How to Diagnose Your Own Bad Breath

The sad fact is, we can’t easily tell whether or not we have bad breath ourselves, due to something called “habituation” - the body’s way of adjusting to whatever odors or tastes are present.

Instead, it’s the people we spend time with - our families and coworkers - who can most easily and accurately identify unpleasant odors emanating from our mouths. The degree of one’s bad breath isn’t going to be the same from day to day, either; it largely depends on both the dryness of the mouth and the number of residual toxins there.

Still, there’s hope for the person who simply dreads asking others: you can try this self-test. First, lick the back of your wrist, then allow the saliva to dry for several minutes. Do a sniff test, and you may be able to identify bad breath … or its happy alternative.

Another way to test for your own bad breath is to lightly scrape the back of your tongue with an inverted spoon, or a piece of dental floss. Check the dried residue for any sulfuric odors.

Or, you may need to bite the bullet and ask your spouse to help you. Ask them to smell your breath and give you their considered opinion. For those who simply can’t bear the thought of adding this task to their morning routine (”Good morning dear, I hope you slept well, can you smell my breath?”), very reliable home tests have come on the market which test for the telltale presence of polyamines and sulfur compounds on the tongue - proving that anyone who’s loathe to ask their spouse is certainly not alone.

You may need to test several times in a day to arrive at a meaningful result. However, if an odor problem shows up continuously and persistently, and all other factors have been ruled out, you might want to consider taking a more sophisticated test using the latest tool technology has to offer.

This new tool, a portable sulfide monitor with much accuracy, is called the Halimeter. The Halimeter sees wide use when testing for above-average emissions of sulfur in the mouth. However, even the Hallimeter has its drawbacks in clinical and lab applications.

For example, many common sulfides you’d encounter in common meals aren’t easily differentiated from the anaerobic types, and can cause erroneous readings in test results. In fact, certain delicious but odorous foods such as garlic and onions produce sulfur in the breath for as long as 48 hours, and often lead to false readings.

The Halimeter is also found to be very sensitive to alcoholic drinks, so for best results, you’ll need to avoid drinking alcohol or using alcohol-rich mouthwashes for at least 12 hours before you test your breath. What’s more, the Hallimeter loses its sensitivity over time and requires periodic recalibration to stay accurate.

So what might you choose if your pocketbook’s deep and your need for information insatiable? Well, modern science has given us portable gas chromatography machines such as the “OralChroma”, which digitally measures the molecular levels of three major odor-causing compounds taken in a sample of air from the mouth. The OralChroma provides extremely accurate results, and even offers visual feedback in the form of graphs via a computer interface. And it only runs you a little over $5,500!

Despite the number of hip and interesting tools for measuring bad breath on the market, microbiological testing of teeth and tongue residue, taken from swabs, remains the most accurate way to determine the specific bacteria that’s causing a patient’s bad breath. It may not be glamorous, but it works. At least you don’t have to ask your spouse for this kind of testing.