Celebrities continue smoking despite risk of bad breath

Despite the fact that smoking is known to cause terrible halitosis, many celebrities continue to pick up the habit, tarnishing their image and their breath. Smoking may cause many health complications, but stars in image-obsessed Hollywood may find the bad breath caused by tobacco to be the most harmful to their careers.

Jessica Alba is one inveterate smoker who has had a difficult time kicking the habit. She was recently spotted while on vacation in France lighting up several times. She was sighted with a cigarette while at an al fresco café, walking down the street and later with husband Cash Warren, according to London's Daily Mail.

Alba has made no apologies in the past about her smoking habit. She told the New York Post following a New Year's Eve party in 2003 that her resolution was "To eat, drink and smoke as much as possible."

Reports said that she had quit during her recent pregnancy, but she appears to have picked the habit back up.

Everyone knows the health implications of smoking so I won't bore you with a health class-style account of all the damage tobacco does to the body. However, fewer people are aware of the fact that smoking produces extremely bad breath. Here are some of the reasons:

While cigarettes have many chemicals that may produce unpleasant odors, the main culprit is nicotine. This sticky substance is responsible for tobacco's addictive quality, and it is also the primary cause of bad breath. The reason is because once it is inhaled into the mouth, it becomes lodged on oral surfaces. Because it is so sticky, it can be difficult to remove with brushing alone. And because it smells so bad, smokers often had trouble getting rid of their halitosis.

To make matters worse, smoking dries out the mouth. Xerostomia, the technical name for dry mouth, is known as a prime contributor to bad breath independent of smoking. The reason is that a dry mouth serves as an excellent breeding ground for many odor-causing bacteria. Saliva serves to sweep these microbes out of the mouth, and in its absence they are free to reproduce.

While quitting the habit may help you fix your bad breath problem, many people have a difficult time with the task. If you are concerned about halitosis while you are in the process of quitting, you may want to check out TheraBreath's specialty breath freshening products.