What's worked for me ... warning - long post!

[Poupidou]

Hi.

This post is definitely not going to help everybody. Possibly, it will help nobody! It's just my personal story, from which people are welcome to draw advice/methods should they wish to.

First off, I do not naturally have AWFUL breath. What I've found is that I seem to develop a breath odour quicker than others do, and a stronger breath odour than others' at that. I had little idea why this might be, until around two weeks ago when I started seriously investigating my mouth and all therein, because it was really starting to get on my nerves, and had been progressively growing worse for years.

I think my problem with my breath really started when I was around 16 years old (I'm 24 now). My breath odour has never been chronically strong (I can't fill rooms or smell myself when I talk), but I was always aware when it smelt, due to a bad taste in my mouth and various other factors.

I know that when it smelt, which was probably 95% of the time, it smelt quite unpleasant.

I have really good teeth and gums. I've never had a filling or any sort of dental procedure, and my teeth are straight and a nice colour. I see a dentist every six months who has never noted any problem with me - and never noticed the smell of my breath, because after brushing, I could usually stay fresh for about an hour. So I fooled him every time.

People who think that having good teeth naturally entitles you to good breath are both a. ignorant and b. annoying. The same applies to those who believe anyone whose breath smells must not follow a good oral hygiene routine. I looked after my mouth really well and STILL I kept developing this idiotic smell, no matter how much I brushed, scraped, flossed, gargled and scrubbed. So I embarked upon a mission to get to the root of my problem, and here's what I have discovered:

- I have a fairly dry mouth, and definitely need to drink my 8 glasses of water a day (I was previously drinking around 3 a day or even less - bad I know).
- I have long tongue papillae. Some people are lucky enough to have smooth tongues, but I'm a Yeti by comparison.
- I have a partially erupted wisdom tooth - as others have said on here, this is ABSOLUTELY something worth investigating.

The first two problems were easy enough to remedy. Drinking lots of water is only going to do you good (as long as you're not drowning yourself with the stuff) and it really helps with dryness-induced odour. As for the tongue, I just make sure I'm extra vigilant when cleaning it - Orabrush, followed by a good scrub with a manual toothbrush and toothpaste, followed again by the Orabrush, and finished up with a spot of Tung Gel on a Tung Brush (rinsing in between these steps of course).

I found very quickly that if I did this morning and evening, and gave my tongue a quick scrub after meals, I could keep it really clean. Previously, although I used an Orabrush, it would develop a fairly noticeable coating at the back and in two strips along the sides. And it stank. Even more so if I ate, and the food debris got stuck to the existing coating for all those stupid bacteria to enjoy further.

But what I really wanted to know was WHY my tongue stank. Obviously, there was an overgrowth of bacteria in my mouth for some reason, which was allowing these microbes to feast so indulgently on my poor tongue and make me pong. Enter my wisdom tooth.

As I said before, my problems started when I was about 16 - the exact same time my wisdom teeth began to erupt. First it was the upper ones, which took a couple of years to come through ... I hate to think of all the rubbish they were trapping until they finally erupted entirely. Around 2008, my left lower wisdom tooth began to appear. This is when I started to notice that if I touched the gum covering it, my finger would smell awful. I got by with the use of interdental brushes, inserting one into the space and moving it around a bit (bringing it out smelling like death) - with hindsight, this probably didn't help my breath much at all, but at the time I didn't realise that the bacteria feeding on the food trap of my wisdom tooth were causing all the other problems in my mouth. Eventually, that tooth came through too and I was acceptable ... for a while ...

This last one, on the right side of my jaw, is the worst. It's been sitting in the same position now for at least two years, with a piece of gum covering it. There are a couple of reasons why I can be sure it was definitely this tooth that was causing my bad breath. Firstly, the coating and bad taste on my tongue was far worse on this side. I also recently managed to pull almost 30 tiny tonsil stones, around poppy seed size, out of a crypt behind my right tonsil. I got two out of the left one. And I know this wisdom tooth seeping its sewage into my mouth and down my throat all the time is to blame!

