Breath Facts

• Aside from fixing cavities and gum disease, the public seeks dental care most often hoping to improve their breath quality (although this is not usually shared with the dentist or hygienist).
  
  
• Morning breath improves more after eating breakfast than after brushing.
  
  
• Less than 1% of breath odor does not come from the stomach.
  
  
• People are generally unable to assess their own breath odor.
  
  
• Women tend to believe they have poor breath quality while men, in fact, produce bad breath more commonly and suspect it less often.
  
  
• About 90% of the population experiences periodic bad breath and up to 25% suffer from chronic halitosis.
  
  
• Garlic can be smelled on the breath for over 30 hours after eating it.
  
  
• Certain bacteria produce compounds that smell unpleasant (kind of like humans passing gas after eating beans).
  
  
• Over 700 different kinds of bacteria have been found in the mouth and one specific bacteria seems to be present in everyone with breath odor arising from the oral area.  This bacteria was not discovered until the year 2000 (thanks to DNA analysis) and only in 2007 was it associated with bad breath. 
  
  
• Two scientific instruments have been developed to assess breath quality: The Halimeter, which is a portable sulfide monitor and the Oral Chroma, which is a portable gas chromatography unit.
  
  
• The average mouth houses about as many bacteria as there are people on the earth – 6 billion.
  
  
• Bacteria group together in colonies called biofilms that are resistant to antibacterial agents, sometimes requiring 200 times as much antibiotic as would be needed to eliminate free floating bacteria.
  
  
• Nearly 10 % of people who think they have bad breath do not.
  
  
• Bad taste is sometimes a sign of bad breath.
  

Psychological studies…

• Organoleptic Testers are odor judges who test breath by sniffing and are “calibrated” so that they can report consistently similar scores.
• There once was a king who got angry with his wife because she didn’t inform him of his bad breath and he found out through a friend.  Her wise reply was that she had never been with another man and that she thought that all men smelled that way.
  
  
• A rare metabolic disorder called “fish odor syndrome” (trimethylaminuria) causes the breath to have a strange fishey odor.
  
  
• Diabetes mellitus gives an acetone-like smell to the breath.
  
  
• During periods of fasting, fats and proteins breakdown. The waste products of this metabolism result in a characteristic odor.
  
  
• Infections, especially of the sinuses or lungs, can cause bad breath.
  
  
• Kidney failure and liver disease can affect breath quality.

Office Location: Ray & 101
602-904-7245
2470 West Ray Road, Suite one, Chandler, Arizona 85224

View map >