This Old Tooth

Ashtray Breath from Snuff and Stuff_015

Dr. Lisa Germain discusses the effects of smoking tobacco, dipping snuff and vaping with e-cigarettes on halitosis and overall oral health.

EPISODE_015: SHOW TRANSCRIPT

Hello everyone. You are listening to episode number 15 of this old tooth, a podcast devoted to providing you with honest agenda-free information about how you can get and keep a beautiful healthy smile for life. I am your host, Dr. Lisa Germain. On today’s show, I will be talking about how the stale smell of tobacco can create an odor in your mouth that is suffocating in its intensity. It is no secret that smoking cigarettes, cigars, and a pipe, as well as chewing tobacco, can make your breath smell like an ashtray. Many people claim they only smoke occasionally, say after a meal or sometimes when they drink, but that just intensifies the ashtray breath with the sulfur smell of undigested food and or the drying effects of the alcohol. Smoking not only causes bad breath, but it also reduces your ability to smell and taste. And this could mean that you have no idea that your breath is offensive because you can neither taste it or smell it yourself.

Besides bad breath, smoking can also lead to a multitude of dental problems. And while my intention for the series these 10 small bites on bad breath was to highlight the causes of bad breath, I would be remiss if I did not discuss how snuff n’ stuff affects your oral health in general. Not to mention the multitude of misinformation about the safety of vaping and e-cigarettes as well. First of all, tobacco will turn your teeth yellow, then ultimately brown. No amount of whitening toothpaste will counteract the stains created by tobacco. In addition, it increases the buildup of plaque and tartar on your teeth can inflame the salivary gland openings in the roof of your mouth and increases bone loss in your jawbones. Tobacco users have a much higher risk of oral infections such as periodontal disease because it acts as an irritant to the tissues and affects the attachment of the bone and soft tissues to the teeth. It also impairs blood flow to gums that make for problematic wound healing. This explains why tobacco users have a lower success rate for dental implant procedures. Regardless of how long you have used tobacco products, quitting now can greatly reduce serious risks to your health. 11 years after quitting former smokers, likelihood of having periodontal disease was not significantly different from people who never smoked and even reducing the amount you smoke appears to help both gum disease and oral wounds can be a chronic source of bad breath and unless tobacco use is stopped, it really has no permanent solution. Now you can rinse with peroxide and baking soda, but as soon as you light up again, the odor will come back. If bad breath is not enough of a deterrent to using tobacco products, it is important to know how their use is directly related to oral cancer.

Statistics from studies done by the American cancer society present some very sobering reasons to quit smoking. They state that 90% of people with cancer of the mouth, lips, tongue, and throat use tobacco, and the risk of developing these cancers increases with the amount smoked or chewed and the duration of the habit. Smokers are six times more likely than nonsmokers to develop these cancers. About 37% of patients who persist in smoking after apparent cure of their cancer will develop second cancers of the mouth, lips, tongue, and throat compared with only 6% of those who stop smoking. Now, if you glazed over with all those statistics just suffice it to say that smoking significantly increases your risk of getting oral cancer and that is not a pretty picture. Now you might be asking, is that just from smoking tobacco? Are smokeless tobacco products like snuff and stuff safer?

The answer is an unequivocal no. Like cigars and cigarettes. Smokeless tobacco products, for example, snuff and chewing tobacco contain at least 28 chemicals that have been shown to increase the risk of oral cancer and cancer of the throat and esophagus. In fact, chewing tobacco contains higher levels of nicotine and cigarettes, which makes it much harder to quit and one can of snuff delivers more nicotine than over 60 cigarettes. Not to mention the nasty odor that literally when combined with your saliva coats the entire inside of your mouth and your tongue and your teeth, smokeless tobacco can irritate your gum tissue and it can cause it to recede or pull away from your teeth and once your gum recedes, your teeth roots become exposed and you are at an increased risk of tooth decay. Now exposed roots are also more sensitive to hot and cold or other irritants and this can make it really difficult and uncomfortable to eat and drink.

And this is something that I didn’t know at all and that is that smokeless tobacco is enhanced or the flavor is enhanced with sugar. And this of course as we know, can increase your risk of tooth decay as well as bad breath. Research has shown that chewing tobacco users were four times more likely than non-users to develop tooth decay. And if that’s not bad enough, smokeless tobacco also typically contains sand and grit which can wear down your teeth. But what about vaping and e-cigarettes? Well, we know that over the past few years, sales of e-cigarettes have skyrocketed, while the use of traditional cigarettes continues declining along with the average age of the user. It is not uncommon to see young adults and even teens vaping. Since there is no tobacco, vaping is sometimes viewed as a healthier alternative to smoking tobacco, cigarettes. But tobacco or not, vaping is just as bad for your breath, teeth, mouth, and body.

Since vaping introduces nicotine into your body, just like smoking tobacco does, it increases your risk for gum disease, gum recession, bone loss, increased susceptibility to infection and decreased ability to heal along with that fetid odor that accompanies these problems. It has recently been shown that vaping instantly stiffens and tightens your blood vessels and it causes dry mouth, which we know is another cause of bad breath. I think part of the confusion about vaping is that most people assume that the liquid is water, but it’s not. It’s a complex solution of chemicals that have been changed from their original state because they’ve been heated to high temperatures and although these components are considered safe for ingestion, the flavorings like cinnamon, the vehicles like the vegetable glycerin are not safe for heating and inhaling because the chemical constituents have changed. In addition to that, the main liquid used is propylene glycol, which is antifreeze.

\ The bottom line is that these E liquids contained chemical substances and ultrafine particles that are toxic to the lungs and carcinogenic to the human body and if you suspect that your children are using them, please advise them to never inhale anything in their lungs except for air.

And now for our fun fact. It is a known fact that more people use blue toothbrushes than red ones.

I want to give a big shout out to all of my new subscribers from Overcast. Thank you very much and if you haven’t subscribed yet, please do so. You don’t miss any of the amazing shows that I have coming up. I recently did an interview with a world-famous cosmetic dentist and I did another interview with a dentist who will give us some tips on how to motivate our kids to brush their teeth. If you have a question about your dental health, please go to your dental question.com I’ll be happy to answer it personally. On my next show, I will be taking my eighth small bite in my series on bad breath and discuss how a sinus infection and a strep throat can cause you to have the worst breath ever. Now that is an episode you don’t want to miss. Until then, thank you for listening and remember, be true to your teeth or they will be false to you.