In which way does the gut flora affect breath?

[aues]

Hello,

How does the gut/colon flora affect breath?

Couldn't find an explanation.

[halitosisux]

Gut bacteria produce chemicals which get absorbed into the bloodstream, even in healthy people.

TMAU is an example of such a process, but where the body has a diminished ability to convert the chemical trimethylamine (made by the gut bacteria) into an odourless form.

So, very similar processes could be going on with other chemicals and diminished abilities to process chemicals in the bloodstream

[aues]

And the tongue releases these chemicals?
How to explain tongue coating in this case?

[halitosisux]

In the case of TMAU, trimethyamine is secreted in saliva and mucus. I don't know whether the main area of the tongue itself secretes anything - but it probably does in ancient forms of medicine and pseudo science where it's appearence is supposed to tell a lot about the condition of the body.

Many of the microorganisms of the mouth are also found in the gut and vice versa. In the same way that certain conditions in the mouth can lead to an excessive amount of bacterial activity and production of VSCs and odour above the cognitive threshold (gum disease, sinusitis, etc), in some people it may have nothing whatsoever to do with anything going on in particular with the mouth, nose or throat. VSCs or other similar bad smelling chemicals that oral bacteria are capable of producing in most cases of bad breath, could be getting produced in the gut and finding their way via this bloodborne pathway.

Aydinmur, who probably knows everything there is to know about the causes of bad breath and the reseach that's been done on the subject, did not know whether there existed any reseach made on samples of pure saliva, to see whether it already contained VSCs before it gets secreted into the mouth - Rather an important thing to know really.

These VSCs which oral (and gut?) bacteria are able to produce are actually toxic. If they getting into the bloodstream at sufficient concentrations they could potentially cause a lot of bad symptoms. This is just another fact to consider.

Tongue coatings, as far as I know, are dead cells, bacterial plaque (biofilm structures), similar to that which grows on tooth surfaces, and oral debris. It's no coincidence that recently formed tooth plaque is mostly odourless, and so is a tongue coating if you scrape some off certain cleaner areas of the tongue.

Some people have clearly visible thick white coating and zero bad breath. That might be simply because they have more favourable oral bacterial species or they just have a higher cell sloughing rate resulting in nothing more than a visibly thicker coating. But usually, a coating is associated with bad breath, probably because there is more bacterial activity going on underneith the coating, and then more of this plaque gets to form. Exactly the same thing might also apply to the formation of tonsil stones.