I've never really been able to find out why I have bad breath. After years of torturing myself I finally managed to tell my girlfriend (after painful 3 hours of trying to put the words together), and to my surprise she claims that I don't have bad breath. Though I know this is not true as I've had various experiences of people letting me know about the problem. Anyway, I kind of gave up thinking about it for a while, since my biggest worry was my girlfriend, and she clearly doesn't seem to be affected.
Well, I'm back again because for the past few months I've been noticing that the mucus in my nose had started crusting in a different way than usual. Simultaneously, I've been having lots of irritations round the edges of my nostrils, sometimes resulting in pain on contact (blowing nose etc). Sometimes I would have tiny accumulations of crust that when removed would just cause more to form over the following hours, sometimes even causing slight bleeding. I thought maybe it was a result of a party lifestyle of putting things up your nose that you shouldn't, so I've kept my nose away from the stuff for quite some time, which indeed has helped for a certain amount of time. However, the crusting of the mucus has never gone back to how it used to, and just today as I was removing a crust from the edge of my nostril I noticed a slightly musty smell on my finger.
I immediately connected with my bad breath situation, and went onto google. And here's one of the many links that I found on Atrophic Rhinitis:
It sounds pretty accurate to what I have with my nose, and I'm wondering if maybe it could be contributing to my breath in any way, although I know that I've had breath problems from an early age, and the nose issue seems to have only just started recently.http://www.utmb.edu/otoref/grnds/Atroph ... 050330.htm
The findings of atrophic rhinitis are easily recognizable. The first sign often is the smell of the patient. In some cases, this can be severe. Paradoxically, this likely will cause distress to everyone except the patient, due to the prevalent finding of anosmia. Patients may relate that others have informed them of the smell. Some patients have also been noted to have clinical depression at presentation due to the social implications of the disease
2 years ago I was attacked by some guys who smashed my head in with a baseball bat. I ended up in hospital with 5 fractures on the front side of my face (zygomatic arch), for which I received multiple surgeries to fix up. I now have a couple of metal plates keeping my bones together: one on the outside edge of my eyebrow, and one under my cheekbone. In various articles about Atrophic Rhinitis they say that sinus-related surgery can be a cause....
Not sure what the point of this post is, just throwing this into the mix, maybe it helps someone.
Does anyone have any other info on this. Is it known to contribute to bad breath?