Wisdom teeth are horrible. Even if yours are fully erupted, if you suspect they may be trapping food and other gunge, consider having them removed. I should be getting all of mine out sometime this year, and I can't wait. Until then, I'm using my Panasonic EW-DJ40 oral irrigator to flush out the space every day, sometimes two, three, even four times a day. I've been doing all this now for around two weeks, and it's really working. The smell that comes from that tooth when irrigating, however, is inhuman, but getting it out at least means other people won't have to smell it. I am so looking forward to having all four of my wisdom teeth pulled so I can finally relax.

[halitosisux]

Thank you for sharing this. Your story sounds so incredibly similar to mine.

I also did not fill rooms or smell lingering odour, but I could get whiffs directly coming from my mouth using various rebound techniques. Even though the back of my tongue smelled very strongly I never had any reason to believe I had any odour coming from my nose.

My breath could also stay reasonably acceptable for about an hour on good days. It was always guaranteed to become sewage in my mouth eventually though, no matter what. Except towards the end when I started making real effort to clean out the wisdom tooth area.

I dont know by how much true tongue papillae depth varies between people. If I let my tongue dry out and then try to see how long mine are, I'm also a Yeti. A tongue may look smooth when it doesn't have much of a coating and nice and moist, but I think you'll find that everyone's tongue has roughly the same length of actual blood-filled part of the papillae.

I used to have names for various ideas and theories I thought about. One I called the drainpipe theory. Normally a drainpipe doesn't cause odour, even though it's teeming with germs. But, if there's a blockage or abnormality then it can easily start to smell and cause the whole system to smell. This is how easily a tooth or a sinus infection can lead to the whole area smelling bad.

I'm really fascinated to hear how your tongue coating and taste is worse on the same side as this wisdom tooth. While I still had tonsils it was the same side as my wisdom tooth which always seemed to have the stones and certainly the worst odour. My left tonsil actually smelled quite nice in comparison. Like a clean breath kind of smell.

I never thought to use an irrigator on my wisdom tooth, but I did improvise a syringe, which helped, but nothing like as much as the extraction finally did.

I wish you all the best when you finally get them removed. I hope my story has inspired you and given you plenty to be encouraged about. A lot of people have taken out their wisdom teeth without any improvement, but if it's not the underlying cause then that's unfortunately not going to do anything. Try to keep researching in the meantime so that you have plenty to keep trying incase of failures and disappointments. Try to keep hopeful all the time because this problem is usually curable and your only hope is through trial and error and an open mind to every possibility.

[Poupidou]

Hello. Thanks for replying.

I too use a rebound technique. Don't know what yours are but mine is probably too silly to describe in detail here - suffice to say, I have to make a face like a monkey ...

I've read somewhere that some people do have longer papillae than others. I think it just means that basically you have a rougher surface to your tongue - and therefore a much higher potential for bad breath unless you keep the area as clean as you can. It's been very refreshing for me to discover that even then, if you have an imbalance of bacteria in your mouth that favour the Dark Side, your tongue will still breed vast colonies of the little swines no matter how much you clean it.

Imagine thousands of Stormtroopers marching round a vast oral cavity. That's me. I guess that would make Darth Vader my wisdom tooth ... so if he goes, they go. Or at least start behaving themselves a bit better.

Anyway, bit of an embarrassing tangent to go off on there.

I just want these wisdom teeth out so much, so I can start eliminating other possible sources for my oral imbalance - if removing my wisdom teeth doesn't seriously improve my breath that is. But I am pretty confident that it will. And I don't care how much it hurts. If my tonsils turn out to be the culprit or start to take on some of the responsibility of making my life miserable, they can take a hike too.

My left tonsil also smells fine! But my right is worse than a public toilet. I'm hoping that losing the teeth will allow it to clear up on its own, as surely significantly less or even NO MORE stones will form therein without such a rich source of garbage to supplement them, but we will see.

How did you find that removing your wisdom tooth improved your mouth's general condition? Are you completely odour free now or just greatly improved? Our problems do indeed seem similar but you're further along your journey than I am, so I'm very interested to know.

