Stress and anxiety can make your world stink!

Think of all the advertisements for deodorants or mouth fresheners. Some cute guy likes a pretty girl. They talk, they come close, but the guy had bad breath and the girl then loses interest. What she doesn’t know is that he is probably stressed!

Yes. Worry, anxiety, fear and all such negative emotions can lead to certain chemical chaos in the body and make things worse for you by giving a bad odour.

Sweating

Aimee’s palms were really moist when her friend wished her luck. Aimee was nervous as she had to give a speech in front of a hundred students.

Anxiety, fear and nervousness lead to increased sweating. Ever noticed how your use of antiperspirants and deodorants go up during times of stress. Sometimes you may not even realize that you’re sweating more than usual. It does not have to be trails of salt water running down your body. It may just as well be invisible sweat.

And sweet is the smell of sweat only in fancy literature. Sweat gives out bad body odour and causes discomfort to those around you.

Stress-eating junk food

We have already heard quite a lot about this. When you are stressed, you tend to eat unhealthy things. You find comfort in food, in carbs and in salt. Okay, so what? How is it related to foul smell?

Make the connection people, it is pretty obvious. Most of the junk food contains a lot of spices, strong smelling ones too. Plus the salt content in junk food is high. The result is sweat loaded with these smells.

Digestion gone bad

We know stress affects every big and small aspect of your life. How will the poor stomach be spared! It is the first to react when trouble approaches. The activities in your digestive system go a little haywire when you are stressed.

Daisy is a bright kid. Sincere, intelligent and smart, she is also a worrier. And oral exams frighten Daisy enough to give her loose motions.

Whether it is rushing to the toilet at an abnormal frequency or building up too many acids in the system or bloating up with gas, the system manifests some or the other reaction to stress. Needless to tell you, none of it smells pleasant.

Added to it is the earlier factor of junk food, you further torture the system by loading it with the wrong raw material. Processing is already jeopardized. All this makes a deadly mix of foul body and mouth odour.

Dry mouth

John had a fight (like most days of his married life!) with wife, Cynthia and went to sleep. On waking up in the morning, he tried to patch things up and hugged her. Reaction? Cynthia complained that his breath smells bad. John got upset, thinking it is her way to find faults with him. After many such fights and many such nights, he realized she was right (like wives usually are!). But he couldn’t understand why this is happening.

We know. Stress, tension, anger and worry cause dryness of the mouth. The saliva protects the mouth from bacterial activity. When there is dryness, the bacteria find a freeway and have the time of their lifewhile giving you bad breath.

Don’t let the smell give you away

Sowhat’s the solution? Don’t get stressed, be calm, think positive, relax, and so on and so forth. Good words. But it is really not that practical. Impossible to run away from stress always, you need to find means to tackle these little problems at hand.

Take good care of hygiene, especially oral hygiene. Use of perfumes, deodorants in accordance is helpful.

Stress is inevitable. While John and Cynthia continue to fight, they do kiss and make up now. Mouthwash is the saviour.