What Causes Bad Breath?
New science uncovers the exact cause of halitosis. Here’s how to avoid it.
Smelly breath was as a bigger faux pas than bad jokes, terrible dress sense, lateness, and even poor manners, in a 2019 survey by the Oral Health Foundation. The findings also revealed that 80% would not go on a second date with someone with stinky breath.
Jewish law even includes foul breath as grounds for divorce and can prohibit priests (kohanim) from performing holy rites in the Temple.
It wasn’t until halitosis — an old Latin term for bad breath — was linked in the 1920s with a poorly selling mouthwash called Listerine, that a new medical condition was coined, and of course it needed treatment, being a condition that affects nearly everyone at some time. Nasty breath usually results from overabundant oral bacteria that release obnoxious gasses, commonly known as volatile sulfur compounds or VSCs.
Treatment has primarily focused on products that are short-term and don’t solve the primary cause; options like breath mints and mouth sprays that merely disguise the odor, similar to air freshener, or the burn-and-clear technique of a medicated mouthwash that wipes out 99% of all bacteria, including the good. The latter may have negative health consequences since good bacteria are necessary for creating…
