Nov
9
2009
Detect Bad Breath
Author: tayana
There are ways you can objectively smell your own breath. However, you have to take a slightly indirect route.
Try this technique. Lick your wrist, wait about five seconds while the saliva dries somewhat, and then smell it. What do you think?
That’s the way you smell. Or, more precisely, that’s the way the end of your tongue smells (your tongue’s “anterior” portion). How was it? Did you pass this first check?
Now try this second experiment. It will check the odor associated with the back portion of your tongue (your tongue’s “posterior” aspect).
Take a spoon, turn it upside down, and use it to scrape the very back portion of your tongue. (Don’t be surprised if you find you have an active gag reflex.) Take a look at the material that has been scrapped off, usually it’s a thick whitish material. Now, take a whiff of it. Not so bad? Pretty nasty? This smell, as opposed to the sampling from the anterior portion of your tongue, is probably the way your breath smells to others.
Just as your experimentation has suggested, for most people the fundamental cause of bad breath is the whitish coating that covers the surface of the posterior portion of their tongue. More accurately, bad breath is caused by the bacteria that live in this coating. (The second most common fundamental cause of bad breath is bacteria that accumulate elsewhere in a person’s mouth.)