[Dsufferer]

Hello guys,
i'm starting to think the cause of my BB is my wisdom teeth too but i remember when i did an X-ray 2 months ago the dentist told me i only have 2 upper wisdom teeth and none below

but when i touch the place where my lower wisdom teeth are supposed to be it smells really bad too

this is really getting on my nerves , i'm so tired of trying stuff


Things i did to try and cure my BB :

Getting braces (yes i thought the alignment of my teeth could be the problem but it didn't help)

using fluconazole

things i still have to get tested for :

Diabetes (ketoacidosis)
need an endoscopy to check if i have any GI problems
go to an ENT

[halitosisux]

Poupidou, I can remember reading many years ago, that if you can detect odour from any area of gum when you rub it with a finger, that this must be taken very seriously when looking for causes of bad breath. I can actually remember going around certain teeth which I considered might be problematic (because of over-crowding and some twisted teeth) but never smelled anything. The inner gum on my top molars looked different to other areas of gum, a bit like they were receeded slightly, like there was no area of gingival sulcus. But this is apparently quite normal on areas where there is a lot of mechanical abrasion from chewing food. These were the only areas where I could see there might be a problem relating to my gums, so I focused on them. I'd been to see a number of different dentists, with the primary complaint of bad breath, and each one gave me a perfect bill of dental health. Then, just by pure chance one day I sat there staring at myself in a mirror thinking how the F**K can this PATHETICALLY innocuous problem be so unabatedly destroying my life like this??

While I was standing there staring at myself for a while, I started feeling like I was standing outside my body. I suddenly felt really powerful. It was just as though I was looking at someone else, like my mind had become detached from my body. Just the most strangest moment I'd ever felt. It was as if I was spooking away the demons covering up my eyes. I opened up my mouth again, with a real anger inside me because I wanted to confront the site responsible for my torture. I felt so angry, I could have just ripped my tongue out in an instant. I stared at my throat like I had done so many times when messing around with my tonsils and back of my tongue. I started prodding the area where my tonsils used to be, using my finger. I felt absolute rage inside my stomach like I wanted to rip my head off to look inside it. I was literally having a fight with myself. I went to sniff my finger just to see whether there was any odour after rubbing the area formerly occupied by my tonsils. Nothing. I carried on prodding around and went to sniff my finger and thought WTF where has this stink come from suddenly?? I carried on prodding around and eventually homed in on the source, right in the far corner of my mouth. An area which was nothing more than a semi- erupted wisdom tooth - I had NO idea of the presense of the pocket of gum surrounding the buried crown of the tooth. That's it really. I eventually made a syringe to try to flush it out, and even used pure bleach in there. Nothing could stop the bad smelling discharge for longer than about 2 hours. Overall it made a small improvement to my breath, but nothing that made me feel absolutely certain that this was the answer. It was very hard to convince myself that the odour being produced from this pocket was responsible for the sewage in my mouth and not that the sewage in my mouth was for other reasons, which eventually led to the smell inside this gum pocket - in just the same way I believe happens with tonsils, since tonsillectomy made ZERO difference to my BB or any of it's symptoms.

But after the tooth was extracted, I knew immediately this was it. The stench which would always coat my entire tongue was no longer occuring. I wasn't taking any antibiotics or antibacterial measures, so I knew this must be it. Whether or not I still have bad breath, nobody can ever been 100% certain. But what I do know is that on a percentage level, the sewage in my mouth went down to about 1% of what it was before. I can put my finger down the back of my tongue and smell nothing, except for very low levels in the morning and if I've allowed my mouth to go a bit stale.

[Poupidou]

I am actually glad to say that this particular wisdom tooth also makes my finger smell, just as its predecessor did. I'm glad because I am pretty sure this is the only cause for my imbalance, so I'm getting very close to not having to worry about it anymore. Bring on the operation! My dentist told me I can get it free on the NHS (I'm British) if he refers me to hospital - means a general anaesthetic, but to be honest I'd prefer that.

Right now I can keep my tongue from smelling at all (judging by the touch and sniff method at least) by following my massive tongue routine, but it's such a chore. It would be nice to just go back to giving it regular attention instead of fiddling with it all the time.

