Bridget McNulty

How does your breath smell in the morning?

// August 12th, 2008 // Decisions, Life (and the living of it)

Yes, it’s a serious question.

I went to a talk last week that was all about preservatives in food and beauty products, and how they’re the devil, and then in the middle of the talk she says, almost as an ‘of course, everyone knows this!’ that your body detoxes overnight. So if you wake up with bad breath it’s because you’re detoxing from whatever you ate the day before.

This is fascinating! Was she right? Does everyone except me know this?

The reason I find it so interesting is not that I have a bad breath problem (I promise!) but that it means you can monitor your body’s response to food by how you feel when you wake up the next morning. That sounds obvious, but I don’t think it is. Think back to what you ate yesterday, and how you felt this morning. Think back to a day you gorged on junk food, and how you felt (and smelt) the next morning. I think there’s a direct correlation here…

I suppose what I like about this idea is that it’s another tool to tap into attaining wellness. There are all the obvious things, like exercising and monitoring how your body looks, trying to drink enough water and monitoring how your skin looks, but here’s a no-nonsense approach that says, ‘Hey, I don’t like what you ate yesterday. I’m spewing it out while you sleep.’

And I think that’s pretty cool.

What’s so funny about eating right is that we all know what to do. We all know the fruit, vegetables, water, not a lot of red meat or carbs or saturated fat shtick. But, like cigarette smokers ignoring their lungs, we go back for more of the delicious bad stuff… I think it’s a habit that needs some exploration, what about you?

Until then, eat well! Be well! Smell well.