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Consumer Remedies That Don’t Work The most common remedies for bad breath, alcohol-based mouthwash, breath spray, and candy mints, are mostly ineffective. According to a September 1992 report by Consumers Union, the 15 most popular breath freshener brands only masked the offensive odor with another odor that lasts from as little as 10 minutes. Because most mouthwashes contain alcohol, a drying agent, they frequently make bad breath worse, by drying out the mouth creating a more hospitable environment for odor causing bacteria. (New mouthwashes containing chlorine dioxide have proven very effective in combating bad breath. These mouthwashes do not mask bad breath, but directly attack bad breath germs and neutralize the volatile sulfur compound that cause bad breath. Tooth brushing can actually worsen breath, because most toothpaste contains sulfide, a drying agent, that temporarily causes drying of the mouth, thereby increasing the release of noxious volatile sulfur compounds into the air when exhaled. Internal breath pills claims to attack bad breath emanating from the stomach. According to all current scientific research, however, less than 1% of bad breath originates in the stomach, lungs, or sinuses. By far, the overwhelming source of bad breath is the top back surface of the tongue. One popular internal breath pill, BreathAssure, was ordered by a federal court to stop claiming, either directly or by implication, in any advertising or promotion or promotional context, effectiveness in stopping bad breath. Antibiotics can cause bad breath by killing not only the bad breath germs that reside on the top back of the tongue, but also other oral microorganisms that are critical in the digestion of foods. Undigested food on the tongue creates a lush breeding ground for the bad breath germs that produce the noxious volatile sulfur compounds that cause bad breath.
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