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bad
breath / bad breath testing / bad breath cures
Bad
breath, also known as "halitosis",
doesn't have to be an insurmountable problem. Appropriate cures
for bad breath are usually very simple once the sufferer understands
the fundamental
causes of their breath odors. In most cases a person's bad
breath is due to anaerobic oral bacteria which have accumulated
on the person's tongue and also between and around their teeth.
Our discussion will outline for you some simple
tests you can use to determine if you have bad breath, explain
to you how
and why oral bacteria create bad breath, detail for you where
these offending bacteria commonly accumulate and how to effectively
minimize them, provide you with explanations regarding the use of
tongue
scrapers, mouthwashes,
and other specialty products, and provide you with some common
sense tips which can help you to minimize bad breath.
Do
you have bad breath?
How
is your breath, not sure? No doubt at some point each of us has
unwittingly had bad breath (halitosis)
only to subsequently be embarrassed by the reactions of those around
us.
For any individual the exact status of one's breath can be difficult
to ascertain. The reason for this lies in the fact that the oral
cavity, the source of our breath, is connected to our nose by way
of an opening which lies in the back of our mouth (back in the region
of our soft palate). Since noses tend to filter out and ignore background
odors, it filters out and ignores our own bad breath. This means
it is quite possible for a person to have bad breath, yet not be
aware of it.
Is
there a way a person can test his own breath?
There
are ways to accurately 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
do this experiment, it will check the odor associated with the back
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 its 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.
The
fundamental cause of bad breath is...
So
now you know, the fundamental cause of bad breath for most people
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 live and accumulate
elsewhere in a person's mouth.)
The
remainder of the text on this page describes various methods by
which dental researchers attempt to quantify levels of bad breath.
If you're interested in this topic of course please read on, otherwise
you may want to skip on to our next
page of topic bad breath.
How
academic researchers test for bad breath.
Before
a dental researcher can evaluate various cures for bad breath they
must first have a way to measure its severity, both initially and
after the cure they are studying has been administered. Some of
the different methods researchers have used to measure bad breath
are discussed below.
Organoleptic
judging of bad breath.
Judging
of a person's bad breath by way of organoleptic testing simply means
that the one performing the breath evaluation has used their sense
of smell (their nose) as the means for making the determination.
Historically this method of breath testing has been a frequent choice
among dental researchers. Noses are readily available, inexpensive
to obtain and operate, and to their credit noses can detect up to
10,000 different smells.
The problem one encounters with organoleptic testing is that it
does not provide an evaluation of bad breath that is totally objective.
Factors other than breath odors can and do influence organoleptic
evaluations. In fact research has shown that factors such as hunger,
menstrual cycle, head position, and the degree of attentiveness
and expectation can each influence a judge's interpretation of what
they smell.
As for quantifying the organoleptic measurement itself, what exactly
does constitute a weak, strong, or average level of bad breath?
Will each judge involved in the research be able to make equivalent
comparisons? Complicating things even more, as we all know when
we are repeatedly exposed to a bad odor our sense of smell acclimatizes
to the odor and therefore our sense of smell loses much of its sensitivity.
Bad breath that seems exceedingly objectionable at the beginning
of testing may seem quite less so as the evaluation continues.
Using
gas chromatography to evaluate bad breath.
Researchers
in a number of scientific fields have long used gas chromatographs
as a means of identifying the gases found in the samples they are
studying. Likewise, gas chromatographs have been utilized by dentists
in bad breath studies and have provided a means by which a researcher
could definitively quantify the precise levels of specific compounds
present in someone's breath.
While gas chromatography is probably the best way to test for the
compounds associated with bad breath it has not been widely utilized
in studies for several reasons. Gas chromatographs are relatively
expensive and need personnel with special training to operate them.
The equipment is not portable and a significant amount of time is
needed to make each breath measurement.
Using
Halimeters to judge bad breath.
A
specialized type of sulfide monitor (termed a Halimeter) has been
developed and it provides a means by which a tester can quantify degrees
of bad breath. These machines, first introduced in 1991, measure the
amount of sulfide gasses found in a person's breath. Some sulfides,
such as hydrogen sulfide and methyl mercaptan (collectively referred
to in dental literature as volatile sulfur compounds or "VSC's"),
are well known as being causative agents for bad breath. A Halimeter's
discovery of a high level of sulfides suggests a correlating high
level of VSC's, although the individual types of VSC's aren't tested
for specifically.
Since Halimeters test for a fewer number of compounds than gas chromatographs
(sulfides only), and in fact test for no individual compounds at all
but instead just sulfides as a class, Halimeters provide for a less
definitive evaluation of a person's bad breath than gas chromatographs
can. Additionally, compounds such as ethanol (alcohol) and essential
oils (both being compounds commonly found in mouthwashes) interfere
with a Halimeter's ability to make a measurement. The advantages of
using a Halimeter for a study rather than a gas chromatograph are
that a Halimeter requires no special training to use, is portable,
breath measurements can be made quickly, and the apparatus itself
is comparatively inexpensive.
The
BANA test.
Some
of the bacteria that cause periodontal disease (gum disease) produce
waste products that are quite odiferous and as a result contribute
to the presence of bad breath. Some of these types of bacteria can
be tested for by way of a BANA test.
The bacteria in question have the characteristic of being able to
produce an enzyme that degrades the compound benzoyl-D, L-arginine-naphthylamide
(abbreviated BANA). When a sample containing these bacteria is placed
with the BANA compound they break it down and the result is a compound
that has a different colour.
Utilizing
chemiluminescence in detecting bad breath.
One
of the more recently developed methods of testing for the presence
of compounds associated with bad breath relies on the principle of
chemiluminescence. This type of testing was first introduced in 1999.
When a sample containing sulfur compounds (such as VSC's,
the types of compounds which cause bad breath) is mixed in with the
test's mercury compound the resulting reaction causes fluorescence.
The strength of this methodology is that it can provide better selectivity
and sensitivity when measuring low levels of sulfur compounds, as
compared to testing with a Halimeter.
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