Welcome to Bad Breath 911

Welcome to Bad Breath 911, your source for the information you need to understand the causes of bad breath, how to test yourself for bad breath and how to cure bad breath. We want to make it easy for you to find the information you need to cure bad breath, whether for yourself or someone you know.

Bad breath has affected each and every one of us at some point. Bad breath, otherwise known as halitosis, is embarrassing and can have a negative impact on relationships with coworkers, family, and even strangers you encounter every day. Making matters worse, it can be difficult to detect when you have bad breath unless someone tells you, which most people are not likely to do.

Do you have bad breath?

Has somebody approached you and told you that your breath is offensive?  Do people take a step back from you during conversations?  Do you find people offering gum for no apparent reason?  Each of these scenarios could be an indication that you may be affected by bad breath (halitosis).

The reason that individual bad breath is hard to detect has to do with the fact that the mouth and nose are connected through an opening in the rear portion of the oral cavity (an area known as the soft palate).  Our noses almost always filters out and disregards background odors such as our own breath.  Ever notice how you may encounter a person with particularly strong body odor but that person seems unaware?  This is also due to the nose filtering process mentioned above.  Our noses do not typically, however, filter out the odors of others.

What is one to do upon learning they have bad breath? Many would use gums, mints, mouthwashes, or other store-bought products designed to freshen breath, but quite often these products provide only temporary relief.

How do you determine if you have bad breath?

Since our noses won't accurately indicate the status of our own breath, what methods can we use to determine if we have bad breath?  If you have a significant other or family member you could ask them.  If you are too embarrased to ask them you could ask your health care professional, particularly your dentist or oral hygienist.

Self testing for bad breath

If our noses prevent us from accurately detecting our own bad breath what other options do we have?  One of the better options is to put the odor onto something else.

Grab a fork, spoon, tongue depressor or anything else you can put in your mouth.  Lick that object and then wait a few seconds to allow content to dry and then give it a big sniff?  Do you detect an odor?

Here's another test.  Take that same object and rub it against the far back area of your tongue (pull the object out if you start to invoke your gag reflect).  Now give it another big sniff?  Do you smell anything that's not quite right?

One final test is to use the concave portion of spoon to scrape the surface of the back of your tongue.  Examine the materials that the spoon picked up.  Does anything appear unusual?  It will typically appear as a thick white material.  Now a big sniff.  If you don't detect a foul odor then you may be in the clear.  If it smells a little rotten then others may be smelling that same odor from your breath.

What causes bad breath?

Bad breath is caused by certain foods, inadequate hygiene habits and certain health conditions.  Quite often, one can significantly improve bad breath by improving dental hygiene.  However, if dental hygiene improvements do not improve or eliminate your bad breath, it may be time to visit your dentist or doctor to rule out more serious conditions.

Bad breath is an odor that is typically caused by decaying food particles and various bacterias in your mouth.  Proper oral hygiene, including brushing your teeth and flossing are vital to improving bad breath.  Another important oral hygiene practice is to brush your tongue to reduce the amount of bacteria that lives on your tongue. Since your tongue has millions of filaments, it can capture and retain considerable amounts of very small food particles and bacteria.

You may think that gurgling a mouthfull of mouthwash would fix your bad breath and you would be partially right.  Mouthwash can help freshen your mouth a little and might make that blind date a little less intimidating but instead of fixing your bad breath it only masks the problem.