Dry mouth: Symptoms, Causes and Treatment

Dry mouth, also known as xerostomia, is a condition in which the salivary glands of your mouth do not produce enough saliva to keep your mouth wet. There can be different reasons for dry mouth that could include certain health conditions, medications, or simply bad oral habits. The alarming aspect of this condition is that it can lead to several oral health conditions which can further contribute in the worsening of overall health.

Symptoms of dry mouth

The symptoms of dry mouth are quite prominent and you will not need to get your oral cavity analyzed by dentist specifically to check if you have a dry mouth. You will just have to know about the symptoms. As a matter of fact, you will be able to tell it on your own that you have a dry mouth if you suffer through the symptoms related to it. The symptoms of dry mouth may include:

• Feeling of stickiness and dryness in your mouth
• Thick and stingy saliva
• Difficulty in speaking, chewing and swallowing
• Bad breath
• Sore through due to dryness
• Dry tongue with grooves
• Difficulty in wearing dentures
• Change in the overall taste of the mouth

After noticing any of symptoms mentioned above, you will need to visit the dentist.

Major reasons for dry mouth

When you salivary glands stop working, you get the dry mouth. The inability of ducts to drain saliva from glands into the mouth is another reason for dry mouth. Some major reasons of dry mouth may include the following.

• There are certain medications which can result in dry mouth. The most common are the ones that are used to treat depression, high blood pressure and anxiety. Decongestants, muscle relaxants, antihistamines and painkillers can also slow down the production of saliva.
• With aging, different systems of the body lose functionality. The system which makes salivary glands to work is also included in the ones that get affected in this regard.
• Getting cancer treatment can also dry up your mouth. Chemotherapy and laser treatments targeted at the head and neck area can make the salivary glands to stop working.
• If you smoke or consume alcohol, you will feel that your mouth is running out of saliva. The reason is that both of these habits can result in serious kind of nerve damage in the oral cavity, leading to the failure of a lot of systems.

Treatment and prevention

The first thing that you have to do is to make sure that you drink plenty of water to keep your mouth wet. But this is not the treatment if you are suffering from the chronic dryness of mouth. You will need to get your oral cavity analyzed by your dentist. If it is due to medications, your doctor may be able to prescribe you thee drugs which wouldn’t hamper the functions of salivary glands. Moreover, you can also get medications to generate saliva in your mouth. You need to get it prescribed by your dentist.