It's been a while since I visited and posted in this forum. I was a very active user back when the forum started in (in 2006??) when I was still 19yo :O
Now I'm 27 and my life is very different.
I stopped visiting after I realized how much all this bad breath related stuff was contributing to my depression so I just stopped thinking of it and pretending it doesn't exist. There are so many people with bb that live their life normally like everyone else because they don't even know they have it.
In fact, bad breath was thing that kept me down, otherwise my life was near perfect.
Here's a very brief story of my quest trying to get rid of this disease.
I'll try to make it as short as possible keeping only the most useful parts, but be prepared for a very long read anyway
1. Got bb probably all my life, started noticing in high school. My dental hygiene was like everyone else's (brushed 2 times a day and thats all) until I discovered I have bb, this is when I became obsessed with my dental hygiene. However my bb persisted, it was clear it had nothing to do with it.
2. Went to dentists, my teeth had nothing to do with it.
3. Went to various ENTs, everyone said I was fine. Had an endoscope shoved up my nose, doc said it was full of mucus. Had an xray that showed "mucosal thickening" in the sinuses. Also had a saliva culture test done, turned out fine. At this point after reading a lot of stuff I was convinced that it was my PND that caused this.
Never really had sinusitis in my life, I didn't even know what it was. However being a kid desperate for a cure, I was convinced that this was my problem. Doc prescribed my some antibiotics and a nasal spray that opens up your nostrils to help you breath and drain mucus. Didn't help. Prescribed me some harder antibiotics which turned out to be pretty bad stuff and messed up my intestines, since then I have what looks like Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Can't drink milk, eat fruits, coffee etc without running to the toilet. It improved somewhat since then, but its far from what it used to be, I could eat anything I want and wouldnt feel a thing.
NEVER TAKE ANTIBIOTICS UNLESS NECESSARY. DOCS DONT GIVE A DAMN, ITS NOT THEIR BODY THAT WILL BE RUINED. LATER IN MY LIFE I HAD A DOCTOR GIVE SOME OTHER ANTIBIOTICS ALTHOUGH I ASKED IF THERE IS ANY WAY TO AVOID THEM. DOC INSISTED AND THEY GAVE ME A PERMANENT VISION PROBLEM.
3. After 5 ENTs who couldn't help me, the last one I went (the one that did all the tests I mentioned above) told I most likely have a type of rhinitis (if I recall correctly) that causes me to have an excessive amount of mucous produced because of changes in temperature. Eg when going outside, or moving from a warmer room to a colder one. Other reason could be allergies.
4. This is where I started trying difference toothpastes and mouthwashes hoping something would help. Nothing made a difference. I even had to search my whole city for a pharmacy that sold a TheraBreath pack that consisted of a useless piece of shit mouthwash, toothpaste and tongue scraper. Finally I found one that was willing to make a special order from the company that imports it and I paid double price of what it costs in the US (I don't live in the US).
"Dr" Katz is just another scammer businessman who takes advantage of people's pain to make profit. Don't buy any of his shit. If you believe it helps you, its probably in your mind, working like a placebo. Common products from a super market do the same job and cost 1/10 of his products.
5. Forgot to mention that 2 of the ENTs mentioned that I had a deviated septum which could be the cause of my PND and that I had to have it fixed. I had the surgery, wasn't as bad as I expected pain-wise. Also had my enlarged turbinates (I think this is what they're called) cauterized.
Maybe my breathing improved a little (although the effect was negligible) however BB and PND were as bad as before.
6. I went to an allergist, he is also a pneumonology professor at a major university and has a pretty good name who was recommended to me by a friend of mine. I had to travel 2 hours to another city to visit him.
I had a full allergy test done on my back, test for a LOT of allergens, unlike most allergists who test you only for the very common ones. Turns out I had about ~20 minor allergies to various pollen, flour dust and other stuff. Also a few a little more major like to dust mites etc.
Doc prescribed me antihistamines, a Nasal spray (Nasonex) also gave me a Cortisone shot to see if it makes any difference. Neither the shot, spray or antihistamine meds made any difference. Or it was so small that it was insignificant.
7. Bought Chlorella and took that for a long period. Didn't help at all. All it did was make my shit green. It seems once you get "sick" there's a whole multibillion market of thousands of scam products and people who will gladly help you empty your pockets.
