Our world is a fast-paced world. We seem to rush from one place to another. We’re seemingly connected to our phones or laptops constantly, trying to keep our online presence alive, as well as our real life. And this can cause stress.
Stress comes from a number of reasons. You might not be seeing eye-to-eye with your boss, you might have a lot of pressure at work. Kids or family members might not be behaving as you expect. There might be anxiety in your life from something that just causes you to stress.
It has been said that stress is the #1 killer for people. Not cancer, cars, or Kool-Aid, but stress. Not sure if it’s true or not, but stress is that we should try to alleviate from our bodies, because as we worry, we cause our bodies to not work properly.
Can stress cause bad breath? Oh yeah, it can. It can cause halitosis, and a host of other problems.
What Is Stress?
I think most people know what stress is. It’s that feeling of worry or anxiety, that causes your body to start ‘shutting down’, and not work properly. It’s what can cause you to lose your hair, or give you line and wrinkles on your face.
Stress comes about when there is something in your life that is putting negative pressure on you. This can be because you are constantly thinking about it, or because you just have so much to do in your life, and not enough time to do it all.
For example, if I were in a relationship, and didn’t want that relationship to end, but thought it might, that whole issue may be constantly on my mind. Because it is on my mind, it makes me start to worry and feel anxious every time I am around that person I have a relationship with. This, in the end, would cause stress to my body.
Is stress healthy?
Stress is never healthy for you body. It can cause and damage many parts of your body, provided that you under stress for a long enough period of time.
Heart Problems. Heart problems is a big problem for those who deal against stress. Because you are constantly worrying about something, your body will naturally raise your blood pressure.
Also, because you could be getting less sleep because of this stress, you keep your heart rate up higher than it usually is. That in turn puts more pressure on your heart.
Diabetes. Stress can make your diabetes worse. Because of the lack of insulin in your body, you can’t break down glucose as you normally should. Stress has been known to raise your glucose levels significantly in your blood stream.
Additionally, as you stress out about certain things, many have a tendency to allow unhealthy habits, such as snacking and eating food that would otherwise be unhealthy for you. As a diabetic, it is essential to watch what you eat and how much of that you eat.
Accelerated Aging. With stress comes the harm of making your body age more naturally than it otherwise would. A study was done on women who had the stress of caring for chronically ill children as opposed to women who didn’t have that stress.
The conclusion?
The women who had the stress aged 9-17 years, and died earlier than those who didn’t have the stress. So not only will you have accelerated aging with stress, but also the possibility of premature/dying earlier.
So stress is something that doesn’t help your body, but really harms it. It will cause failure after failure to your health, and in the end, cause you to die younger than you should.
But what about bad breath? How do stress aggravate you halitosis?
Stress and bad breath
As your body shuts itself down, because of the stress that is in your life, certain functions of your body will not longer work as they once did.
Dry Mouth. Dry mouth is a term for those who experience a severe drying of their oral cavity. This is usually caused because of the lack of saliva that is being produced.
Your saliva is produced to help flush out bacteria, food particles, and other debris, from your mouth. It does this so that those debris won’t stick around, populate, and cause decay, disease, or halitosis.
But when your saliva doesn’t work, bad bacteria, specifically ones that cause halitosis, flourish, and cause foul odors to be produced.
To best fight against this issue, it is best recommended finding ways to keep your mouth moist. That may be from drinking water, or using a mouthwash that is specifically designed to keep your mouth fresh and clean.
Unhealthy Immune System. As you stress, your body’s naturally fighting mechanism, the immune system, will start to gradually become worse and worse. When this happens, certain diseases, which otherwise wouldn’t affect us, become prevalent in our daily lives.
One disease that is effect specifically by our unhealthy immune system is Oral Thrush. Oral thrush is a yeast infection that usually forms on the top of the tongue or insides of the cheeks.
Fighting against Oral Thrush is done best by getting a more healthier immune system (more on that later). But if you are interested in looking for specific ways to fight against yeast infections, feel free to take a look at this article, where we explore the differences of White Tongue, and Oral Thrush, and how to cure both of them.
Gastrointestinal Issues. Problems may arise within your intestines and digestive tract as your stress out about things. Your body will shut down, and begin to not properly allow your body to work, especially in your digestion.
Because of this, Acid reflux might occur, causing you halitosis. Acid reflux is an issue where the acid in your stomach will come up into your esophagus and even into the back of your throat. Not only will it cause bad breath, but it can also bring about pain, swelling, a burning sensation, and much more.
You might have bowel obstructions and problems with bowel movements. This might cause things to stay too long in your colon, which has the possibility of giving you bad breath. Because the waste, if it’s smell can’t be removed from your body, it will want to be released some other way, and that might just be through your breath.
Herbal teas are natural remedies that can help ease most gastrointestinal issues you might be facing because of stress. Just grab you favorite tea, sipping it regularly, and you should be able to clear most of the issues up.
Fighting The Stress In You Life
Below are a few ways to fight against the stress you might be facing within your breath. While they are no means an exhaustive list, they will do wonders if used properly.
Deep Breathing. Just a simple exercise of breathing more deeply will help your stress to go away. As you breath more deeply, you bring oxygen into your body, helping it relax your system, and calm everything down. Deep breathing can go hand-in-hand with meditation.
Meditation. Prayer, scripture reading, even reflecting on the issues at hand, can help give you a sense of peace, and help you not worry about those issues that are causing your so much anxiety. You can also use meditation to get to a place where you figure out what exactly is causing you stress, as sometimes you don’t know what exactly is causing it.
Finding Things You Like To Do. It could be listening to a favorite artist, playing with your kids, or hanging out with certain people. Doing those certain things that you like, will help you ease out of the tense state that your in, and help fight against your stress. As you do things you enjoy, you find that you’ll worry less about the thing that is stressing you out.
Take Care of the Stressful Situation. Sometimes, stress comes because of the fear of a certain situation. It might be that you have to speak to someone that you don’t want to. Or it may be that you don’t want to do a certain job that is causing you worry.
Whatever it is, taking care of it sooner rather than later will help get you out of that stressful situation, and give you back your stress-free life.
Cure Your Halitosis By Curing Your Stress
Life is full of stress. I think it was my grandfather who told me once that life IS stress. While I won’t argue with him (since he’s my grandfather), the point he was trying to make is that our lives will always have stress in it. It’s just a matter of finding ways to live with that stress and easing it.
And that’s really what most people need to do. Find out what is stressing you out. And then find ways to remove that from your life, or making it easier on you. As you do, you’ll find that your life will become more free and peaceful. On top of that, you’ll get better breath out of it as well!