My view on halitosis

I am new to this forum, although I am not new to the halitosis problem. I have suffered from this for more than a decade; I was humiliated at school, failed to make new friends/ keep old friends, and lost the love of my life. I am sure you are familiar with how desperate it feels, so I am not going to bore you with a long personal story. I am a physician/scientist-in-training myself (by no means I am implying that I have authority on this problem), but given my background I would like to share some thoughts with you.

These are my thoughts on several issues:

1) About claims that promise cures for halitosis:

I am skeptical about dentists who are in private practice and claim that they have come up with a solution. Most dental schools in the United States offer very few microbiology courses during their 4-year training, and those courses are not specific for halitosis. Few dentists have the knowledge to address halitosis adequately. I am very skeptical about claims that 100% of the patients are cured after using a certain treatment. As far as I know, there is no treatment (be it for halitosis or other ailments) in this world that will help every single patient. Some will respond to the treatment, but some won't. Moreover, most of the "success" stories are anecdotal. To be considered scientifically sound, research has to be done in an unbiased manner (preferably no financial implication, but most of the dentists who claim they can help actually make money off the product) and with a statistically significant sample size. Research needs to be published in a peer-reviewed journal and needs to be reproducible by other researchers who follow the method.

2) About Dr. Mel Rosenberg's product

I have never used that myself, though I would say that theoretically it seems the most promising. I am not sure how the 2-phase mouthwash's hydrophilic/hydrophobic properties work on microorganisms (I am not a microbiologist), but if it can successfully lift the microorganisms from the mucosal surface then it should reduce but not eliminate the odor. According to some researchers at the Forsyth Institute of Harvard University, we have more than 700 species of bacteria in our mouths, and the bacterial species in the mouths of people with halitosis are different from those in the mouths of people with fresh breath. There are several issues that should be addressed to understand the problem: 1) Why do the "bad" bacteria manage to colonize and wipe out (or decrease the level of) "good" bacteria? 2) How can we SELECTIVELY remove the "bad" bacteria but keep the "good" ones? At this point, we don't have a clue for these questions. Most of the mouthrinses available today, including Dr. Rosenberg's product, target towards the general bacterial population. Therefore, they may reduce the overall load of bacteria (decreasing BOTH good and bad bacteria) in our mouths but do not solve the fundamental problem (eliminating the bad ones only).

3) What can we do now?

I don't think the scientific community has given much attention to this problem at all. For those who are scientifically inclined and are at college age (or younger), I encourage you to try your hands in science. It's hard, I know, but it's also interesting. Plus, you have a problem that you care about passionately, so do something about it if nobody does it well enough. I am not a microbiologist (yet), but I will pursue that field once opportunities arise. For those who find it difficult to change career, try to organize yourselves (I suppose jimi comes up with this site for this specific purpose) and let the academic scientific community know it's a serious problem that affects a lot of people. In general, people in academia are more interested in solving challenging problems than making money (I say in general, not always). I live in the United States, so I can only talk about what I know here. Try to look up the research being done at dental schools/ microbiology departments of universities and contact those people who work on biofilms/ halitosis (don't send individual e-mails; that's annoying. Let's organize everything here and send ONE letter). Honestly, there are not that many people who work on this problem. Be courteous, no emotional ranting. People really don't listen to us when we are emotional.

4) Kudos to this site!

Thanks to jimi for coming up with this site. I have read through his/her post and I am sure he/she means well. I just want to ask everyone on this forum to stay cool and think scientifically. We have such a humiliating problem and we are emotional, I know, but do try to stay cool. Scientific research is the (only) way to go. Good luck everyone!

I have a link that may be of interest:

http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/02.27/01-breath.html