At this point in my life I was slowly becoming majorly depressed, I was losing all hope. I was only 19 and I was preparing for life of loneliness. Can't even describe you how that felt. I had girls hit on me and all I could do was avoid them to save myself from the humiliation the moment I start talking.
8. This is where I read someone talking about TUNG brush. It is like a tongue scraper, except it was a brush. I thought it would be another scam product. How a soft brush can clean better than a hard plastic scraper? My toothbrush is a "brush" too and I've tried it many times without results, how it could be any different?
However it only cost like 5 euros and I think it was another 5 for the gel so I decided to try it anyway, although I didn't have any hopes, I was just used to spending money on countless products so one more wouldn't hurt.
What you do is just put a small amount on the brush, and brush your tonge from the back to front with circular motion and then towards outside. For the first day it would make my tongue bleed a little and hurt (it said it would in the instructions). However after only a few days of using it, I noticed a difference. After a month of using it, after cleaning my tongue it would be almost completely pink! Never seen it like that before, with any product, not even CLOSE! I finally had some hope returning to me. My breath wouldn't stink nearly as bad. I was happy beyong words. It gave me enough confidence and this is where I became more outgoing and found my first girlfriend who never ever showed any reaction to my breath.
To this day I consider TUNG brush the only product that had any significant effect on my bad breath. And the funny thing is it was by far the cheapest.
Note that after using up the whole tube of gel I stopped using the gel completely and was using just a tiny bit of regular baking soda toothpaste (a little bigger than a grain of rice) and the effect was the same.
Another good thing is after using it for a while, the tongue becomes softer and brushing doesn't make it bleed or painful. Even better, after using it for months, brushing my tonge with a regular medium hardness toothbrush and toothpaste would clean it just like TUNG brush would!!! So ended up using the tooth brush all the time for cleaning my tongue but use TUNG brush every few days to keep my tongue "soft" so cleaning it with a regular toothbrush would be possible.
HOWEVER this was not yet the cure. This was a treatment that maybe made my breath 70% better for a few hours. Keep reading
9. I kept visiting the forum however my latest huge leap in getting rid of BB, got rid of my depression almost completely (since BB is the only reason I had it in the first place). I stopped researching spending countless hours every day researching BB and slowly stopped visiting this forum since only reading about BB would remind me of my sad sad past.
10. Fast forward to 2009. I've been using the TUNG brush for ~2.5 years and living my life normally. However I was really REALLY tired of my three times a day routine of brushing teeth thoroughly, then my tonge with tung brush. I was so scared of not doing it well and getting BB before I had a chance to come home and do it again that it took me literally 20 minutes everytime. Everyone was always complaining why I take so much time in the bathroom.
11. And although my breath was a million times better than it was my whole life, there was still something to be desired. When I exhaled I could feel a very bad smell that was not coming from my tongue but from the very very back of my throat, where the tonsils are. I had in my plans to have a tonsillectomy because I was constantly reading about people having tonsil stones and tonsils causing their bad breath so I had it in my "things to try" list since the beginning but I was too busy living my normal life and even the thought of getting involved in the long forgotten BB stuff made me depressed so I ignored it. However I never had docs complain about my tonsils and I never had tonsillitis or tonsil stones. This is where I started experiementing. The next morning when I was brushing my teeth I started messing with my tonsils and this is when I saw my first tonsil stone. I know this could be disgusting to you but, tough luck, all those years reading about BB i'm sure you've read a lot worse
.Anyway, it was really disgusting and smelled like shit of a dead dog who had indian food. So I added that to my brushing routine. After brushing my teeth and tongue, I would mess with the tonsils in case there's some of that nasty stuff stuck in there. That made my routine even longer. I was wasting a lot of time in front of the bathroom mirror 3 times a day but I didn't have a choice.
12. This is when I started getting tonsillitis ~3 times a year for the next 2 years. Tonsillitis is when your tonsils get inflamed and infected, hurt like HELL and is accompanied with a fever. If you think that swallowing is painful when your throat hurts, try doing that with tonsillitis. Btw, with tonsillitis your tonsils get coated with a white film that you can see in the mirror. This helps you identify it.