I am so pleased you found that your thoughts were correct, because it means that chances are mine will be too. There's nothing wrong with the rest of my mouth. Or any other part of my body as far as I am aware.

Dsufferer, did your dentist say you had no wisdom teeth at all on the bottom or just that they are impacted (embedded in your jaw) and have not broken through the gum yet? If you have no wisdom teeth at all, it is curious that you should be experiencing an odour in the area where they should be ... are your existing molars at the back set quite deep in the gum? Because if so they could be really hard to clean and be trapping all sorts of stench below the gumline which is making the area smell. If you do have wisdom teeth down there but they haven't broken through, even the smallest crack anywhere can allow food and bacteria in and start them off on their irritating love affair with each other. Either way I would suggest trying an oral irrigator to flush out the areas between your existing teeth and gums and see if that helps at all (if you don't use one already that is).

[Dsufferer]

No the X-rays should that i have none in my lower jaw
so i only have 2 wisdom teeth in the upper jaw (never extracted any wisdom teeth)

[emotional rescue]

But after the tooth was extracted, I knew immediately this was it. The stench which would always coat my entire tongue was no longer occuring. I wasn't taking any antibiotics or antibacterial measures, so I knew this must be it. Whether or not I still have bad breath, nobody can ever been 100% certain. But what I do know is that on a percentage level, the sewage in my mouth went down to about 1% of what it was before. I can put my finger down the back of my tongue and smell nothing, except for very low levels in the morning and if I've allowed my mouth to go a bit stale.

Hi Halitosiux and poupidou!

I wonder if somehow I have a similar problem than yours....
I tried lot of things, with no final succes at all.
But from long time ago, my dentist had to do me a root canal at one of my molar teeth, and extract me the upper part of that molar, and replaced it with a porcelain crown. The usual thing in this kind of cases.
At first, the porcelain crown didn't seemed to fit quite ok in there, but the dentist said that that was normal and that I will get used to it.

The thing is: I cannot say that from that point my bb started because it was long time ago and I don't remenber it clearely, but I do know that from that point, when I floss that teeth, the dental floss smells really bad and some times it comes out like darker, in opposite to the other teeths that seems to be virtually othorless. Also, the gumline of that mollar looks with a thin black line, and I can get very deep inside of that gumline when I floss.
Like there is a lost of space between the porcelain crown and the rest of the teeth.
It seems to me that that spot picks up a lot of food junk.
But to my surprise, I asked more than one time to the dentist about that molar, and he always says that it is ok, and that that kind of separation in the implant is normal.

I also have all of my wisdom teeth. The upper ones hadn't broken through the gum. And the lower ones stopped after they were half way out, and stayed that way.
But none of them seems to smell, only the molar with the porcelain fix.

I also at some times can get some minutes of bb free, but just that, maybe moments, but I can't control it.
I don't have bb from the nose.
My tongue smells bad at all the upper surface, but it is less smelly in the front, and get worst at the back. It doesn't smell bad at all if I touch the down side (or the bottom) of the tongue.

Things that make my breath very bad:
- Not to eat for a long period of time.
- Onions, garlic, all that stuff.
- Potato chips, chocolate, ice cream, sweets.
- Alcohol.
- I think all kind of dairy and sugar are the worst for me.

I'm triying to eat less gluten now, and it seems to be helping a little bit, but not sure yet.
So I'm not sure what path should I follow.

I always have strong pnd, and I usually get tonsil stones.

Any thoughts??? coincidences??

Thank you very much!!

[Poupidou]

Hello!

I don't think these are coincidences at all. I'm no expert, but from my own experience so far, I'd say these things:

Firstly, your bad breath (the smell at least) is most likely coming from the back of your tongue.

Secondly, your dentist is crazy. Any tooth that has a bad smell coming from it is obviously not a good tooth. It doesn't necessarily mean that it is decaying (mine isn't) but as you said, it's picking up food junk. And that food junk is feeding the bacteria in your mouth that are usually in harmony, causing them to overgrow and produce bad smells.

