“Uhh, Your Breath Kinda Smells, Man”

When you meet someone new, they’re pretty tolerant to whatever your looks, smells, and mannerisms are. This is mainly because they can choose to never talk to you again if they dislike those things, so really, they shut their mouth and head the other way once whatever encounter brought you together is over. But the same really can’t be said for whatever friends or family you have that always have to be around you.

There’s only so much neglected hygiene your close ones can put up with before they either explode or leave you in the dust unexpectedly. Neither of those scenarios are desirable in the slightest, so what are you to do?

I’d suggest getting to the bottom of whatever it is that annoys them.

One of those common culprits is bad breath, and that’s something that can be hard to get rid of unless you have time on your side.

To combat your bad breath issues, we’ve compiled a little list of things that may be causing it. If you tackle these things, you’re likely to improve your breath enough to be tolerable to friends and family.

Gum disease

Gingivitis affects a large portion of Americans, so don’t feel like you’re the only one dealing with this. Really, to combat the problem, all it takes is talking to your dentist about it and getting on a good dental regimen. Once they clean your teeth, give you what’s needed, and tell you to stick to a very healthy dental routine, your gingivitis should wane over the course of a few months. This is likely the number one reason your breath smells.

Smoking

Smoking is also a big culprit to bad breath, and it can give you chronic bad breath if you don’t curb the habit sooner than later. While you can eventually get rid of the bad breath if you start getting your smoking habits in check, it’s likely that it sticks around until you’re done smoking completely. Sorry, smokers, but this is one of those things that come as a package deal with smoking.

Your diet

Pretty straightforward here. When you consume garlic, onions, coffee, or other pungent things like alcohol, fish, and dairy, you’ll be killing your chances at landing a hot date. It’s fine to eat all these things and most are relatively healthy, but try to stay away from these things if you’re about to meet someone new or are particularly worried about your breath smelling. They definitely won’t help.