Bad Breath Halitosis Forum

In this thread, I'll detail and update my experiences with my latest trials and products.

Prologue:
For the last month or so, I've been taking Betaine HCL after EVERY meal..
The purpose of this was to test whether my stomach was producing enough acid to properly digest my food. The first few days I was on it, I felt my breath had an empty burp kind of stomachy component to it.. Some backdraft I'd get during the day smelled like a belch..

That either vanished, or I became immune to it, because I haven't had it since. My theory is my stomach walls became stronger to deal with the higher acid environment. It also seemed to make my crap more solid the first couple days, but that also went away..

If this was helping my breath, my thoughts were that it might be attacking a resilient bacteria overgrowth, or fungus, or some kind of other trouble that a low amount of acid couldn't deal with... However, I've been out of my usual environment for the last month and a half... I'm now back in the classroom regularly, so will be better able to judge reactions, though it's with all new students.... So they may not as readily show disgust.


Anyway, I'm on the Betaine HCL after meals.

As of about a week ago, I've also been doing two more things:

- Digestive Enzyme capsule before meals
- Oral Probiotic Lozenge with BLIS-K12 and BLIS-M18 (2-4 times a day)
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Here's my daily breakdown recently:

- Gargle water while in the shower and try to eject it through my nose (I'm concerned about the safety of this, but it doesn't seem to have the same risk of ear infection as neti pot nasal irrigation.. It's silly, nbut I just do this out of curiosity.. It feels like it might just clear out some stray mucus in the back of my throat.

- Digestive Enzyme capsule before breakfast

- Betaine HCL capsule after breakfast

- Waterpik with nonalchol mouthwash and often a cap of Hydrogen Peroxide

- Brush teeth (lately with a teatree toothpaste, though I've been mixing it up a lot lately.. sometimes I put three different toothpastes on the same brush.
Brush tongue lightly including in the waaay back, brushing that area left and right. (A few times I've added a drop of grape fruit seed extract, but that doesn't seem to do shit, though I might still do it occasionally)

- I try to hack up music from my throat all the while I'm doing my morning routine.

- Next is the tongue brush, which I use with any remaining toothpaste still in my mouth and on my tongue.. I've been trying to be a little lighter on the tongue recently.

-Often I'll use a second style of tongue brush which is gentler, but has some rubber grips in addition to a soft brush, which pulls all the slimy tongue saliva off pretty well.

- Next I gargle the nonalcohol mouthwashe, which is some 'night herb' type. Anyway, it's kind of effective, I feel.. Who knows. I swish it all through my teeth before switching to gargle mode, where I get it as far back in the throat as possible, humming and singing and talking to make sure it gets back there.. I also move my head from side to side while looking up ( someone recommended that around here... seems like a good idea, even though Jesus apparently told him that info.. huh)

- If I'm heading right to work from this, sometimes I'll pop the first Oral Probiotic and let that sink in while my mouth was just recently cleaned.
Sometimes I want to save those for later, so I might just pop in a light mint to keep the saliva flowing (after brushing I'm often very dry, especially if rushing to work)

Lately, throughout the day, I make sure to almost ALWAYS have something in my mouth.. Tiny mints have been a favorite. The tiny tiny kind .. I stick them a bunch of them in my front pocket and reach for them throughout my lessons, 2 at a time or so.

Sometime about midpoint through my lesson, or if I'm really nervous, I'll pop the next probiotic.

I also have some Japanese brand throat lozenge that claims to have some kind of probiotics, but who knows... Whatever the case, it's sugarless, and does it's job as a normal lozenge.

For the most part, my meals have also been very routine. Before class, they include rice, a huge vat of flavorless probiotic rich yogurt, a vegetable juice box, and an apple. (I used to do bananas all freaking day.. but those were so full of sugar, I feel.. Apples feel fresher). I eat this meal once, if not twice every day. But it's my meal before classes for sure.

I also do a quick brushing and sometimes gargling after eating right before the class, though sometimes that seems to have more of a negative effect than not, strangely enough... I dunno.. Can't make sense of this shit. I'm not a ****ing doctor, which is something I could really use. An honest and earnest doc.



As for my recent illness, the first day was nausea; then vomiting; then head and body aches, light nausea all the while; then really severe and painful bloating; then that same bloating with really bad and stinky diarrhea AND BLOOD.. yikes!; Yesterday it wasn't so bad.. Just some gurgling in the bowels and more liquid than usual shit... Today feels not even as bad as that, so I think I'm recovering.



CONCLUSION:

I don't know. I feel my breath might be less offensive than not using all this crap.. Even the Betaine HCL,dangerous though it may be, seems to have a positive effect... I swear I'm not belching,burping, hiccuping, etc, like I usually do...

I'll update more later. I have about a week's worth left of that BLIS-K12 and M18 left. If I feel it worked well, I'll order more. Apparently there's also a chewing gum version.

Mike, I know this may be miles off, but could all those mints be having a laxative effect? Most sugar-free mints seem to have such warnings on the packagaing.

Many of your BB decriptions give the impression that your BB involves more than standard type-1 stinking tongue breath.

If I were in your position right now though, I'd try doing nothing other than light tongue scraping (not with a brush but with the metal or plastic "band" type scrapers), purely to scrape away what hasn't been removed from natural abrasion. Don't use any type of antibacterial, except using standard toothpaste to brush your teeth. Take all the probiotics you can, and allow them to do whatever they possibly can in your mouth. I would also continue with the Betaine HCL.

One other thing you could do is when you take any of your chewable probiotics, to use very light scraping to get the probiotic into your tongue papillae.

I've been trying out a lot of things lately, and I'm convinced that tongue coatings are mostly nothing other than the dead skin at the end of each papillae which builds up when microorganisms which normally decompose them are disturbed by antimicrobial measures, whether that's with antibiotics or with mouthwash. These dead cells also quickly grow out of control if the abrasion from eating and drinking is reduced or diminished. Tongue coatings act like a sponge and they shield bacteria from your natural defenses.

Using a Waterpik is always good providing you don't set the pressure any more harshly than it needs to be. Dissolve a teaspoon of salt into the water, or better still just use plain warm water.

Give this a go and see whether it helps. If you don't feel that it's possible to go without your normal routines at the moment, then try it whenever you get some time to yourself.