5 Common Bad Breath Myths

Contrary to popular belief, chronic bad breath can’t always be treated by brushing your teeth more often or avoiding certain foods. In fact, there are countless bad breath myths that can inhibit your ability to properly treat halitosis. Some of the most common myths we hear from our patients include:

• Halitosis Is Hereditary: This is completely untrue — Halitosis can’t be passed on genetically.  However, there are contributing bad breath characteristics that can be handed down to offspring.
• Halitosis Comes From The Lungs: Halitosis will very rarely come from the lungs. If this does occur, it’s the result of a serious respiratory disease, like pneumonia.
• Increasing Oral Care Can Treat Halitosis: Many patients believe that halitosis is caused by poor oral hygiene and can be fixed by simple brushing more. While this can be the case in some instances, we find that many patients have very good oral hygiene. More commonly we find that it is difficult for patients to remove the specific odor-causing bacteria through oral hygiene practices.
• Certain Foods Cause Halitosis: Most notorious foods like onions and garlic will only temporarily cause bad breath. Chronic bad breath is also a “sulfur” type odor not associated with odor caused from these particular foods.
• Halitosis Can Be Cured With Probiotics: There is no scientific evidence that proves probiotics can cure chronic bad breath.