part of brushing your teeth is clean your tongue back and forth every part of it, almost 85% of the flora is growing on your tongue only. You can notice the change if you clean your tongue properly.
After brushing your teeth, just go directly to bed and don't take anything in between. Because the left over food in your mouth is the nutrient for the bacterial growth and they survive on that.

Basically, having a healthy attitude of brushing your teeth and keeping your mouth clean can cure your halitosis problem.

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All these are just the basics what a normal person want to know. Lets talk about some science now!

There are several bacterial sp. present in our mouth, but largely we have Lactobacillus and Streptococcus species. Back there, working with the oral plaque samples I also found very huge number of such cultures. With Lactobacillus and Streptococcus there are also Campylobacter, Acinetobactor, Actinomycetes, Megasphaera, Veillonella, Aneurinibacillus, Porphyromonas and many more, but these are some of the common ones. In the study both the healthy and the diseased individual was examined and these are the species which are present in almost every individual. We isolated almost all the listed species and studied few of them for their specific activity. I will be sharing one of work here which got published also.

As I mentioned earlier the food left in your mouth and the lesions in gums and other cavity problems are the cause of bad odor. What people generally don't realize, that the anaerobic bacteria are the real reason behind their bad breath. The metabolic product they produce after consuming the proteins are malodour volatile sulfur compound, which makes your mouth stinks. The majority of species which generally causes halitosis are anaerobes, aerobic bacteria generally do not produces such sulfur containing byproducts. They uses fermentation as a way to produce energy out of the food which we provide and anaerobic respiration leads to the production of such odorous by product.

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Many of the gram negative species like Porphyromonas are known to produce several endotoxins produced from their cell wall lipopolysaccharide by consuming the dead cells and debris from mouth. All the volatile sulfur containing compounds are very smelly, some of them produced by the mouth bacterium species are Hydrogen sulfide, putresine, methyl mercaptan and many more. Amino acids containing the sulfur side group Methionine and cystiene are mainly present in almost all the protein. So, keeping a proteiniceous diet in your mouth for the bacterium can give you a stinky smelling mouth. I wanted to share some of the research work what we have performed in our lab with these bad odor producing bacteria but it will be deviating the topic. May be some other time I will discuss in more detail about the research work what we have performed in our lab with these Anaerobic bacteria.

Are they only harming us!

Well, as you know with the bad odor bacteria good ones are also there. This I also mentioned in my previous post, with the bad ones we have the good ones too and we need to save them. As I love them, I care for them.

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Bacteria are always considered as threat and are portrayed as only a disease causing creature. However, if they are procured and allowed to live in a balanced way, they can have a major impact on our health. It was found that, there are around more than 700 different species we have in our mouth and contains about 6 millions of them at a time. A healthy mouth with this huge number of microbes suggests the good ones are leading the odd ones there.

All of this are related to the diet, the increased consumption of carbohydrates has made heaven for the bad bacteria and let them infect our gums and enamel and let them grow. Excessive consumption of soft drinks carbohydrate rich drinks, cigarette, antibiotics etc has caused the mass destruction and created an imbalance of microbial flora not only in our mouth but in the whole body, wherever they are required. So, to achieve that we must change our diet.

Concluding Remark

Almost every one of us has faced the bad odor problem, but some time it may get worse. The odor what you smell in the morning is just because through out the night you mouth was dry and a really warm place for bacteria to grow. Otherwise, If your mouth stinks throughout the day it means it's time for you to go see a dentist. And strictly follow the prescription. Microbes are really a lovely yet deadly creature, treat them well they will give you the same in return.