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Wisdom Teeth Extraction Cured My Nasal Bad Breath

Tell us your story with bad breath
Larc400
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Post by Larc400 »

Hi again Cured :) ...a couple of more questions:

1) When you say yours were impacted, does this mean they were below the gum line, or sticking up a bit, but at an odd angle?

2) Did you ever have any infection in the wisdom teeth area, as a result of the bacterial collections there..?


I guess maybe the wisdoms are not the problem for me: all 4 are grown out properly. There are tiny flaps etc but nothing major. Still, I'm interested to learn more...

It's interesting that your tongue never had an odour though. Maybe that's what differentiate your case from many others. Mine always stink, only rarely is it below a 2 out of 5 score for stench. More common is a score of 3-4...


All the best O:)


Cured
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Post by Cured »

Larc400 wrote:1) When you say yours were impacted, does this mean they were below the gum line, or sticking up a bit, but at an odd angle?
I don't know the full extent of my wisdom teeth impactions because I never examined them closely, and don't have a copy of my dental x-ray handy to look at (though now that I think about it, it'd be good to get a copy from my dentist so I could be more descriptive for people).

I know all four were impacted to some degree (and by "impacted" I mean either unerupted below the gum line or partially erupted--I don't believe any were angled too far from the vertical). I also recall the second ENT I saw remarking that my wisdom teeth sat sky high in my oral cavity, very close to my maxillary sinuses. My dentist also told me for certain that my lower right one was "exposed", that is, partially erupted. When I asked him how effectively one could clean these kinds of teeth with brushing and flossing, his one word answer was: "impossible!". That sealed the deal for me as far as getting them out.

And after getting them out, as I had stated in my original post, the cheesy/foot odor that used to be in my nose regularly returned with a vengeance, and a truly gagworthy pungency that bore little resemblance with the nastiness of the old one by comparison. Based on where I could sense it coming from, I do believe it retrospect that it was that exposed wisdom tooth that was the main culprit (though the others may have certainly played a role, and I could have been off).
2) Did you ever have any infection in the wisdom teeth area, as a result of the bacterial collections there..?
To the best of my knowlege, and perhaps surprisingly, no. Pericoronitis is supposedly a nasty infection that causes noticeable swelling and pain. I never had such symptoms, though the odor was obviously always there. Why didn't develop into a full-blown infection? I don't know. Perhaps I did have a minor, chronic infection that never manifested any of the major symptoms.
I guess maybe the wisdoms are not the problem for me: all 4 are grown out properly. There are tiny flaps etc but nothing major. Still, I'm interested to learn more...
Yes, and I should emphasize to members here that wisdom teeth are probably only possibly the culprit of your bad breath if they're impacted. If they're fully erupted and in normal anatomical position, getting them out probably won't improve your breath. But my gray-haired oral surgeon who had 35 years of experience with wisdom teeth didn't believe my breath would improve with extracting them--even being impacted--either--but he was dead wrong!

This is why I won't discourage people to give extracting them a try, even if they're fully erupted and normally positioned.
It's interesting that your tongue never had an odour though. Maybe that's what differentiate your case from many others. Mine always stink, only rarely is it below a 2 out of 5 score for stench. More common is a score of 3-4...
I never said my tongue never had an odor, only that I always failed to detect it with any scratch-and-sniff or lick-and-sniff crude type of test. For a good while I actually believed the second breath odor I suffered from (which as I stated previously I can only describe as a musty, stinky water, wet wood-like odor that was very like the smell of the mist one produces with a deep, hard sneeze) originated from the back of my tongue.

The way I would always seem to detect both the cheesy and sneezy odors best was by tilting my head back and hitting it repeatedly against the back of my neck (it seems funny, I know, but that's what worked!). I would sometimes do this after brushing my teeth as one of my various experimentations in trying to identify the source of my problem. The sneezy odor would only be faintly detectable at the point, if at all, but I could produce it by doing one round of tongue scraping and then doing the tilt test again. After a second and further rounds of tongue scraping it would elude me again.

Naturally, I thought the brushing and first round of scraping were stirring up the odor-causing bacteria on the back of my tongue (hence causing release of the odor), and the successive rounds were getting rid of that bacteria. So I got to doing tongue scraping say 3-4 times a week, but both odors continued to plague me and nothing ever changed.

That was until God hit me in the head with the metaphoric brick that made me think to get my wisdom teeth out and I had them out (certainly it wasn't going to come from any dentist or ENT).

After getting them out, I could detect immediate improvement as I said, but I still occasionally got around to doing my routine of brushing, tilt test, scraping, tilt test, scraping etc. Up until about two weeks ago I could still produce that sneezy odor with that routine every now and then. But now that the upper left socket has almost completely closed up with new gum tissue (I can barely even feel an indentation there anymore) the sneezy odor has completely disappeared and I can no longer produce it at all, no matter how hard I brush, floss or scrape.

