Why It’s Hard, Why to Do It, and How to Do It
At one time or another, almost everyone wants to smell their own breath and check whether it’s fresh. You may find, though, that your own breath is surprisingly difficult to detect. In this article we cover why you can’t smell your own breath very well, why you might want to check it anyway, and the methods that let you smell it.
Why you can’t smell your own breath
It’s very hard to smell your own breath because you become acclimated to it. In other words, you get so used to the smell that you stop noticing it.
Have you ever visited someone’s house that smelled bad because they had a lot of cats or other animals? If you told the owner their house stank, they might be surprised, or say they didn’t even notice it. We clearly become acclimated to the smells around us.
Our brains are wisely designed to acclimate to smells so we can notice new ones more easily. If we never became acclimated, it would be hard to smell new things such as food or flowers, because our sense of smell would be overwhelmed by the smell of our breath and our surroundings.
It’s often easy to smell other people’s bad breath because we aren’t acclimated to theirs. If someone close to you has bad breath all the time, read our article on How to Tell Someone They Have Bad Breath.
Why check your own breath?
The obvious reason to check your breath is to find out whether, at that moment, it’s fresh. You may want to do this before a meeting, a social gathering, or a date.
Another reason to smell your own breath is to gauge the effectiveness of various oral care products. There are many mints, gums, mouthwashes, and toothpastes on the market that promise fresh breath, and it’s clear that some work better than others. You can test which products work best for you by checking your breath after using them.
When testing products, don’t check your breath immediately after using them, because it will just smell like the product. Instead, check it one to three hours later, and make sure you haven’t eaten or drunk anything other than water in the meantime. Record your results for each product, and be consistent in how you test so the results stay accurate. Check your breath the same amount of time after using each product. For example, if you brush with Crest toothpaste and check your breath after one hour, then when you test a different product, such as toothpaste from Colgate, check your breath after exactly one hour as well.
Eating roughly the same food before using each product matters too. For example, suppose you’re testing toothpastes: one day you eat garlic cloves for breakfast, brush your teeth, and check your breath, and the next day you have bacon and eggs, brush your teeth, and check your breath. I’m willing to bet that, regardless of how effective either toothpaste is, your breath will be worse on the day you ate those pungent garlic cloves for breakfast.
Methods on how to smell your breath
Here are several methods you can use to check your own breath. Some may work better for you than others, so experiment and see what works.
Hand-Cupping Method
This is one of the most popular yet least effective methods. To do it, you breathe into your cupped hand and sniff immediately afterward. It doesn’t work well because we are acclimated to our own breath. To detect your breath more reliably, it’s important to remove the source of the odor from your mouth and then smell it.
Wrist Method
- Make sure your wrist is clean and doesn’t smell like perfume, cologne, or sweat. If it does, wash it and let it dry.
- Lick your wrist with your tongue and wait 10 seconds.
- Smell the spot you licked. If it smells bad, your breath probably smells bad; if you smell nothing, your breath should be fine.
Cheek Pulling Method
- Pinch your cheeks and pull them out, away from your teeth.
- Push them back toward your teeth.
- Repeat a few times, faster, and sniff at the same time.
- If you smell a bad odor, your breath is probably bad.
Tongue Swab Method
- Take a spoon, Q-tip, cotton swab, toothpick, or finger and gently rub the far back of your tongue; the farther back, the better. Set the object aside and wait a minute, then smell it. Your breath probably smells the way the object does.
Swabbing Your cheeks
This is the same as the Tongue Swab Method, except that instead of swabbing your tongue, you swab the insides of your cheeks.
Smelling Dental Floss or Toothpicks
This method isn’t as reliable as the others, but it does give you a good idea of whether particles or compounds between your teeth are causing odors and bad breath. Simply use the floss or toothpick as you normally would, then smell it afterward.
Closing Note: One of the easiest and most accurate ways to find out whether you have bad breath is to ask someone you know well. If you discover that you do, please read our article on What Causes Bad Breath and then our article on How to Get Rid of Bad Breath. With time and effort, you’ll greatly reduce your bad breath and feel more confident around others.