Abstract
The inability of a person to sense his own breath results in a situation called the “bad breath paradox” (Scott Harper, personal communication). According to this paradox, most of the people suffering from breath odors are unaware of their condition, whereas many others that do not have any breath odor worry excessively that they do. For example, in a study of 88 subjects attending a routine health check up, 19 thought that they had bad breath, but this was not confirmed by the odor judge. Conversely, nine had breath odor (as determined by the odor judge) but were not aware of it (Rosenberg et al. 2007). In another study conducted in Japan (Iwakura et al. 1994), 80% of the patients who visited the clinic claimed to be self-aware of their condition, while only 24% had actual malodor.
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Sterer, N., Rosenberg, M. (2011). Self-Assessment of Breath Odors. In: Breath Odors. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19312-5_10
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