It's Friday August. I'm Oscar Emrrors from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is reopening America. As dentists have started to open up, they are seeing patients come in with a new set of symptoms and they are dubbing it mask mouth. Dentists are seeing inflammation and gums, decaying teeth and really bad breath. Wearing a mask can lead to dry mouth and a host of other problems
unless proper precautions are taken. Milkorka Lisaya, features writer at The New York Post, joins us for what to do about mask mouth. Thanks for joining us, milk Corka, thank you so much for having me. So. Dentists have been reopening their doors and they're saying that some of their patients are coming in with a new set of symptoms
that they've called mask mouth. Obviously this has to do with wearing the face coverings because of the coronavirus pandemic, and they're saying that people are coming in and having some problems. I love the quote from one dentist that she spoke to. Quote, patients are coming into us like, wow, my breath smells. I need a cleaning so I saw that. I thought it was hilarious, but you know, some of
the reasonings behind it seemed to be generally true. So tell us what you're hearing from dentists about mask mouth. So one of the big things about wearing a mask is that we tend to want to breathe with our mouths open, which is something that you know, typically without a mask on, you wouldn't be doing. So when you start to breathe with your mouth open, it actually makes your mouth get dry and your saliva doesn't cover your teeth the way it should, which is leading to some
of these issues. And what kind of things are they seeing in actual people's mouth. There's issues with gums and cavities. There's a bunch of things they're looking at. You know, it's it's leading to just more general bacteria in the mouth, So that could lead to gum disease, it can lead to cavities, and if it's not taking care of, it could lead to more serious things like, you know, a heart attack, which hopefully messing like that would happen. But
yet it's sort of exacerbating these issues. Why did they come up with that name of mask mouth? So they told me, you know, it's catchy. Of course it has the alliteration, but also it's sort of a play on mess mouth, which most of us are familiar with, but for those of us who are not, it's uh when
people get you know, black and cracked teeth from doing mess. Now, this is an interesting story to me only because obviously throughout the pandemic a lot of things shut down and people weren't doing a lot of their routine checkups, whether it be at the doctor's office or at dentist office, and there has been this conversation about is it safe
to go back to these things. Actually, the w h O, the World Health Organization, just offered some new guidance saying that you should be careful about going to your dentist office and delay some of these routine dental checkups because of what goes on there. Obviously, the dentist is right in your mouth. They use sprays and different things that could kick up virus particles. So when I saw this in my head, I was like, well, dentists want to get back to work. They want people to not put
stuff off. So they're talking about some of these problems that people are experiencing now. But at the same time, the who has conflicting guidance, so it's kind of like, who do you believe in this kind of situation? Totally Yeah, you know, I think it really does just come down to taking really good care of your teeth right now, whether or not it is going into the dentist, but just like take oral hygiene, maybe more seriously than ever.
Sounds like a safe in between. And I think the w h O even offered guidance saying, well, you should do like some type of telemedicine thing, you know, get on a skype call or zoom call with your patients and instruct them on how to properly take care of yourself. So in the dentist that you spoke to about this, what did they say? What can we do to try
to cut down on this mask mouth? Yeah, so they basically were like, simple, try to breathe with your mouth cloth, with your mouth closed, and with your nose um and and things like um, using a tongue scraper. They said, it is really great, um, just to get all that bacteria off. Maybe to brush your teeth more are often during the day, three times a day, and to definitely
slop and use mouthwash very regularly. Are all good things to do, and they also recommended, uh, you know, to maybe cut down on things that dehydrated, so coffee and alcohol. If you can cut that down, it helps keep the saliva in the mouth. Yeah, drinking a lot of water, which you know obviously once you have the mask on, it's tough to do all these things. So it's just kind of be conscious of these slight adjustments that we should be making so you don't get the really smelly
breath out of this. And I mean, I guess it's coming across if dentists are talking about it that way. Yeah, totally, And I mean it does make sense if you're wearing a mask, we all are like suddenly like, wait, does my breath smell like that? Look more aware of it. Suddenly now you're only smelling your own breath exactly. It's like, oh god, Okay. Malkorka Lisaya, features writer at The New York Post, thank you very much for joining us. Of course, thank you so much again. I'm Oscar rom Us and
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