Oral Health
Common Oral Health Problems
Achieving and maintaining a healthy mouth is an essential key to overall health, well-being, and quality of life for everyone. Oral health problems can make it difficult to eat, drink, and speak. These problems in cases where oral health is taken care of can be a sign of other diseases. Some common mouth problems include bad breath, dry mouth, canker sores, thrush, fissured tongue, gingivitis, and others.
Halitosis or bad breath is a condition that can disturb the person and those around him/her. The main cause of bad breath is usually due to incomplete oral hygiene. However, various conditions can also cause bad breath despite having a healthy mouth, as well as pointing to other health problems.
Generally, it is physiologically normal to have an unpleasant odor in the mouth in the morning. Bad breath, which persists despite good oral hygiene and a healthy mouth, may also be caused by the nose, throat, stomach, upper respiratory tract, and lungs. It is necessary to investigate the causes of persistent bad breath.
When the bad breath originates from the mouth, we call this oral malodor or halitosis. The main cause of halitosis is the tongue, not the teeth. In other words, the main smelling area in the mouth is the tongue, more precisely, it is the back of the tongue. Therefore, we can also call halitosis “tongue odor”.
Food residues cannot remain on the regularly cleaned dentures for a long time. Accordingly, it is difficult for bacteria to cause bad breath by consuming food residues here. However, an unclean dental prosthesis is a suitable environment for bacteria to adhere and reside.
Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENT) Related Bad Breath
In the case of ear, nose, and throat (ENT) related halitosis, the source of the bacteria causing bad odor is not directly in the mouth. But these bacteria come from there and settle in the mouth and cause a bad odor. In particular, this is the cause of a large proportion of bad breath in children.
When our digestive system cannot digest food residues due to any problem, bacteria decompose them and expose malodorous gases. These gases can rise from the digestive tract to our mouth, and as a result, they can create a bad odor in the mouth.
Halitosis and breath odor are different things because their sources are different. The source of halitosis is inside the mouth, especially the back of the tongue. However, breath odor is caused by the gases expelled from the lungs through respiration.
Psychogenic halitosis is the situation in which the person declares that he/she has bad breath, but there is no real bad breath. This subjective halitosis is the sensation of bad breath that the individual thinks he or she feels at the receptor level.
The main cause of dry mouth is the deterioration of fluid balance in the mouth as a result of decreased saliva. Dry mouth increases oral health problems such as dental caries, gingival diseases, and intraoral infections. Dry mouth is also one of the causes of bad odor in the mouth.
Yeast infection is seen in the mouth and throat mucosa in about half of the population. Although it is a member of the normal body flora of humans, it causes infections in the mouth when the immune system weakens and/or when we use antibiotics excessively.
Tongue Problems
In cases where the tongue fissures are very deep, it may appear as if the tongue has different parts. But in general, the fissured tongue is not an oral health problem, except for appearance. So it is not involved in serious tongue problems. This condition does not require any treatment unless there are other findings.
Geographic tongue gets its name from the map-like spots on the tongue. With the disappearance of the papillae in some parts of the tongue, bright red sections, strange lines, and shapes form on the tongue. In fact, many people don’t even know they have a geographic tongue.
Lip Problems
Canker sores are white, painful sores that occasionally form inside our mouth. Although they don’t usually cause serious lip problems, they are quite painful. They hurt more during actions such as talking, eating, drinking, and brushing teeth. The exact cause of canker sores is not known.
Cold sore is a common viral disease that usually starts on the lips and it is one of the important lip problems. It manifests itself with blisters filled with fluid. Cold sores occur most frequently around the lips. However, they can also spread to the far edges or inside the mouth. They are usually painful, but not all cold sores are painful
ENT Problems
Nasal congestion is a nasal obstruction that we all have experienced at least once in our life. We also call this stuffy or runny nose. Sometimes it can be bilateral, sometimes unilateral. It can be mild or very severe. But we cannot consider every nasal congestion as a serious ENT problem.
Nosebleed is also known as epistaxis. Actually, a nosebleed is not a disease, it is just a symptom. Because many diseases can cause this. But the most common cause of all nosebleeds is nose poking. We see nosebleeds mostly in the winter months.
There are some kinds of harmful habits that damage voice. For example, to speak loudly and loudly in noisy environments. Or when we go to a soccer game, we cheer out loud. After all, our voices are muted and this results in voice disorders.