Dec 16 2008
How To Cure Bad Breath From High Protein Diets
If you hear someone asking “how do I cure halitosis bad breath caused by a high protein diet?”, it is likely that this intentional eating regime has caused the body to become unbalanced. This could be intentional for the body to burn fat and rebuild muscle tissues quickly, but it is always more important to keep the body functioning safely. High protein diets are often consumed by athletics, body builders and some people trying to lose weight via the Atkins diet. Although these people seem to come from different worlds, they have a same pressing problem: bad breath. You cannot tell these people to switch their diets, because for professional sportsmen, they need the high protein intake to increase and rebuild muscle mass quickly in order to meet competition requirements. Similarly, for dieters who have found the Atkins diet to be working for them in losing unwanted body weight, it will be difficult to ask them to stop the high protein weight loss diet. They are under extreme social pressure these days to good slim and lean. People cannot detect bad breath unless they talk to you, but people can spot a fat person from far easily. So what do you think the dieters’ top priorities are?
The smelly breath that results from eating a high protein diet is due to the build up of ketones in the blood. Ketones are malodorous chemicals with a carbonyl unit produced by your liver when it burns fat for energy instead of the usual carbohydrates, a process known as Gluconeogenesis. The body rapidly excretes these ketones because they are harmful to the body and ketones leave the body through urine, sweat and even saliva and breath. Although the Atkins diet is well known as high protein, actually it is also very high fat and low carbohydrates in order to suddenly force the body into ketosis and this is fundamentally why people on high protein ketogenic diets inevitably suffer from bad breath. A person may also be suffering from undiagnosed or poorly managed diabetes where inadequate insulin production tends to cause ketones to build up in the blood. Abnormally high ketone levels in the blood for a long time and degenerate into a life threatening situation.
The best option for eliminating bad breath if you have to stick to a high protein diet is to seek medical help from a qualified dietitian who can help formulate special diets that are high in protein for the patients’ specific needs while having just enough carbohydrates to avoid the ketosis liver condition. Most likely, the dietitian will introduce more vegetarian sources of protein such as beans and legumes which also contain carbohydrates naturally. Drinking plenty of water is also a good idea to expel the excessive ketones from your body through urination. This also helps dilute and wash away the ketones in your mouths that may also cause problems for your teeth and gums. Try to work out a good amount of sweat by exercising; you should not try to lose weight solely via diet and some exercises are helpful to retain muscle mass. The goal here is to sweat more often so that more ketones can be excreted this way. If you are already very tired, then go relax in saunas for the sweat effect.
These are just some simple ways you can try to cure bad breath from eating too much protein for your own good. An unbalanced diet will always do more harm than good, so you have to consider carefully whether it is worth the risk or not. You know you have overdone it when you get all sorts of problems in your breath, stained teeth and weakened gums.
