No matter how innocuous saliva is, it is pretty useful. It helps to moisten and cleanse our mouths as well as aids us in digesting food. Saliva also helps prevent infection by limiting bacterial growth in the mouth. With proper saliva production, your dental and oral health will also be saved since saliva helps prevent tooth decay by neutralizing acids produced by bacteria. The best thing is, it enhances our ability to taste food.

Without saliva, our mouths are going to feel dry all the time, and we will be eating food purely for sustenance. After all, food won’t please us if we can’t appreciate its taste. This seems like such an impossibility. After all, saliva is always present. However, this is not true for everyone in the world.

Xerostomia—more commonly known as dry mouth—is a real condition that happens to people sometimes as a side effect of various medications. For this reason, the salivary glands present in the mouth will be unable to produce enough saliva to keep the mouth wet. This is why your mouth will feel dry and uncomfortable. You will feel thirsty even if you just drank. Decreased saliva production in the mouth can range from being merely a nuisance to something that impacts your overall general health in a big way, as well as your oral and dental health.

CAUSES OF DRY MOUTH

Side Effects

Medication

Medication used to treat or prevent the symptoms for depression, allergies, pain, anxiety, colds, epilepsy, acne, hypertension, obesity, diarrhea, asthma, nausea, psychotic disorders, and Parkinson’s often cause dry mouth as a side effect. And it does not matter whether it’s prescription or over-counter drugs, too. Even sedatives can cause dry mouth to patients.

Disease and Infection

Dry mouth can also be caused by medical conditions like HIV/AIDS, Sjögren’s syndrome, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer’s disease, anemia, rheumatoid arthritis, stroke, mumps, and Parkinson’s disease. Apart from their usual symptoms, these medication issues also have dry mouth as a side effect.

Old Age

Older people usually experience dry mouth when they get to a certain age. The changes in their bodies as they age affect their ability to process medication. Added to that is the fact that most older people have inadequate nutrition as well as long-term health problems, which aggravates causes dry mouth as much as the next reason.

Nerve damage

A patient who has nerve damage due to an injury or surgery can also look forward to dry mouth as one of its symptoms, especially if he has severe damage to the neck and head area.

Dehydration

Patients who have a high fever, vomiting, excessive sweating, diarrhea, burns, and blood loss can also have dry mouth as one of its symptoms. After all, these conditions usually lead to dehydration, which is the main cause of dry mouth.

Surgical removal of the salivary glands

Parotidectomy is a procedure where surgeons remove the parotid, which is the largest salivary gland. This is usually done to treat a tumor, a chronic infection, or a blocked gland.

Intense Treatment

Chemotherapy is an intense cancer treatment, and it usually causes damage to the salivary glands due to radiation. In addition, chemotherapy drugs also change the nature and production of saliva. The radiation treatments targeted to your head and neck damage salivary glands and cause a marked decrease in saliva production. Fortunately, the normal salivary flow will return after treatment is completed, however.

Lifestyle

Smoking, alcohol overdrinking, and drugs can also aggravate your salivary glands and cause them to produce less and less saliva. Addicts, especially, are known for their “meth mouth”. It’s one of the first things doctors and nurses check for drug use.

SYMPTOMS

The symptoms of dry mouth include the following:

• A dry and sticky feeling inside your mouth
• A thirst that seems unquenchable
• Sores or split skin in the mouth
• Cracked lips
• Dry throat
• Tingling sensation on the tongue
• Dry and red tongue
• Speaking, tasting, chewing, and swallowing problems
• Hoarse voice and sore throat
• Dry nasal passages
• Bad breath

TREATMENT

Managing the cause

The treatment of dry mouth depends on the cause. If you wish for this condition to be truly treated, you have to go after the cause and not just the symptom. This is why it is imperative to identify the cause first, before attempting to correct it. This means that if you think your dry mouth is caused by a certain medication you’re taking, for example, talk to your doctor. The doctor will either adjust your dosage or switch you to a completely new drug that purportedly doesn’t cause dry mouth.

If, however, there’s a medical condition in the equation and it causes dry mouth, treatment will then focus on ways to increase saliva flow.

Preventing tooth decay 

Apart from helping you chew, swallow, and digest food and saliva can also be considered a natural mouth cleanser. Frankly speaking, without it, tooth decay and gum disease will probably descend on your teeth like the plague. This is why you need to be extra careful about your oral habits. After all, you need to fight both tooth decay and gum disease.

Increasing the flow of saliva

To increase the flow of saliva in your mouth, the doctor will likely prescribe an oral rinse to restore the moisture in your mouth. In addition, he also probably recommends other over-the-counter products like toothpaste, mouthwashes, and moisturizing gels to treat dry mouth. If that doesn’t help, they can also prescribe Salagen or Evoxac—the former being a form of medication that boosts saliva production. The latter is an FDA-approved medication that treats dry mouth in people with Sjögren’s syndrome.

Other more promising new treatments are also currently being studied. Several scientists have been working on ways to repair salivary glands that have been damaged. They’ve also been trying to develop an artificial salivary gland that can be implanted into the body. If these ventures and experiments succeed, dry mouth will be a problem no more for people who have long been suffering from it.