Dear Queenie,
A friend of mine has really bad breath. Sometimes it’s so bad you can’t even talk to her because of the smell. She doesn’t have much success with boys and I think it’s because of her bad breath.
I want to tell her about it but I don’t want to make her mad at me.
Queenie, how do you tell somebody something like that?—Holding my nose
Dear Holding my nose,
A looooong time ago there used to be a television commercial for toothpaste that said, “Even your best friend won’t tell you (that you have bad breath)!” I always thought that if someone was really your friend, they would tell you so you would know to do something about it. And of course, the same thing applies to body odour and smelly feet.
How to go about it? Well, that depends on the kind of person your friend is and how close you are to her.
You could take a deep breath and tell her straight out. Then sit down with her and try to figure out why her breath is so bad and what she can do about it. Possible causes could be tooth decay, poor oral hygiene, a diet that includes smelly foods like garlic, a medical problem, smoking, or a combination of several of the above.
A visit to the dentist and/or doctor will help her to determine the cause, and the practitioner will be able to make suggestions as to ways to combat the problem.
And if she smokes, stopping smoking will both help sweeten her breath and help make her more aware of her problem. It’s a fact: As well as fouling the smoker’s breath, smoking deadens the senses of smell and taste. If she is a smoker she probably is totally unaware of how foul her breath smells to others.