Did my tongue have anything to do with it when it was around? Apparently not, since it vanished but my tongue remains the same as ever, right? Now that will make you wonder, then, why I could seemingly stir up the odor by scraping my tongue? The answer is: I haven't the foggiest idea! Logic dictates there must have been some connection, but I simply can't fathom all that was going on there on a microscopic level with microbes transferring around the mouth and whatnot.

But on second thought, brushing does leave a film on the tongue, not matter how hard we gargle afterwards. Was my brushing transferring bacteria from the gum around my wisdom tooth to the back of my tongue, which I was then stirring up with scraping? It could be...but that would only show how difficult it is to pinpoint the exact source of bad brath, even if one believes he or she is certain.

The moral is that I too, at one point, blamed my tongue (among many other things) for what ailed my wisdom teeth.

Hope this helps...
Cured
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Post by Cured »

Jimi wrote:nice post, I am glad you ar almost cured, I only have one wisdom toosh that has no pockets.

Yes gums might be the big factor but how to cur it I dont know, my gums are healthy no pockets at all
Greetings Jimi,

It's not so much about pockets per se. Yes, at least one of my wisdom teeth had gum pockets surrounding it, but the main issue is if the teeth are impacted or not.

When the tooth is impacted, or only partially erupted, as wisdom teeth often are, depending on how far beyond the gum line the tooth takes position (if at all), it will leave a significantly deep crevice between the gum and itself.

No matter how tight the space, with the tooth sunk that far below or above the gumline food debris will eventually find its way in there. When you try to brush you will pass over the crevice with the brush and scrape the very top tartar off, but not reach the stuff deeper in..

And when you try to floss it is difficult enough to reach that far back in the first place, and in the second it is nearly impossible because with the tooth mostly sunk in the gum there's little for the floss string to hook on to, unlike with fully erupted teeth. Not even the dentist can really clean the area effectively with a standard cleaning.

The result is food debris stays there for months and years, eventually causing chronic bad breath that continually intensifies over time the longer the food sits there.

Antiseptic mouthwashes will penetrate the crevice to kill the bacteria, but with the food debris still there, it will grow back within a short time and you're back to square one with bad breath.

This is why no attempt at oral hygeine will get rid of the bad breath, and only extracting the tooth will do.

I might add that in reflecting back on my experience, age also plays a factor in that wisdom teeth erupt roughly in one's late teen years or thereabouts, so if they erupted only partially (impacted), this is about the time one would expect to develop the chronic bad breath associated with this condition (and this is exactly when I began my battles with chronic halitosis, where as I was perfectly fine before).

Of course I am not advocating extracting your wisdom tooth if that's not what you believe to be the cause. I just realized that I failed to clarify in my original post regarding pockets that may form as a result of the trapped bacteria, versus what the source of the problem truly is.

Cheers...
Jimi Stein
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Post by Jimi Stein »

THat is a very good theory, yes I have only 1 wisdom tooth left, the top 2 were extracted and were really small with almost no root, this one was impacted for long time and now it seems to grow out, the one on the left bottom never growed out, I think I dont have it at all. But for sure you would smell something in there if yu poke around.
What about root canals that are infested with bacterias, and bridges ....

I am not sure this might be the problem for all of us. But it would be cool if it would be

keep us updated if your bb went away totally and do you have any root canals or bridges?
yeagermeister
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Post by yeagermeister »

Cured, do you remember when your bad breath began? The way you describe your odor is identical to mine, but my odor began well before my wisdom teeth came in. I really curious to see if I should look in this direction.
Cured
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Post by Cured »

Jimi wrote:keep us updated if your bb went away totally and do you have any root canals or bridges?
Hey Jimi,

I have no bridges, and one crown capping a root canaled tooth...

I may come back and post an update in a few more months...I'm kind of in an interesting spot right now because, as I said, my breath has improved nearly 100%, and I no longer get the cheesy or sneeze-like breath odors at all, only the foul dental smell that resulted directly from the extraction, and even that has been weakening significantly week by week (it's even improved in the few days since my original post to being barely detectable, and then only sometimes). So I feel on the brink of being out of the woods, and am slowly regaining my confidence with people as a result.

Considering how often I've gotten my hopes up and been let down in the past, during the few weeks after the extraction I was paranoid that my breath would return to its former condition as the inflammation from the surgery settled, but it never has up to this point. The fear isn't totally gone yet, but it's diminishing continuously day by day.

