Science Questions

What can you do fo bad breath?

Is there anything you can do to combat bad breath apart from a tongue scrape and a toothbrush? Paul, Essex

We put this question to Marcello Riggio:

Marcello: Unfortunately at the moment there is no cure or effective treatment so one should actually continue to use these scrapers where at all possible. Unfortunately there’s a perception that people with bad breath have got poor oral hygiene. That is not the case. You can keep your teeth scrupulously clean and floss consistently and you will still have bad breath unfortunately. You can use zinc containing chewing gum, for example, which will help to a certain extent. There is no good solution or cure at the moment.

Chris: I did hear that swilling your mouth with hydrogen peroxide in low concentrations is also quite good at killing the bacteria.

Marcello: Yeah. There are a number of solutions such as hydrogen peroxide which will kill bacteria but one has to be careful that you’re killing off the good bacteria as well as the bad bacteria. That’s certainly something we don’t want to do. These agents are non-selective.

May 2008