What is the impact of chewing gum on bad breath?

In the Journal of Evidence-Based Dental Practice,

a study compared the levels of stinky breath compounds in people's mouths,

before and after chewing mint

gum for 15 minutes.

And they found that chewing gum significantly decreased the levels of all the volatile

sulfur compounds they tested, reducing them all by about half, which they attribute to

the effect that chewing gum has on salivation.

How do we know that the mint didn't have anything to do with it?

Because flavorless chewing gum base without any active ingredient can work too. So

chewing gum may indeed control bad breath temporarily because it triggers the salivary flow.

That's thought to be why we wake up with morning breath, but it just goes away on its own,

even if you don't brush your

teeth or anything.

Here's the levels of the stinky volatile sulfur compounds in people's breath right when they

wake up dropping even before they eat breakfast.

That's because we have one and a half liters.

That's like six cups of saliva bathing down our tongue daily, but the spigot is turned down at night

and bacteria grow in the stagnant puddle that is your nighttime mouth.

Saliva works because of the simple fact that larger saliva volumes allow increased amounts

of volatile sulfur compounds to enter solution. Instead of off-gassing, the gases dissolve in the fluid.

This can also be accomplished by just drinking some water or by using chewing gum,

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