Today (May 29th) will mark the critical 90 days mark since the extraction.
Humble
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Wisdom Teeth Removal

Post by Humble »

Hi, I am a new member. Greetings to everyone. I have an appointment in several weeks to remove my Wisdom teeth. I am 38 years old and currently have all of my Wisdom teeth. I believe that they may be the culprit for my breath issues. I began having an issue about 7 years ago and went to my dentist. I discussed the issue with him. He advised that I " brush my gums". I was stunned that he didn't offer any other course of treatment. Since this time, I have used the Therabreath products, which are a temporary fix. Within an hour, the problem returns. I hope and pray that after the removal of my Wisdom teeth, I can attempt to get a dental treatment and reduce or eradicate the problem. As many of you know, it is a painful thing to deal with.
Cured
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Post by Cured »

yeagermeister wrote:Cured, do you remember when your bad breath began? The way you describe your odor is identical to mine, but my odor began well before my wisdom teeth came in. I really curious to see if I should look in this direction.
My bad breath began about the summer after I graduated high school when I turned 18, and during the first semester of college. It would annoy people only every so often, so I didn't make that big a deal about it at first, then as it grew worse first misattributed it to chronic sinusitis (which I don't really have, as it turns out), and so believed there was little I could do. I saw my ENT about it the first time then, complained of a foul nose odor/breath and was misdiagnosed with allergic rhinitis and put on allergy medication (which did diddly squat).

I didn't return after that because I didn't believe much of anything could be done about it, and during the next few years it slowly, but surely began to take control of my life. One of the major psychological damages that I (unfortunately) allowed it to inflict on me was that whenever people would get near me or I'd have to talk to people I'd start taking deep breaths in, trying to hide it. It was a totally unconscious, nervous reaction that I could never control. But yet again, somehow I managed to live like this, most likely because I'm a pretty, shy, introverted person by nature who never got out of the house much.

That stage lasted about two years or so before I could gain conscious control over my breathing and stop reacting that way. But in turn people could now actually smell my breath when I talked and it became a real problem. It seemed to get slowly worse over the last 3-4 years until my life became so crippled socially that I could no longer reasonably take part in any social activities besides the necessary (that is, work or school), and even those became nightmares.

As far as age, I'm at a loss as to what to tell you. I can only judge by my case, but my wisdom teeth had been suggested for extraction as early as my last visits to my pediatric dentist at about age 12 or so if that helps at all. She probably noted it just to have them out, and only once, but I certainly wish I'd have gotten them out soon after then and not now at age 26.

It doesn't necessarily have to be wisdom teeth either. Any tooth (including 2nd molars) has the potential to cause this type of problem if it is impacted enough to keep food debris out of cleaning reach. The overwhelming majority of time it is the wisdoms that fall susceptible to this, but it's not a strict rule. You may also consider that wisdom teeth take lots of time to come in.

Now, let's be clear that I don't advocate pulling teeth for just any reason. I am glad to answer any questions anyone has about my case, but only they can judge how much it relates to theirs, if at all. Certainly nobody should be thinking wisdom teeth who has never had a tonsillectomy or adenoidectomy, as these are much, much likelier to resolve the problem.

A big motivator for me in sharing my story was because I believed the cause of my bad breath and its resolution was so unlikely and/or rare, that only the most desperate person on the planet who was at their wit's final end and had tried every other conventional treatment an ENT or dentist had to offer might benefit from it as just another idea to add to the list to try. There may be many here who find it doesn't match up against their case at all, or simply aren't that desperate yet and wish to explore other causes first. It's something I expect and fully understand, and that's why I'll continue to do my best to try to answer any questions anybody has.

I hope this helps and best of luck...
sean1979
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went to dentist

Post by sean1979 »

So I saw the dentist today and he recommended I don't extract my wisdom teeth out. He gave me good reasons not to as my wisdom teeth were replacement molars for the second molars I had removed prior to getting my braces.I think he thought I was crazy. He told me that's like amputating a foot off because it's broken. What an analogy...Although I think I would amputate my foot if it stunk like my breath. He was confidently positive the extraction would not resolve my problem. Instead, he told me it would lead to more problems like my face becoming disfigured like old people with no teeth and chewing would be more difficult. This sounds ridiculous. I'm beginning to wonder if dentists are reluctant to perform extractions as it is kind of nasty if you think about it.

I tried convincing him to take them out, but he just made me feel like a psychologically disturbed person which made me less confident about telling him to go ahead and just extract my teeth damn it. So he recommends me I see a periodontist and prescribes me this antibacterial rinse. I felt demoralized. I didn't have the guts to just tell him to extract the teeth.

I think it's kind of funny he thinks I need to keep the teeth because the top two wisdom teeth are not even aligned and are protruding outwards and are barely touching the bottom teeth when I chew. I don't even need them. I should have gave him the analogy that the teeth are like extra feet that I don't need.

