Hello all. I've just signed up here and
have been wanting to get some issues
regarding bad breath and, specifically,
the therabreath website
(www.Therabreath.Com) off my chest for a
while.
I've had bad breath for the most part of
two and a half years now. Therabreath
products helped me to get rid of it for a
while, but having not used the products
for a while, i've been burdened with this
condition again.
I think there are a set of circumstances
which make bad breath a problem. One
dimension is the physical cause of the
problem, which seems to have been
accurately determined by Dr. Katz on the
therabreath site, but i'll get onto that
shortly. But what really makes it a
problem is that it is viewed as 'socially
unacceptable' to have bad breath.
To use some examples of other conditions
for comparison, those who suffer from
mental retardation are viewed with
sympathy. Similarly, those who are
physically disabled generally encounter
sympathy and people are often willing to
go out of their way to help them. Now,
i'm not for one minute downplaying the
seriousness of these conditions; instead,
i'm using them to show the contrast that
exists between sufferers of those
conditions and sufferers of bad breath. A
long time ago, sufferers of the
aforementioned conditions wouldn't be
treated with such sympathy; in the present
day, sufferers of bad breath aren't all
that much better off. In my experience,
i've only been mocked for having the
condition on very few occasions, but I
have been asked if I wanted gum etc.
Quite a few times. This is indicative of
a great lack of understanding the public
has on the condition.
On the therabreath site, in one of his
main articles
(http://www.Therabreath.Com/art_badbreath.
Asp), Dr. Katz claims that bad breath is
caused by bacteria (which everyone, he
claims, has in their mouth) and these
bacteria sometimes produce foul smelling
vscs that cause the odour. These sounds
about right to me, but it leaves some
questions unanswered:
1. If everyone has these bacteria in
their mouths, why is it that only a small
proportion of the population suffers from
the condition caused by their actions (the
production of vscs)?
2. Dr. Katz claims that drinking coffee
is one cause of bad breath. To use an
example that seems to go against this, I
was at a meeting with my father recently.
He drank a full cup of coffee and did a
fair bit of talking, which is meant to
lead to dry mouth. Just after the
meeting, he was talking to me with his
mouth close to my nose, and there wasn't
any smell whatsoever. His breath was
completely odourless. Another example is
one of my teachers, who smokes and was
talking to several pupils in my class just
beside him in turn about a piece of work.
When he got on to me, he was talking to me
and his breath was completely odourless.
Why was this the case in both situations
where it would appear the circumstances
would cause bad breath?
I admire Dr. Katz for making a
breakthrough in bad breath research and
creating what seems to be the only
effective 'temporary' cure, but there's
still a long way to go in this field.
Apologies for the long and somewhat
rambling post, but I felt I should make
this public. I, for one, am not willing
to go through life with this burden on my
shoulders and I don't believe anyone
should have to do so.