I would suggest that the coating on your tongue is worst at the back because of your post nasal drip - because when the mucous from your sinuses gets deposited on the back of your tongue the stupid bacteria have just the sort of protein-rich food source they love to break down handed to them on a plate (or a tongue, technically).

I've recently discovered I may well have mild PND myself. I've started sinus irrigation, which hasn't helped much as yet, but it's only been a few days. I'm researching nasal sprays I can safely use regularly and trying to keep my body as hydrated as possible to thin out my mucous - this has been beneficial for me in terms of ease of swallowing and keeping my mouth moist. Because a dry mouth is so bad.

Dairy and sugar ruin me too. I think they tend leave a lot of residue on my tongue, but I'm not giving them up, just cleaning my tongue regularly after eating, which seems to help.

My tonsil stones are, as far as I can tell, most likely related more to the bacteria in my mouth rather than PND (as I've pulled so many out of the tonsil on the side of my impacted tooth compared to only a couple on the other side). Yours, however, are probably related to your PND as you say it is severe. I am still considering seeing a doctor to ask about possible tonsil removal as it's really the only way to prevent that particular problem.

I think the two things you really need to concentrate on are the PND and your molars, because the two together are likely the cause of your problem in my opinion. As I've said above, using an oral irrigator has really helped in keeping my impacted tooth clean and junk free, as it's so much more powerful than flossing, not to mention easier. If you have one, I'd try irrigating around the capped tooth and any pockets that may or may not have developed around your wisdom teeth (they may well be there hiding) and see if that helps at all. And keep your tongue as clean as possible - basically the less bacteria there are, the less smell they can produce. So you gotta blitz 'em.

Hope this helps. It's such an annoying problem to have!

[halitosisux]

Emotional Rescue, do you mention your bad breath when you talk to this particular dentist?

Crowns and root-canals are apparently notorious for causing bad breath if they haven't been done properly or if anything is beginning to fail with them.

Do you know when your BB started exactly? When did you have this work done on this tooth?

Any impacted tooth is a potential cause of bad breath, whether erupted or not, so you have to weigh things up and decide.

I never had any nasal odours either, so maybe that's generally what happens in these situations.

I don't think the underside of the tongue ever has anything to do with bad breath unless there's some obvious problem behind it. It always makes me cringe when I hear people describing brushing under their tongues.

Any kind of foods containing high sugar content or protein will generally tend to worsen your bad breath in type-1 cases. Anything you do that reduces the natural cleansing action inside the mouth, i.e. eating and fluids, will lead to a buildup of odour.

I don't think PND causes BB unless there is some kind of infection behind it. I know plenty of people with PND and their breath doesn't smell. A high level of mucus in the throat is very likely to exacerbate any type of bad breath involving the bacteria present in this area.

I would certainly follow Poupidou's advice and try irrigation to see if it helps at all.

It's hard to determine anything from flossing smells because it's usually only indicating trapped putrifying debris.

I think there may also be some kind of immune system mechanism that goes on in the mouth when there are any sites of infection in the vicinity, such as the sinuses or the mouth. This immune mechanism may be triggering or causing the bacterial frenzy on the back of the tongue that so many people with BB tend to experience.

Poupidou, have you ever tried gargling with hydrogen peroxide or chlorine dioxide to neutralize the odours on your tongue and then roughly every hour putting a clean finger on either side of the back of your tongue to see whether they both begin to smell equally or whether one side begins to smell first?

[Poupidou]

Can't say I have ...

[emotional rescue]

Emotional Rescue, do you mention your bad breath when you talk to this particular dentist?

Crowns and root-canals are apparently notorious for causing bad breath if they haven't been done properly or if anything is beginning to fail with them.

Do you know when your BB started exactly? When did you have this work done on this tooth?


It's hard to determine anything from flossing smells because it's usually only indicating trapped putrifying debris.

