Swollen occipital lymph glands and bad breath

brightonguy · Post by **brightonguy** » Sun Oct 03, 2010 12:13 am

I may be clutching at straws here but I've had a swollen occipital lymph gland on the back of my neck for about 6 months and am wondering if that's got anything to do with my BB. Aside from that and my BB I am asymptomatic. I had the lump checked out by my doctor and he said it was nothing to worry about but now I'm wondering if there's a link....

Any thoughts oh wise ones?

halitosisux · Post by **halitosisux** » Sun Oct 03, 2010 6:33 am

Hey, interesting.. I can remember becoming conscious of a pair of lumps at either side of the back of my head at the base of the skull where it meets the neck. Not sure if its the lymph glands you mention or the posterior auricular glands, but I noticed they were quite swollen in my early teens when I know I had BB. They still are quite swollen, but I'm not sure if they'd be normal or what. I always thought it might be related to my tonsils and frequent bouts of sore throats and otitis media and tinitus. I expected them to shrink when I had my tonsils out, but they havent at all.

Will be interesting to hear if anyone else has this too, in common with other BB related symptoms like tonsil skank.

brightonguy · Post by **brightonguy** » Sun Oct 03, 2010 10:48 am

@hal, thanks for your response. As you say, it will be interesting to hear if anyone else has this issue. My tonsils appear to be pretty skank free... sometimes they stink, one of them usually smells quite bad but now and again neither of them stink. I don't get tonsil stones - I used to when I was a kid without any BB problems and then I got them in 2008 when I had a bout of BB which lasted for 1 year.

Perhaps this swelling could be a sign of a throat infection but I don't get sore throats.... possibly some low lying infection which gives me BB but no other symptoms. I had a blood test three months ago at the UCL dental hospital in London (I got referred there because of my dry mouth). My CRP count was 9.9 which suggests a low level infection. My dry mouth has eased off quite considerably.... I reckon I'm now above 1.5ml of saliva every 15 minutes and according to the literature as long as you're above this level (i.e. not super dry) then there is no relationship between bad breath and dry mouth. Saliva is not the godsend for BB that we would like it to be..... very dry=BB but that is all.

I have a follow up appointment at this hospital tomorrow. I didn’t mention anything about BB last time but I will mention it this time. I’m not holding out much hope for anything in the way of advice from them which I don’t already know but it’s worth a try.

George80 · Post by **George80** » Sun Oct 03, 2010 11:34 am

Do you have PND?
The glands close to my left jaw bone are swollen too. I relate this to my tonsils. I had a tonsilitis about 6 years ago, since then I have swollen glands there.

My Anti-streptolysin O marker is completely OK. But a swab straight from my tonsil crypts show pathogen germs (don't have the whole results yet). The ENT said on the phone: "Take 'em out". All other swabs, e.g. from my tounge were OK. And 3-4 ENTs said: "Your tonsils look OK."

My theory is: The PND f*#*s up the tonsils. When your mouth is shut, the tonsils reside in your throught, right in the passage of the PND. So they got stuck with mucus and "compose" tonsil stones.

What I would like to know, if there is the opposite relation too: Can tonsils cause e.g. sinusitis and therefore PND?

(Sorry, I'm not a native speaker.)

George80 · Post by **George80** » Sun Oct 03, 2010 11:38 am

Maybe this site helps you:
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2979617/Ost ... -Sinusitis

brightonguy · Post by **brightonguy** » Sun Oct 03, 2010 12:45 pm

No PND and no current problems with tonsils as far as I'm aware but thanks for your reply.

stressedout · Post by **stressedout** » Sun Oct 03, 2010 2:30 pm

Made me remember that yes i had the nods at the upper neck, I used to be worried about them and complain to friends, that was a few years before BB, though I remember being sick with high fever (just like years after when BB was obvious, also sore throat and tonsil stones).

This might give an idea into the relation between BB and bacteria cought with being sick.

brightonguy · Post by **brightonguy** » Sun Oct 03, 2010 4:23 pm

I am gonna spill my guts at the hospital tomorrow, postulate a link between my BB, this swollen gland and thus the possibility of a low level infection somewhere in my body which is causing my BB and see what the doctor says.

mike987 · Post by **mike987** » Sun Oct 03, 2010 4:59 pm

Good luck, but don't feel too bad if you get blown off.

How long can infections last? I often have the symptoms of sinus infections... like, very often.... but they're very persistent.

My lymph nodes feel huge.. Right around my neck and jaw, down in the crotch area.. They become larger when you have an infection, right? Well what if they stay large all the time? Years ago the family doctor took note of their size, but thought it might just seem that they're large because I'm a thin guy.

brightonguy, how long have you had BB?

halitosisux · Post by **halitosisux** » Sun Oct 03, 2010 5:20 pm

Brightonguy, while I still had tonsils one side always smelled worse than the other, but the smell always seemed to be constant, but the better and more frequently I tried to clean them, the less they smelled.

Its really interesting how your tonsil symtoms seemed to vary by itself. I still stick to my theory that unless the tissues of the tonsils are themselves infected (i.e. tonsillitis) then crypted tonsil skank/stones are actually a symptom of having BB - that any combination of high levels of VSCs, tongue skank, PND/sinus infection and gum/dental problems etc will all lead to the production of tonsil stones/skank.

Your C-reactive protein count is also interesting info. Has anyone else had this test?

It'll be interesting to hear what happens at your appointment tomorrow when you mention BB. Good luck!

George80, do you have any sinus issues? Is the PND you describe actually coming from the back of your nose or are you just describing the feeling of having lots of mucus in your throat? The feeling of lots of mucus in the throat is not necessarily true PND.

