Bad Breath Halitosis Forum

Hello fellow sufferers!
Like many of you I’ve been trying to find a cure for this terrible illness for over seven years.I've tried a lot of methods mentioned on this site to no avail.

My halitosis started when I had two teeth I had neglected, the filling in each tooth had fallen out and it took four months before I decided to visit the dentist to do anything about it, during this time I developed BB, biggest mistake of my life and still paying for it now.

The dentist removed one of the damaged teeth and did a root canal on the other, the BB has stuck with me ever since, up until three weeks ago when I had it pulled after reading about root canals being a possible cause for BB. I was put on antibiotics (150mg clindamycin) for a week and I honestly thought I was cured, it was the best week of my life, no smell what so ever...... until I finished my course of antibiotics then it was back with a vengeance!!

I've seen my dentist, ENT, doctor and maxi-facial numerous times in the last year with all of them not being able to find a problem.

I think my tongue is the real cause of my BB, anything I eat stays on my tongue it doesn’t clean it's self properly, its white but I don’t get dry mouth and maxi-facial say I have no problems with my salivary glands, although my ENT did say I have thickish saliva. I believe anaerobic bacteria took a foot hold over the good bacteria in my mouth from my two decayed teeth.

I use a tongue scraper, floss and brush my teeth twice daily but the smell is back within half an hour. I drink up to eight glasses of water a day and i'm currently taking blisk12 oral probiotics which I think help alot. I also chew gum all day until I get home.

I have one last test towards the end of the month for H.pylori via a breath test but if that doesn’t find anything I have no idea what to try next.

Has anyone else have a similar experience?

Sorry for my grammar/spelling hopefully its readable

check wisdoms and tonsils?

Before removing wisdoms my tongue is always white. A white tongue indicates the amount of anaerobic bacteria in your gums/body.

Born To Suffer wrote:check wisdoms and tonsils?

Before removing wisdoms my tongue is always white. A white tongue indicates the amount of anaerobic bacteria in your gums/body.

Tonsils are ok according to the ENT but I do have one wisdom tooth that my dentist mentioned was slightly impacted but he said it wasn't a cause for concern and the NHS here in the uk would'nt even consider taking it out...

Could just the one wisdom tooth cause this much of a problem?

Never ever scrape or brush your tongue, roof of the mouth, or cheeks. This will cause your tongue to shed whitish dead skin cells which feed the bacteria and will cause the worst of the worst bad breath.

I like your idea Brad, but I just don't know if that's true..

I tried not brushing my tongue for a week.. The tongue coating became worse than it's been in a long time.

Also, before I ever started using a tongue brush, I always had a very thick coating on my tongue. first time I used a tongue brush, I was stunned at how pink my tongue was compared to before.


Your theory makes sense, but at least in my case, maybe due to some other bacteria pile up or something, it seems to be worse if I don't brush it.


And have we ever proved a direct correlation with tongue coating and bad breath?

Just do a simple test, rub your tonsils or the wisdoms and see if it smells.

You know I only had ONE infected wisdom, and it caused the suffering for a decade.
Just go remove it if it's impacted.

Also when you burp, does it stink like poop? You have to identify where the smell is coming from. Oral or stomach.

Until recently I thought tongue coatings were mostly dead cells that build up when we don't eat or drink enough or because we damage the papillae by scraping too hard or whatever. This is probably the kind of coating you see on people who don't have BB - a "normal" coating.

But now I think tongue coatings relating to BB are mostly the same kinda stuff you scrape off your teeth when you haven't brushed them for a day. That tooth plaque doesn't stink either, unless it's had time to mature and lots of other bacteria have formed into this layer.

The tongue's "plaque" biofilm stinks because bacteria have been busy producing VSCs beneith it all. But if you actually gather some tongue scraping, and hold it near your nose it hardly smells of anything, and nothing like what you'd expect it to. Which I guess proves it's not the actual coating that stinks, but what goes on underneith it.

I think this plaque from the tongue is also what scrapes past the crypts of the tonsils and between the teeth, and once trapped inside them forms into tonsilloliths and flossing gunk.

It's no coincidence that people who suddenly have issues with teeth or gum etc say they notice their tongue is suddenly coated, and that when these issues are dealt with the coating stops.

I don't know what the trigger is for all of this, whether it's simply that bacteria somehow sense when there's a "disease" process going on somewhere nearby, like in the gums or in the sinuses, or even the stomach with h.pylori, if there's any reflux and "communication" between the stomach and the mouth (as there usually is when h.pylori is present).

And so, scraping it all off helps, but the underlying cause is always there, so it's constantly re-growing again and a never ending battle.

I'm doing some tests at the moment with my last remaining wisdom tooth. This tooth is horizontally impacted, and completely under the gum. When I rub it hard enough, I sometimes get a stench onto my finger. Something is going on under there for sure. I'm now deep-irrigating it daily and dabbing it with chlorhexidine (never done this before, I normally leave it well alone). This, along with brushing my tongue with zinc lactate containing toothpaste, is preventing any sign of stench from the tooth, and I'm managing to keep my tongue continuously pink. I've never seen it this clean before, and certainly not continuously clean like this. In the past my tongue has always had a mind of it's own. I finally seem to have permanent control of it.