I do metioned the bb issue to him more than once, but he kept telling me that there were no problem at all, and he didn't give it any importance. He always said that I have a very healthy mouth (what an irony)
On the other hand, i have been always so ashamed to discuss about this problem that I always came to the meetings with him with my mouth super clean, so I don't know.
Overall, I had been with dentists that recognized that there was a problem, and some that didn't. Anyway, there was all akwards situations, very unconfortable, I never could get to the root of the problem with them when I talked about it.
I've seen some bb "experts" too,like the Dr. Katz kind of dentist, and my Halimeter test were around 200.
My bb became to be very present from 13 or 14 years old. The root canal were at 14 or 15 I think. I would say that I had bb already before, but I'm not sure, I can't remembear it clearely.

Early this year I bought a Waterpik, I used it like two weeks and It seemed not to do any significant difference, so I quit. But now after reading your thoughts I tried again specially working on this tooth and I think I feel fresh. Let's see how I get up in the morning (It's late right now here)

By the way, do you think it could be some sort of relation between this root canal - porcelain crown, and my recurrent/chronic PND?

What I mean about the smell when I floss this tooth, is that is not a normal smell, it's the only one that smells this way, if I don't floss regulary it becomes very bad, it's even the only tooth that smells at all 90% of the times.

[Poupidou]

Hope you wake up feeling fresher ...

When I clean my wisdom tooth I usually use more than one tank of water on it, until the stuff coming out of it no longer smells, and that really helps me.

I don't think there could be any correlation between the tooth and the PND unless infection of some sort from the tooth has spread to your sinuses, in which case it could be causing the PND. However, I think it's quite unlikely. It's more likely to be caused by sinus conditions unrelated to your tooth, or allergies.

Do you have acid reflux, as this causes a lot of slime to accumulate in the back of the throat, giving some people PND type symptoms. I think this is what I have. Yesterday I took a Zanac for the first time and as well as having no acid pain at all, I seemed to have less mucous. Which was great!

You need to get to the root cause of your PND and go from there.

I know exactly the smell you mean ... I only have the one that smells too. It just means that something is decaying around there. I still stand by what I said - that it is most likely your tooth is allowing bacteria to overgrow and they're feeding on the mucous at the back of your throat and nose, which is causing the bad breath. So you need to keep your tongue and tooth as clean as you can and try to do something for the PND in order to (hopefully) start seeing some results.

Just my opinion.

[halitosisux]

Emotional Rescue, I always found it very hard to talk to dentists about it too, because of the open nature of dental treatment rooms and the dental assistants who always seem to be stunningly beautiful young women that make you feel you'd rather die than to have to start talking about your shit breath. I found it really easy to talk to doctors and ENTs about it though.

Bear in mind that to have required a root canal, you may have had other dental problems at the time, which you don't remember about because of your fairly young age. Your overall oral care might have been poor at the time.

Hope the Waterpik helps. I bought one recently too and there were certain teeth which always smelled when I flossed them, but the Waterpik completely eliminates this. I never imagined that ordinary flossing could be so inferior.

Regarding PND, it totally depends on whether you mean actual post nasal drip which runs down the back of your nose into your throat or whether you mean lots of mucus which tends to get produced in the actual throat. These are very different things. I can't think of any connection between any type of mucus, except for sinus invasion from upper teeth which poupidou has mentioned.

Poupidou, even with a much more controllable manual syringe, I don't ever recall noticing any stench coming out when I used it. Your situation sounds even worse than mine if it creates such a prolonged release of odour when you irrigate it.

BTW have you ever tried the tongue cleaning Waterpik attachment? I've never heard anyone mention these on here so I'm just curious to know how effective these are compared to other tongue cleaning methods.

[Poupidou]

In fairness to it, it hasn't really smelt of anything at all while irrigating for the past few days so I imagine I've managed to flush out the food trap, but it took a good couple of weeks to do so. It would also taste pretty rank too if I stuck my tongue in there but it doesn't now really. If I go one day without irrigating it though, I know it will just start building up again. I think there's a pretty deep space to fill back there.

I don't think I have PND personally, but I do have phlegm produced by acid over-production, and it's pissing me off.

Don't own a Waterpik but I'm guessing that question was probably aimed at emotional rescue.