Hi all. It’s been so comforting to read your stories and to know I’m not alone.
My question has to do with BB related to tonsil stones / infected tonsils. I’m hoping that if I share my story someone out there might draw a connection between some obscure details and get one step closer to finding a solution.
My problem is that I have had this awful death smell constantly emanating from my tonsils / back of throat. It would still stink up a car even after I had left it. I have always had those tonsil stones pop out about once a year ever since I was child, but have never had a constant odor. I am open minded, but I am almost totally convinced my BB is related to tonsils/sinuses/lungs in some manner. I would have to estimate that this all started to begin around 22-23 years old, which I noticed other people have experienced too. It became quite noticeable at 24-25. I’m now in my late twenties. I have great oral hygiene, I’m very physically active and I eat a healthy diet. As far as vices go, I smoke. I get a fair amount of post nasal drip. I have had a extremely prolonged case of very mild bronchitis. I recently cut out dairy, which seems to be helping mucus clear up a little. I have fairly severe hyperhidrosis in my underarms which I’ve had since I was 13.
Does anyone know what I mean when I’m talking about the tonsil smell? It’s not the same as morning breath or garlic breath or anything like that. I smell it occasionally on other people’s breath. It’s actually quite a distinct smell, or at least it is to me and it usually smells fairly similar from person to person, just some people are stronger than others. Does anyone else experience this?
As soon as I found out about my breath I immediately changed my hygiene routine and diet. I flushed all that tonsillolith junk out of my tonsils with a dental irrigator and do a daily regime (irrigator, neti pot, anti-bacterial toothpaste, etc) which seems to be combating the problem. You wouldn’t believe how much crud actually came out the first time I flushed, I was SO surprised. There’s no doubt why my breath absolutely reeked. I still haven’t been able to confirm that the smell has 100% completely gone since I’m living abroad right now and I would only feel comfortable asking my immediate family to test my breath. For all I know my BB might be worse and I might just be more accustomed to it now. But something tells me that there has been a big improvement even though I know you can’t smell yourself that well. However, I am starting to get paranoid and thinking that I may possibly be catching a faint odor from myself when I’m speaking with people later in the day, even after I’ve cleaned my tonsils.
A theory I have is that I am mildly lactose intolerant and this may be contributing to the BB in some way. There’s a family history of it and when I was young I could only drink goats milk. I don’t ever feel sick after consuming dairy (which I was consuming far too much of), but I guess I’m just running low on ideas and I’ll try anything at this point.
I’ve also contemplated that the ongoing bronchitis may be causing the smell. Any ideas? Would it get to be that strong of a smell with really only mild bronchitis?
OK, anyway thanks to everyone on this board and God bless you. You guys really are life savers.
Thanks for sharing this with us. I know there are many things in my past that I have no memory of, and my tonsil experience, which was identical to yours, was one of them. I'm glad you mentioned it, because I can now share this story with you in hopes that it would help you find a solution. I too suffered from that horrible odor that comes from tonsil stones, and it wasn't until I had a tonsillectomy at the age of 18 that the particular odor disappeared.Mind you, we’re talking about 1968 when there was a popular thought in the medical community that it was better to keep the tonsils because their function was to filter germs from passing down to the lungs. Since I was asthmatic and frequently had bronchial asthma, my mom chose not to have them removed so they could continue in their filtering process.
Finally, I got mononucleosis in 1967, and my tonsils almost closed together, and got so infected that they decided to do a tonsillectomy afterwards. Come to think of it, my asthma improved as a result, as a matter of fact. To this day, my poor mother feels guilty about having waited so long to remove them because she now fears that instead of protecting me from respiratory infection, the tonsils were so weak and infected themselves, that they were a nesting ground for additional infections, including mononucleosis.
In addition, since I developed rheumatoid arthritis, which is an autoimmune disease, she fears that having had infection for so many years stored in my tonsils could have contributed to this autoimmune condition. I don’t know, and maybe she is just overreacting to the potential outcome of sustained infected tonsils. Nonetheless, that’s water under the bridge, no sense in feeling guilt about it.
Getting back to the bad breath part of this, I still had mild bad breath after my tonsils were removed, though very much improved. I wonder if these sick tonsils could have contributed to the growth of bacteria in the back of my throat, sinuses, bronchioles, and lungs that produce bad breath. In addition to this, I wouldn’t doubt that I may have had an altered gut bacteria, since my tonsils were always draining and I had no other choice but to swallow it. This altered gut bacteria and perhaps a mild hereditary metabolic disorder could have taken its course to create a toxic state in my blood which was coming out of my breath, underarms, and periodically my feet. I couldn’t say for sure.
I do know that I struggled with trying to keep all this odor at a minimum with obsessive cleansing rituals, but I am certain that the tonsillectomy alleviated a lot of this problem. In time, my body seemed to go through hormonal changes, and during my pregnancies and eventually after menopause, my odor is almost completely gone most of the time.
I hope this helps.Your experience brought back a lot of memories that I had completely forgotten. I can now analyze them from a different perspective now that we have explored the various possible causes and treatment of body odor.
Wow, youv got exactly what iv got, the tonsil stones and the hyperhydrosis under the arms, the nasal drip(thats one ingredients to the tonsil stones), frequent flem in the throat, coughing... i use the dental water spray to flush the stones out of there little hidy hole, they STINK! i used to get them like u once a year or so but i never had this smell so potent in my tonsils till i turned 18... iv read that if you get your tonsils removed the smell and stones go away forever
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BB and tonsils 
