bad breath back, even after clindamycin usage

[Number5]

I'm new here, so please forgive me if I write in the wrong forum.

I have bad breath for as long as I can think. I had my tonsils removed, have no heliobacter pylori, brush my teeth and tongue regularly, use dental floss daily, but still no luck in fighting my bad breath (it returns 1-2 hours after cleaning my mouth and much sooner if I eat meanwhile). Mouthwashes with chlorhexidine help best but only for the days of usage (then the bad breath is non existent). A few days after that the stink returns.

My dentist attests me good teeth and no gum problem. He says that the bad breath cannot come from the teeth. With another doctor I did a halimeter test and the reading was 380 ppm. After 2 weeks usage of a daily chlorhexidin mouthwash the value was below 50 ppm!

I have a fructose intolerance though, but I avoid the food that causes it, so I think I have that under control.

A few weeks back I had a prescription for clindamycin usage for a week and I did it like described: 3 pills each day. It worked wonders against the bad breath (maybe even better than chlorhexidine) and I hoped that it would finally cure my problem. I strongly suspected a bacterial problem, because chlohexidin worked so well in the past. Well, 10 days after the clindamycin usage the bad breath came back.

I'm out of options now.

If you have ANY ideas regarding my situation, please tell me.

[halitosisux]

Hi, why stop the chlorhexidine if it works for you?

Do you have any odours when you floss your teeth?

If you do then I can tell you how to completely get rid of that odour, and it may help your breath if it's related in any way.

Don't trust a dentist when it comes to bad breath because I did and I wasted 25 years of my life.

[Number5]

Thanks for the quick response!

I've read some times and was told by my dentist that using chlorhexidine mouthwash longer than a few weeks will disturb the bacterial balance in my mouth and maybe destroy it for good. I've used a product with 0.2% chlorhexidine, for a maximum of 2 weeks. I'm afraid that I might destroy the last good bacteria in my mouth if I really use it daily without an end date.

When I floss my teeth I only rarely can smell something and I check that regularly. I'm using dental floss and an interdental brush (since a few months) but I don't notice any improvement from that. I'm suspecting the tongue surface and the very last part of my tongue (back where my tonsils were) to be the source of the odour, I mean that far back where I cannot reach with a toothbrush or tongue scraper.

But maybe it adds to the bad breath, so I'd like to know how to treat the interdental area better!!

[halitosisux]

I think you destroy the bacterial balance in your mouth every time you use chlorhexidine. The same also applies whenever you use "ordinary" toothpastes such as Colgate Total, or whenever you take systemic antibiotics - But, the balance resumes once you stop, in just the same way that the balance was allowed to form in the first place.

Chlorhexidine is also an antifungal, so there's no danger of (temporary) opportunistic fungal overgrowths, as there is when taking antibiotics for example.

Chlorhexidine can have side effects, such as allergic reactions and teeth staining - teeth staining is only a thin coating which scrapes off easily enough and there are ways to minimize this buildup.

I remember reading about a year or so ago, a certain member of this forum who, if I remember correctly is either a microbiologist or a medical student, describe a method of treating gum disease by blasting the whole mouth and gums with chlorhexidine through an irrigation device.

I won't bother going into the full story of why, but I decided to try this on my gums instead of just using salty water through my Waterpik irrigator. Within a few days, I noticed that a pain I could always feel deep in the gum on my upper two front row of teeth when hydroflossing with water, had completely vanished. A second thing I noticed is that even if I stopped all forms of flossing for a few days, if I then flossed with string, there is ZERO odour on the string. This has NEVER happened to me before - I always had certain teeth which always guaranteed to make my floss smell - and now they don't. A third difference I was aware of, is the freshest feeling in my mouth I've ever had.

I've had issues with wisdom teeth and I have Post nasal drip and many of the symptoms which most people on this forum describe. Also, while I still had tonsils, they stunk like horse's shit and produced a constant supply of grain-sized stones. A tongue that smelled like it was dead meat. Now, my 30 year hell is over. Now I know it was never anything other than the bacteria living below my gumline.

[Number5]

Do I understand correctly that Chlorhexidine solved your problem? If so, how often do you use it and in which concentration? I saw toothpastes directly mixed with chlorhexidine (only a small percentage, ... not 0.2% ). Maybe that's something for daily use over the years?

[halitosisux]

Very basically, I was 90% cured of BB (although I have been reliably told I'm 100% cured) after removing one of my wisdom teeth. I'd had 2 others removed about 25 years ago, and I still have one remaining, which still produces some odour, which I'll eventually deal with when I can.

I have excessive post nasal drainage, possibly due to a deviated nasal septum.

I tried irrigating this remaining tooth with chlorhexidine and noticed that the odour it normally produces had completely disappeared.

This fact, along with what another forum member described about the treatment of gum disease by irrigation with chlorhexidine, gave me the inspiration to try this on the rest of my gums too. To my surprise, the pain from deep inside the gum of my upper front teeth disappeared and I'm no longer able to detect any odour whenever I use conventional string floss.

Please search through my most recent posts where I've described my irrigation techniques.

I don't want to speculate on whether chlorhexidine is safe for long term use or not. Chlorhexidine is dangerous to tissues in high concentrations and it causes teeth staining and there are reports on this site of teeth pain.

Speaking for myself, I've not had any lasting side effects after a year of daily use.

[Number5]

Thanks for the idea! I will now check the other forum posts !