Mike, chronic sinusitis can last indefinitely. Acute sinusitis usually only lasts a week or so. Chronic sinusitis takes hold because of the damage done to to the lining of the sinus during the acute stage of sinusitis. You can have chronic sinusitis and hardly realise it - the symptoms are usually congestion and PND. In the acute stage the symptoms are usually fever and pain and feeling like you have flu.

The serious issue regarding any connection between sinuses and BB is whether fungus are involved, or the formation of biofilms in there, both of which are not straighforward to deal with. ENTs know this, which is why they are reluctant to get involved unless the symptoms are severe enough.

Its easy to get fobbed off by ENTs who wont take BB seriously. Only certain types of scan can detect the kind of problems being described here.

brightonguy · Post by **brightonguy** » Sun Oct 03, 2010 7:00 pm

@mike....

December 2009 - Present: It's been a real problem!! I can often smell it and I get some very bad reactions from people, sometimes these people are more than 10 feet away. However, as per other posts I've written here, for about a month now things have been somewhat better. I still get some awful reactions but I feel that there are times when I've completely BB free. I put this improvement down to the fact that I stopped using mouthwash and doing hectic things to my tongue. I just brush and floss twice a day now. I also think natural yoghurt has helped. Since a few days ago I've been substituting the natural yoghurt for other probiotics (thanks to hal for suggesting I contact KT who provided me with great advice on this – FYI he didn’t sell me anything). It's too early to say what effect they're having but I'm full of hope and my bowel movements now are nice and solid, LOL

August 2008 -l December 2009: It was an intermittent problem but I was very close to being BB free.... I had a few comments from friends but nothing major and only very infrequently like after I’d been out drinking too much, I never noticed anything in the way of bad reactions during this time and could not smell it myself.

January 2008-July 2008 I was completely BB free!!

February 2007-December 2007: Looking back I had a BB problem during this time. I was getting horrible tonsil stones and some bad reactions off people. At the time I didn’t really realise it though because this was my first ever encounter with BB. A few of my friends even told me my breath smelt like shit but I didn’t take it on board cuz I’d never had a problem before and, unlike my current problem, I couldn’t smell it. I started to panic in December 2007, started realising that I had a BB problem that wouldn’t go away. I just remember cutting out milk and it, almost overnight, seemed to fix itself.

I’m totally sure that my current BB problem is loads worse than this initial one.

So, this all started getting on for four years ago – I’m 31 now. However, I class the start of my problem as December 2009. It was never anything I couldn’t live with before, now it’s a real pain in the ass.

brightonguy · Post by **brightonguy** » Sun Oct 03, 2010 7:12 pm

halitosisux wrote:
I still stick to my theory that unless the tissues of the tonsils are themselves infected (i.e. tonsillitis) then crypted tonsil skank/stones are actually a symptom of having BB - that any combination of high levels of VSCs, tongue skank, PND/sinus infection and gum/dental problems etc will all lead to the production of tonsil stones/skank.

Your C-reactive protein count is also interesting info. Has anyone else had this test?

It'll be interesting to hear what happens at your appointment tomorrow when you mention BB. Good luck!

Thanks hal, I look forward to letting you guys know what happens. If I had to guess though, I reckon this is more or less what the doc will say: "You don't have bad breath"..then I'll front him up with my horror stories which show unequivocally that I do have it a lot of the time and he'll probably say "Everyone has bad breath from time to time".

George80 · Post by **George80** » Sun Oct 03, 2010 9:40 pm

@halitosisux

George80, do you have any sinus issues? Is the PND you describe actually coming from the back of your nose or are you just describing the feeling of having lots of mucus in your throat? The feeling of lots of mucus in the throat is not necessarily true PND.

Yes, I was diagnosed a sinusitis. The maxilaris on the right and the ethmoids on both sides show a slight shadow on the CT-scan. I don't have any problems at all, no stuck nose or anything. Except the PND and my nostrils are very senisitve to touch, they become inflamed easily.
I have the impression, that the musus doesn't only come from my sinuses. When I clean my tonsils for stones with this vacuum device I produce a lot of mucus in my mouth.

halitosisux · Post by **halitosisux** » Sun Oct 03, 2010 10:23 pm

George do you get nasal odours or can you detect any odour in your actual PND (before it gets to your throat)?

brightonguy · Post by **brightonguy** » Mon Oct 04, 2010 4:42 pm

brightonguy wrote: If I had to guess though, I reckon this is more or less what the doc will say: "You don't have bad breath"..then I'll front him up with my horror stories which show unequivocally that I do have it a lot of the time and he'll probably say "Everyone has bad breath from time to time".

What did I say? I was in there for nearly two hours but in a nutshell the doctor said exactly this.

I started out with a very pleasant (albeit lacking in knowledge) female doctor who reeled off stuff about don't eat onions and garlic, use a mouthwash etc. I spewed my guts about my story, told her that mouthwashes only exacerbated the problem etc and then she said she'd get her boss. He was a nice enough guy but it was more of the same from him. To be fair on them I am having a relatively good day after avoiding meat, fish etc etc the last few days but they would not entertain the notion that I have a BB problem that induces comments and reactions from others. They want me to see a therapist basically.

When I first arrived the nice female doctor checked my dry mouth and noted that, yes, it is dry. I found that strange given that it is no way near as dry as it was 3 months ago when I went there and the doctor I saw then basically said "You're mouth's not dry, go on anti-depressants".... he measured my saliva flow which was 1.2 ml in 15 minutes so I went home and Googled this and <1.5 ml in 15 minutes is very dry. So, I went from a dry mouth 3 months ago and a Dr who said it wasn't dry to a not so dry mouth today and a Dr who said it was dry - aargh. After this we moved on to the BB subject so before she'd even mentioned onions and garlic I'd kind of already lost faith.

On my CRP reading - she said it was too low to be even a low level infection. On my swollen gland - again, insignificant.