Hello all. I've just signed up here and have been wanting to get some issues regarding bad breath and, specifically, the therabreath website (www.Therabreath.Com) off my chest for a while.

I've had bad breath for the most part of two and a half years now. Therabreath products helped me to get rid of it for a while, but having not used the products for a while, i've been burdened with this condition again.

I think there are a set of circumstances which make bad breath a problem. One dimension is the physical cause of the problem, which seems to have been accurately determined by Dr. Katz on the therabreath site, but i'll get onto that shortly. But what really makes it a problem is that it is viewed as 'socially unacceptable' to have bad breath.

To use some examples of other conditions for comparison, those who suffer from mental retardation are viewed with sympathy. Similarly, those who are physically disabled generally encounter sympathy and people are often willing to go out of their way to help them. Now, i'm not for one minute downplaying the seriousness of these conditions; instead, i'm using them to show the contrast that exists between sufferers of those conditions and sufferers of bad breath. A long time ago, sufferers of the aforementioned conditions wouldn't be treated with such sympathy; in the present day, sufferers of bad breath aren't all that much better off. In my experience, i've only been mocked for having the condition on very few occasions, but I have been asked if I wanted gum etc. Quite a few times. This is indicative of a great lack of understanding the public has on the condition.

On the therabreath site, in one of his main articles (http://www.Therabreath.Com/art_badbreath. Asp), Dr. Katz claims that bad breath is caused by bacteria (which everyone, he claims, has in their mouth) and these bacteria sometimes produce foul smelling vscs that cause the odour. These sounds about right to me, but it leaves some questions unanswered:

1. If everyone has these bacteria in their mouths, why is it that only a small proportion of the population suffers from the condition caused by their actions (the production of vscs)?
2. Dr. Katz claims that drinking coffee is one cause of bad breath. To use an example that seems to go against this, I was at a meeting with my father recently. He drank a full cup of coffee and did a fair bit of talking, which is meant to lead to dry mouth. Just after the meeting, he was talking to me with his mouth close to my nose, and there wasn't any smell whatsoever. His breath was completely odourless. Another example is one of my teachers, who smokes and was talking to several pupils in my class just beside him in turn about a piece of work. When he got on to me, he was talking to me and his breath was completely odourless. Why was this the case in both situations where it would appear the circumstances would cause bad breath?

I admire Dr. Katz for making a breakthrough in bad breath research and creating what seems to be the only effective 'temporary' cure, but there's still a long way to go in this field.

Apologies for the long and somewhat rambling post, but I felt I should make this public. I, for one, am not willing to go through life with this burden on my shoulders and I don't believe anyone should have to do so.