Bad Breath caused by 'Allium'

For a lot of people who enjoy eating onion heavy foods, they would often have to deal with its nasty after-effect (smelly breath). This isn't just true of only onions, there exist a lot of other vegetables such as shallots and garlic, which bring about bad breath after consumption. Wanna know why do they do that? Is there even anything that could be done to get rid of the nasty smell? Let's see!!!

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Garlic and Onion-Members of the same family

Some person's (especially those who have a thing for botany) might already be aware of the fact that both garlic and onion belongs to the same family of flowering plants called Allium. It is a genus of the monocotyledonous flowering plants, in addition to those mentioned above, includes scallions, leeks, shallots, chives and a good number of other wild species. The consumption of these vegetables in large quantities result with very similar features with bad breath.

Why Do They Cause Bad Breath?!

The nasty smell which comes from a person’s breath, in medical terms referred to as ‘halitosis’ might be caused by a variety of different things, but the features are same with the one which comes after consuming garlic, often referred to as garlic breath. Garlic is mostly linked to the contents of garlic, which is the the sulfuric compounds resident inside it. Garlic is considered to be a carrier of certain microbes inside the mouth which are usually held responsible for bad breath.

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Amongst the number of chemicals contained in garlic, the major culprit happens to be a sulfuric compound called the allyl methyl sulfide. From the view point chemistry, it's an organosulfur compound with basically two functional groups which are an allyl and a* sulfide*. Checking this out in a laboratory, you'd notice that it has a colorless liquid with a very strong odor which we usually link to with garlic. Factually, this chemical is responsible for nasty smell of garlic; reverse isn't the case.

Some of us don't really know that brushing your teeth or rinsing our mouth wouldn't aid in completely getting ourselves rid of the smell as a good number of the sulfuric chemicals which are present in garlic follow metabolic process, thus it ends up in the bloodstream. Blood flows to every part of the body, so the nasty smell of the chemicals also practically touch virtually every part of the body before it gets excreted from the body through a variety of routes, amongst which are through exhalation - when you breathe out and through the pores. The entire body would sometime smell when one consumes a heavy dose of garlic or onion. The duration of time in which a person breath is likely to smell depends largely on how long the compounds take residence inside the body (before being excreted), as well as how much of garlic or onion was consumed.

Getting Rid Of The Smell

Rather ufortunately, there is absolutely nothing that can be done to guarantee an absolutely nasty free smell after eating onion or garlic. But there are some remedies that could be used to suppress the stench, to an extent.

• Teeth flossing and cleaning of the tongue using a tongue scraper could aid a little in removing the remaining sulfuric compounds from the oral environment.

• Parsley is a very popular food which counteract the smell of ginger; that's why it is used in a lot of recipes which contains a high chops of ginger for the same reason.

• Consumption of milk along side heavy garlic foods would help in reducing the chances of bad breath.

• Other things that are popularly used to neutralize bad breath include fennel, cardamom, mint, cloves, and anise seeds.
  If you happen to be out on dinner with family or friends and you want to avoid a rather embarrassing situation after the dinner, you could either take a little pack of cardamom or simply keep your eyes and hands off any food which are very rich in garlic and onion