Garlic Breath

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Do I Have Garlic Breath?

Despite the many culinary and health benefits of garlic there is one serious drawback: it's hard to prevent garlic breath. The more you enjoy garlic, the more of it you are likely to consume and the worse the bad breath problem is likely to become.

One unfortunate facet of bad breath is that you can rarely smell it yourself. If you eat a lot of garlic then it is probably safest to assume that you do have smelly breath, even if your friends are too polite to mention the symptoms!

What Is Garlic Breath?

Many substances cause breath problems. One of the reasons that garlic breath is so strong is that garlic is full of sulphorous compounds. These compounds "feed" the bacteria in the mouth and bad breath (halitosis) is caused as a result.

If you have bad breath generally then you probably have a lot of these halitosis inducing bacteria in your mouth anyway and so will suffer more from the effects of garlic.

Is There a Cure?

The only guaranteed way to prevent garlic breath is simply not to eat garlic! For some of us that is inconceivable. However, if your main reason for eating garlic is for the health benefits then you could get some relief by switching to odourless garlic supplements instead.

Although there are a number of simple, traditional methods to help reduce garlic breath there's unfortunately no way of getting rid of the symptoms completely. Even the best remedies are only partial. You can improve and mask the smell of your breath, but the garlic still works its way through your entire system. So even with a powerful bad breath cure the garlic will usually still emerge from the pores the next day.

A true garlicophile can literally "seep" garlic through the skin. There's no effective remedy for that.

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