I contacted Prof. Bolin. He told me;
- success rate of bismuth on halitosis patients is around 80%
- dosage varies between 120mg and 300mg daily, depending on the patient (often 1 tablet is sufficient)
- try to minimize sulphite intake (preservatives in fruit juices, delicatessen meat, dried fruits, alcohol, garlic, onion, eggs, seafood. Consumption of these in normal quantities is perfectly okay
I managed to find 2 tablets with bismuth. One of them is chewable, which works pretty fast (makes sense cause I keep it on my tongue for a while) and turns my tongue black for hours (which then goes away). However, in the patent form of Prof. Bolin, it encourages use of "non-chewable" tablets. Actually, the tests were conducted with Denol:
Eight subjects exhibiting halitosis and having a dominant sulfite-reducing bacterial population in the gut as evidenced by the Halimeter™ according to Example 1, were administered a 120mg oral dose of De-nol™ three times daily for a period of 4 weeks. The eight subjects treated exhibited symptomatic improvement of halitosis within 3-7 days. Example 3
A lactulose breath analysis was performed on 25 human subjects exhibiting symptoms of halitosis. The test confirmed the absence of methane, which was indicative of a dominant sulfite reducing bacterial population in the colon. All 25 subjects were treated with De-nol™ (120mg, tds) and all 25 subjects exhibited subjective symptomatic improvement of their halitosis within 2-7 days. Example 4
De-nol™ was administered in tablet form (120mg) to 20 subjects exhibiting symptoms of halitosis at a dose rate of two tablets per day until the symptoms were alleviated. Once the symptoms of halitosis were eradicated, subjects were then administered 1 tablet of De-nol™ per day for 14 days, which was sufficient to maintain alleviation of symptoms of halitosis.
Luckily, the pharmacy store had Denol. I have been using it for 2 weeks now. The smell has definitely reduced. In the morning, my breath used to be horrible. Now I can only get a hint of it. In the daytime, I need to try a few times to smell it.
"Lick wrist" test still fails. But I'm not sure if there should be zero odor after wrist dries. Even in the healthy person there are good and bad bacteria in the mouth and on the tongue (maybe in lower concentrations), maybe "some" odor is normal. However, there was no smell (absolutely none) when I was on metronidazole or amoxicillin.
I went to an ENT specialist today, told him about my bad breath issues and asked him if a septoplasty operation would fix it. We talked for 10 minutes. He examined me, then said he could not smell it. I believed him, cause he didn't show a single reaction the whole time. Maybe bismuth works, I am not sure yet.