Oral Health

You cannot smell your own breath - olfactory adaptation means your receptors stop reporting a constant odour within minutes, and your brain edits it out entirely. Here are the self-tests that actually work, honestly rated, and why cupping your hands and breathing into them does NOT.

Some people brush, floss and scrape their tongue perfectly and still have foul breath — and the reason is often tonsil stones, calcified pellets of bacteria hidden in the crypts of the tonsils. Here is what they are, how to check for them safely, what you must NOT do, and when to see a doctor.

Tongue scraping works — it measurably reduces the volatile sulphur compounds that ARE the smell of bad breath. But almost everybody cleans the tip and front of the tongue, which is nearly clean already, and never reaches the back, where the odour-producing bacteria actually live. Here is the evidence and the correct technique.

Bad breath is not caused by poor hygiene alone. People who brush twice a day can still have it — because the real source is bacterial, and it lives where a brush cannot reach.