I'm pretty sure it had to do with me messing with my tonsils since before doing that I never had that in my life.
Anyway, after getting tonsillitis the first time I went to the doc and he gave me antibiotics for it (I think it was ceclor but I'm not sure). Only after 1 day of taking it, my tonsils would almost heal and the most amazing thing, my tongue would become pinker than ever before and I didn't even brush it those days since my whole mouth hurt! I immediatelly knew my tonsils have something to do with it. Of course after stopping the antibiotics my tongue would become white again and bad breath would return just like it was before.
13. Fast forward to end 2011, after all those years getting tired of spending 20+ minutes in the bathroom 3 times a day just to make sure I don't stink, after going through tonsillitis 5-6 times I decided it is time to do the last thing in my bad breath to-do checklist, getting my tonsils removed. I went to the doc, he looked at my tonsils he said they are not that bad and that a surgery is recommended only if you had tonsillitis more than 3 times a year for the last 3 years. I said definitely yes (I lied since the first time I had it was only 2 years before that) and the surgery was arranged to be done in 3 weeks.
14. The day came, I had the surgery after hearing all those horror stories of having a tonsillectomy as an adult and how painful it was. Not even close. The first day it was pretty painful and I couldn't even talk property since moving my mouth was really painful, but after 3 days it wasn't that bad. Considering the pain of tonsillitis, having your tonsils removed wasn't far off. Except having your tonsils removed is a one time thing.
It took around 1 month for me to heal completely although after 2 weeks there wasn't any pain. All I had to do was to avoid hard foods. I was eating soups all the time with barely any salt and anything spicy.
I was eager to see the results of my BB.
By the way, the doc said when he was removing my tonsils they turned out to be REALLY but and they basically were falling apart and smelled really bad and asked me how come I hadn't removed them earlier.
15. Now that I had healed, my tongue although wasn't pink it was FAR, FAAAR from what it was before. Only thing you need to know is, I don't use a TUNG brush anymore or any other product and my brushing routine is only 3-4 minutes
All I do is brush my teeth for 3 minutes, then brush my tongue for 1 minute with a plain toothbrush a little bit of toothpaste. I got rid of what bad breath was left. Now exhaling doesn't smell ANYTHING no matter how hard I try I still get bad breath if I don't brush, but normal people get too don't they
But now I can get away with brushing only in the morning once and not brushing the whole day which is really nice for the days when I can't brush my teeth because I'm away from home because of work or uni etc.Once in a while although rarely I might get bad morning breath (as in not the one normal people have, but the one distinct smell I had before the surgery) and I don't know the reason but I don't really care because that happens rarely anyway and is still not nearly as bad as before.
So conclusion is, I'm 90-95% cured in the sense that after I brush my "good" breath might last a little bit less
that that of the "normal" people.
I still have PND by the way although I don't have the feeling of constant mucous in my throat (maybe a little and rarely) and I don't spit a ton of clear mucous everytime I brush my teeth. Its just not there. My theory is, my allergies give me a constant increased production of mucous which flows down my throat. This mucous was trapped on and in the tonsils and the bacteria that live on the tonsils were feeding on it which is what produced the stench. Now that there are no tonsils, the mucous just flows down and isn't accumulated in the tonsils which is also why I don't feel like having my throat full of mucous all the time.
In other words, as I was saying even in the old days, allergies aren't the cause, at least not the lone cause. The cause was in the tonsils and the allergies made it really bad. If it was the allergies alone, a lot more people would have bad breath because a LOT of people have allergies. I didn't even have any acute symptoms, my allergy symptoms are mild to none.
So yeah, this is my story, hope it helps some people in their quest of getting their life back
I used to be a person closed to myself and my close friends, not outgoing and very bad low self esteem only because of BB. Many people thought I was antisocial or even had some psychological problems or something because when I wasn't with my friends I would sit by myself, and when I wasn't I was barely speaking beacuse I didn't want to kill them with chemical gasses since I would risk having USA bomb and invade my house in the search of terrorists and weapons of mass destruction.
Now I'm the complete opposite, people that I met after being cured think I'm the most social guy they ever met.
All I know is that I'm living my life normally, completely forgotten about bad breath since I had my tonsillectomy
Btw, here's a picture of my class back when I was still in school
