Bad Breath Halitosis Forum

Hello everybody,
I cannot believe I have never found this forum before today!
I have suffered from bad breath since I was about 18, I am now a 35 year old man. It has had a tremendous impact on my life and changed me from a fun loving boy to a depressed, social hermit obsessed with the idea of killing myself in the space of a few years. I remember the first time I used Listerine and I thought it was a miracle, waking up in the morning with a nice taste in my mouth. A miracle that lasted for 2 days only. The same result with corsodyl mouthwash, maybe that lasted 3 or 4 days.
When I was suicidal at 22 years old, I did not care about my health or my future and so I started smoking menthol cigarettes. I do not know how but these cigarettes 'cured' me. Granted, I stank of smoke, but not shit. I could have a normal life, friends, girlfriends etc. without anyone ever commenting on my breath. No-one instinctively putting their hands up to their noses when I spoke to them, no-one pulling horrible faces when I spoke to them. These had been standard responses to me talking to people for years!
I assume the menthol cigarettes kill the VSC creating bacteria in the mouth. This is the only explanation I can think of.
This 'cure' appears to be temporary though as it is definitely not working the way it used to. I now wake up with awful morning breath again and find myself trying to read people's minds when I am talking to them, are they smelling my breath again? I admit that 12 years is not bad though for a temporary BB cure. Certainly better than the 2 days that Listerine offered!
So now I feel that I am back at square one searching for another cure, at least I have managed to live a little during the last decade though. At 19 I was sure that I would never kiss a girl again. I could only imagine myself with a girl that also had bad breath!
Has anyone else stumbled across similar results with menthol cigarettes? Does anyone here already smoke menthol cigarettes with no results? I have been sitting reading posts on BB forums for the last week and never saw any mention of menthol cigarettes anywhere. I was unsure if I should even post this here as smoking obviously is not good for your health, I know this as I have been smoking for the last 13 years and can certainly feel the effects. However I am sure that many of you are desperate to hear any success that someone has had with this problem. If BB has depressed you to the point where you are contemplating s*****e then I hope that you try menthol cigarettes as a last resort, I hope it works for you and I hope it works forever.

I used to smoke normal cigarettes to mask my BB. It was quite good solution for the emergency situations, but only helped while the cigarette was actually being smoked. After that it was straight back to having even worse shitbreath.

I never smoked menthol cigarettes, but I've tried them and it just gave a menthol feeling for a few minutes.

Did normal cigarettes have any such benefits for you as the menthol cigarettes? Did you ever try any other kind of menthol products to try to isolate what was helping you?

I had used various menthol products such as mints, gums and mouthwashes with no effect before I started smoking, so I do not just think it is the menthol. Also I have gone through short periods of smoking regular cigarettes for financial reasons but always noticed a return of the metallic taste and would start to fail wrist licking tests after about 10 days. About 3 years ago I quit smoking as an experiment and had to start again due to return of metallic taste after about 10 days.
I am totally emotionally crushed by the return of my BB after so many years. I even wondered if I had been imagining that my BB was cured all these years, but no this is simply not the case. I woke up this morning after smoking normally yesterday and I had an evil taste in my mouth and could even smell my own breath. There is no way I would be able to kiss someone feeling like that. I never had trouble kissing girlfriends in the morning before. I used to passionately kiss my ex after not brushing my teeth for days a few years ago. Now I would feel bad kissing someone straight after brushing, flossing and rinsing with mouthwash. Something has definitely changed. The idea that my last girlfriend would passionately kiss my if I had bad breath is ridiculous. There is no way in a million years! Some of my other girlfriends who loved me, maybe, but her, no way.
As BB sufferers we obsess about oral hygiene and our problem has nothing to do with this. If we floss and the floss smells bad, we think that this stench on the floss could be making our BB worse. This is just not true. I would floss once every six months when I was smoking. It was absolutely disgusting smelling, but this stench from between my teeth had no effect in my breath at all. Most people do not floss and their breath does not stink.
So why has my BB returned in the last few months? Unfortunately I have made many lifestyle changes in this time which could be the cause. I have twice tried to quit smoking. Once using a nicotine containing electric cigarette, where I managed for 3 weeks, only starting again because I had uncontrollable feelings of anger which were very unusual and hard to deal with. The second time I quit cold turkey for a month and started again due to a very unwelcome return of suicidal thoughts, thoughts that I had not had for the 12 years that I had been smoking. Luckily smoking again instantly got rid of them and they have not returned. I suffered a bit of a broken heart from my ex. Could this maybe have something to do with it? After my broken heart I got into self help books and decided that I really needed to fix my life. I discovered that I had a strong desire to do something with my life, instead of just working my dead-end job until I retire. I wanted to improve my body, my social skills, use my brain again. I started reading and studying psychology and philosophy and was very optimistic about my future for the fist time in my life. It is almost as if my body decided that I was progressing too much and being too positive and so decided to give me back my BB to crush all these good feelings I had about myself.
So basically my life sucks again :-(

Very sorry to read of your pain and suffering. I can utterly relate to it all, as I'm sure we all do.

I really hope you can manage to eventually figure this out. I sure have no ideas what to think or say.

The only thing I can think of is that your BB is related in some way to your digestive system and that the menthol cigarettes was in some way helping with your digestion.

I can remember being told once by an ambulance paramedic why there's more craving to smoke after a meal. I can't remember what it was, but I also remember him saying that for some reason this is the worst time to smoke. He said it was something to do with the body directing blood-flow to the digestive organs during digestion, and that this is why it's bad to smoke at this time. But I can't remember why it's bad. But I wonder if there might be a connection between this and why the menthol cigarettes helped?

That's not a lot of help, but there has to be an explanation.
You could put it to Dr. Aydinmur who might have some answers that could point you in the right directions.

Yeah I also used to smoke cigarettes to mask my bb but as halitosisux said, it would only help while smoking the cigarette, afterwards the bb got even worse and the mouth-feel was pretty bad afterwards too, so I always used gum afterwards.

Do you know where your Bad Breath comes from? In my case it came from the tongue and until now I was able to effectively treat it with the Tung Brush and Gel (7 days of usage today). Did you try to put a finger at the back of your tongue and then to smell it? If it smells bad (like it used to in my case) then your bad Breath probably comes from the tongue.
I suffered from BB all my life and also had suicidal thoughts because of this but until now this Brush is doing an outstanding work!