People Polish

I had the unfortunate opportunity of attending a mixer yester evening, at no apter location than an uptown Houston wine bar. Due, no doubt, to the venue, this particular mixer was full to the brim with business coaches, financial planners and straight-commission salesmen, bibbing the fruit of the vine and sampling exotic cheese, which has inspired me to write on an ever-timely subject: Breath.

Bad breath is triply dangerous. It makes people want to leave. It makes it difficult for them to pay attention to what you’re saying. And it makes every word you say seem foul, no matter how sweetly phrased or advantageous.

I had a dentist in my youth who, like any good dentist, had impeccable oral hygiene. Or, at least, so it seemed from ten inches downwind, which is a pretty good vantage point. Never once did I detect any odor of gin nor decay on his breath. Since then, I’ve had a handful of elevator moments when I was in such close proximity with equally hygienic individuals that I could feel the breeze as they spoke, detect the warmth from their lungs, but continue respiring through my nose with pleasure because they took such good care of their mouths. This inspired confidence and warm feelings, which put them miles ahead, for what it’s worth, in my estimation.

Directing breath away from faces is hardly a sure bet because of the unpredictable nature of weather. Remember when Hurricane Rita was making a beeline for Galveston, and the entire state of Texas evacuated to Oklahoma? Then she did a pump-fake at the last second and just dumped a bunch of rain on Johnson’s Pass, Louisiana. Try as you may to redirect your high-pressure system away from a potential client or date’s olfactory sensors, there’s always that darned 40% probability it will redirect right where you least want it. Plus, if you direct your head at an angle when you talk, but keep your eyes trained on the listener, you look odd. And they’ll probably guess you’re self-conscious about your breath. The solution is to ensure it’s a fresh wind that won’t carry away your charming wit, even if you’re blasting them full in the face.

Like much of our Western medicine, commercial breath remedies adhere to the treat-the-symptom philosophy. Consider Tic-Tacs, Certs and Binaca, frequently liable for the mint-leaf compost smell that wafts about the mouths of salesmen and lounge lizards. To mitigate foul breath, one must understand its cause, which is, for the most part, naturally-occurring bacteria growing along the path of air as it departs the lungs for the surrounding atmosphere. Most of these anaerobes are found perched along the posterior dorsum (or back part) of the tongue, which, as Wikipedia describes, “is relatively dry and poorly cleansed, and bacterial populations can thrive on remnants of food deposits, dead epithelial cells and postnasal drip.” Their second-favorite place is between the teeth, where they’re generally safe from outside influences and frequently smiled upon with food bits that can only be dislodged by the rare flossing. For this reason, even brushing teeth is hardly a cure for bad breath, as the bristles of the toothbrush simply scour the hard, enamel surfaces where the offenders don’t like to live, anyway. Brushing teeth is about as effective in curing bad breath as policing Mayberry is at reducing crime. To cure bad breath, a full-scale offensive must be waged against the very offenders, and it must be fought on their turf.

I always marveled as a kid when my dentist knew I hadn’t been flossing. In my later teens I forewent pretending that I had, and instead inquired how he could tell. “Your gums are bleeding,” he said, which didn’t surprise me, because they bled every time I flossed (twice annually). He went on to explain that the aforementioned bacteria devour the gums when left to their own devices, hence the bleeding, and regular flossing shakes up their little colonies and keeps gums healthy and strong. While Oreo residue between the teeth isn’t very threatening to a sixteen-year-old boy, flesh-eating microbes, on the other hand, are an incentive to floss.

This simple - yet brilliant - device cleans bacteria from the back of the tongue while sparing the gag reflex. It's an invaluable aid in the quest for sweet breath.

A while later I discovered the tongue scraper. I had seen George Washington’s at Mt. Vernon some years prior, but since it was right beside his snuff box I didn’t think it applied to my generation. My dentist showed me his one day, then sold me a replica for $15. It’s essentially a steel squeegee, and while plastic versions are available for less money, I have the comfort of knowing that if my house burns down I’ll be able to dig my tongue scraper out of the rubble and take it with me to the motel.

The scraper brought instant derision from my friends, who are just the sort to laugh at anything beyond their worldviews. “I just brush my tongue,” guffawed one. Yet the scraper offers several advantages over the brush for this task. First, its low profile allows it to operate clear of the uvula, sparing the gag reflex (I’m reminded of an era before my discovery when I would repeatedly sock my uvula, reminiscent of Jerry in Tom’s mouth, with my toothbrush as I frantically scrubbed away. The resulting utterance caused considerable amusement among my roommates.). Additionally, it’s simply better at the job. Rigid steel proves a much more formidable foe to the offending colonies than do the pliable whiskers of an Oral B Soft Bristle, and following up a brush with a scraping will clearly reveal the latter’s superiority.

I don’t mean, in my praise of the floss and scraper, to debase the toothbrush or replace mouthwash. The toothbrush remains the foundation of sound oral hygiene and should be employed for two minutes, thrice daily. Floss in the evening, at the very least, and scrape the tongue as needed (after breakfast and before talking to anyone). Mouthwash users don’t need to be told how often to rinse, but twice a day probably can’t hurt.

As a child, my fastidious father spent many frustrating years teaching me the difference between cleaning the kitchen and making the kitchen clean. The former treats it as a process, where you go through a list of steps: wash the dishes, put the stack of newspapers on the barstool, wipe the counters, rinse the sink and sweep the floor. It sounds good enough for most people, but I learned at a young age to peer at the flat surface of the counter at a low angle, looking for irregularities in the reflection, which would, surely, be mung I had missed with the washcloth. I learned to scrub the gap between the countertop and the undermount sink with a dish brush, dislodging all sorts of hidden unpleasantries. While I can tolerate a fair amount of clutter in my life, when I do get around to cleaning the kitchen I seek out the nooks that never make it on the checklist. The goal is to designate a space and eliminate filth from it, diverging from the process in any way necessary.

My guess is that most of the undesirables I met at the mixer had brushed their teeth that day, possibly within the hour, but had done so because that’s what you do. Brushing is part of the process, and the supposed result is a clean mouth. But the repercussions of foul breath are simply too grave to risk a sub-par, automated cleansing, and hygiene should be pursued with the intent to designate a space (the mouth) and make it clean. A simple token brushing is not sufficient – it must be reinforced by flossing, scraping and rinsing, which, together, will eliminate all but the worst and rarest manifestations of halitosis.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 at 5:02 pm and is filed under Communication, Hygiene. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.