What should I do? The top two like I said are protruding outwards and it's difficult to clean. It seems useless to keep them. The bottom two look like regular molars and are aligned properly. I think the bottom two are not the source of my bb, but dentist told me I would have to take them out as well if I wanted to take out the top two because the bottom two would move upwards because it has nothing to bite against.

Cured, how many molars do you have now?
Larc400
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Post by Larc400 »

Even if they're no bb experts, I think you should put a bit of trust in your dentist, if he strongly advices you not to take them out.

If, when flossing etc, really deep, in that area, you don't get a strong scent, I think it's very unlikely the wisdom teeth are the problem, especially if they're not impacted. He's probably right it would affect your jawline etc too.

There's gotta be a way for us to find out if the wisdoms are the problem, without actually taking them out. Maybe with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) they can see if there's some abscess/bacterial collection in those areas?

One thing that is interesting is the connection with the onset of bb (often puberty) and the wisdoms teeth growing out (also puberty)...

8-[
Cured
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Re: went to dentist

Post by Cured »

sean1979 wrote:Cured, how many molars do you have now?
I now have eight, the first and second on both sides of each row. I had all twelve before the extraction.
Jimi Stein
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Post by Jimi Stein »

Larc400 wrote:Even if they're no bb experts, I think you should put a bit of trust in your dentist, if he strongly advices you not to take them out.

If, when flossing etc, really deep, in that area, you don't get a strong scent, I think it's very unlikely the wisdom teeth are the problem, especially if they're not impacted. He's probably right it would affect your jawline etc too.

There's gotta be a way for us to find out if the wisdoms are the problem, without actually taking them out. Maybe with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) they can see if there's some abscess/bacterial collection in those areas?

One thing that is interesting is the connection with the onset of bb (often puberty) and the wisdoms teeth growing out (also puberty)...

8-[
You forgot to ask him if he really has abad breath?
daveparker
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Post by daveparker »

Well last time my dentist told me that their isn't enough room for my wisdom teeth and eventually they will cause problems, so I might get them removed and pray that they are the cause of my bb, wow i can't imagine myself without this problem, it would be a dream come true.
tdonline
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Post by tdonline »

Cured, how is your BB situation now? Did the teeth extraction solve the problem for good?

I was recently at the dentist and of course, was told I didn't have bad breath. I was also told that I have all my wisdom teeth and that everything looked good. I had braces in high school and other teeth were taken out to make room for the remaining teeth to move. As far as I can tell my wisdom teeth aren't impacted. Can wisdom teeth that have come up fairly straight still be a problem?
Cured
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Post by Cured »

tdonline wrote:Cured, how is your BB situation now? Did the teeth extraction solve the problem for good?
My situation is generally better by the week. As for solving the problem permanently the jury is still officially out as I believe that to be closely tied to the empty sockets closing up fully and the bottom ones are still not fully sealed up.

At nearly five months after extraction I would say I'm about 90-95% better--better to the point where I don't let it bother me anymore even if I sense one or two small reactions to my breath a day (which is about where my situation is right now). At almost no time in the day can I ever detect an odor on my breath or in my nose anymore.

The toughest part of it all is the tortorous waiting game of watching those sockets heal and the gum remold itself. As I described it to another member, the reduction in foul breath odor has not been a line graph with a steep 100 to 0 straight descent as I anticipated but a gradual, long-term descent with hills and valleys along the way. Some days those hills can really give you heartache and make you wonder whether you are really getting better at all, but their frequency and severity continues to lessen by the month.

I mean I can feel it anatomically just by how when I speak with my mouth in certain positions I can barely detect any odor whereas pre-extraction those same positions would have released humiliation I cannot describe, that the odor is helplessly, albeit slowly, dying by strangulation but fighting with life and limb for every last bad breath. Eventually, it will be completely smothered, but it's such an unconscionably gradual process that I'm becoming accustomed to social activity again in such a way that by the time it disappears completely I feel as though I will honestly have forgotten I ever had such a problem (though I would remember it in my past of course).

I'll let everyone know how I make out when those bottom sockets fully seal up...
I was recently at the dentist and of course, was told I didn't have bad breath. I was also told that I have all my wisdom teeth and that everything looked good. I had braces in high school and other teeth were taken out to make room for the remaining teeth to move. As far as I can tell my wisdom teeth aren't impacted. Can wisdom teeth that have come up fairly straight still be a problem?
I don't know how straight wisdom teeth can come in before one could rule them out as a problem. But I was always told too by my dentist that my gums and teeth looked very good, and that I just needed to brush and floss regularly. Go figure...
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