Obese people prone to bad breath

20 December, 2007

A recent research has thrown up a surprisingly interesting result: fat people are more inclined to have bad breath than people who are not fat.

A team of scientists at the Tel Aviv University in Israel, who came up with the finding about the link between obesity and bad breath, however, explained: “This finding should hold for the general public. But we don’t have any scientific evidence as to why this is the case. That will be the next step.”

Professor Mel Rosenberg from the Department of Human Microbiology and the Maurice and Gabriela Goldschleger School of Dental Medicine, Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, concluded that the more one is obese, the more the risk of having bad breath.

In the study, the researchers included a sample of 88 adults of different weights and heights. The researchers asked the participants to go through a regular check-up of mouth odour and asked questions relating to their daily habits.

On the basis of collected data, scientists reached the conclusion that people who are overweight are more likely to have bad breath than underweight people.

“The finding on alcohol and bad breath,” Professor Rosenberg said, “was not surprising because the anecdotal evidence was already there. However, the finding that correlated obesity to bad breath was unanticipated.”

Many factors, he continued, could cause the connection between obesity and bad breath. Obese people may have a diet that causes the condition of dry mouth. Also, obese people may also be less in tune with taking care of their mouths and bodies.

According to Tsachi Knaan, a co-author in the study, “self-detection of bad breath is not possible, so one should not be embarrassed in pointing this out to someone or vice versa.”

He added that his “goal now is to give people a list of the potential factors that could lead to this condition, so they can treat themselves.”