Halitosis: Foolproof ways to check if you have bad breath

It’s quite bizarre that even though our nose is right above our mouth, we can’t really smell the odours that come out of it. It would be ideal if we could, given that a smelly mouth can actually be pretty embarrassing—especially when you’re out in public or on a special date night.

Everyone has dealt with having unpleasant mouth odour at least a handful of times in their life. It could be after waking up in the morning, or eating a particularly garlicky dish. But you should know that there are several ways of checking if you should freshen up your breath with a little spritz of mouth spray. Here are a few you should memorise:

Sniff test

The easiest way to find out if you have a case of stinky breath is to probably ask your close friend or may be just someone who will not laugh at you. But let’s face it, the likelihood of you doing that is probably close to nothing so try out these sniff tests instead.

Take your wrist (make sure it’s clean) or the back of a spoon and give it a big old lick. Let your saliva dry then take a whiff. This should give you a pretty good idea of what your breath smells like. For those of you who are at home, or have access to floss, you can also floss the teeth at the back of your mouth and then smell it, the team at Colgate advises.

Another method you can use is the cup technique. Cup your hands and cover your mouth with it. Breathe out using your mouth by making a 'ha' sound and then take a quick sniff.

Taste test

When you can taste something funky in your mouth, chances are, your breath probably smells that way as well. So, if you’ve just finished eating a big tuna sandwich for lunch, you should probably pop a mint in your mouth afterwards because we guarantee that not only will you be tasting fish for a couple of hours, you’ll also be smelling like one.

In the case that you have a condition like dry mouth, which is notorious for making the oral cavity taste a little raunchy, you should expect that your breath will smell rancid too. This is because the saliva, which usually washes away dead cells inside the mouth, is lacking. Hence the dead cells in the mouth start decomposing and leaving a real stink behind. While talking to Dollar Shave Club, dentist Dr. Corbin Brady suggested people who suffer from chronic dry mouth to visit a dentist to get a medical grade rinse.