Breath-o-Gram

Now that National Fresh Breath Day has receded with sounding brass and tinkling cymbals into history ... whoa! ... wait a minute ... you didn’t hear about this? Caught up in all your petty little distractions, were you? Well, you’re in luck! In response to an overwhelming demand, the Center for Breath Disorders has promised to continue the "special service" that made its debut on National Fresh Breath Day.

We won’t even ask if you’re aware of the Center for Breath Disorders, but it does give us pause to realize that there are major developments breaking right, left and center, and yet there are dentists who are blissfully unaware of the excitement exploding on the dental horizon.

Here’s the "special service" as explained by Dr. Jon Richter, founder of the Center for Breath Disorders: If you know of a friend, relative or colleague who has breath that, to put it discreetly, would wilt the spines off a cactus, all you have to do is e-mail or snail-mail a note to the center providing the offender’s name and address. The center will tactfully contact that person, mentioning that a well-meaning busybody thought his life would be better if he had more knowledge about halitosis. That’s all there is to it. Subtle, but plain enough so that any recipient with an IQ higher than cement will realize that the halitosis literature accompanying the note is trying to tell him something.

To get the olfactory relief ball rolling, simply dispatch an e-mail to drbreath1@aol.com and the whole thing will be held in strictest confidence. Your candidate will never know who ratted him out.

The point is, halitosis has escalated from a social boo-boo into the realm of Big Business. The Journal of the American Dental Association says that as many as 85 million Americans suffer from the problem. How it arrived at this figure is open to question, but obviously the heartbreak of psoriasis is small potatoes compared with the consequences of breath that would make a camel reel.

Check out any issue of the nationally distributed Dental Products Report. A full-page ad sponsored by Breath Remedy touting its In-Office Breath Center notes that 40 million suffer from halitosis.

The ADA and Breath Remedy statistics seem to be at variance but may be explained by differences in their concept of "suffer." The ADA feels that the bearer of bad breath arguably suffers as much or more than the adjacent inhalers. Breath Remedy realizes that exhalers often have no idea that they are offending, and the suffering in that case is unilateral.

The company is offering a device called the Halimeter as the standard dental office tool for detecting and determining the extent of the problem. Instead of a .08 reading sending you off to the pokey as with the more familiar police Breathalyzer, you are directed to the In-Office Breath Center. There, sympathetic personnel will assure you that in less time than it took to consume an entire Pizza Supreme with extra garlic anchovies, you can return to the social whirl.

Discus Dental is right in the forefront with its BreathRx, an attractive countertop merchandiser replete with tongue scrapers, assorted pills to neutralize those volatile sulfur compounds, and a neat little display they call a "Product Glorifier," a sort of respiratory makeover kit.

In the same issue, Rowpar Pharmaceuticals, Inc., is proud to announce the availability of a line of products designed "for everyone you want to get closest to." If you can’t overwhelm them by the sheer force of your personality, this array of toothpaste, mouth rinses and compact oral sprays should at least get you a slot somewhere near the front of the line.

Listen to the words of Roger P. Levin, DDS, MBA, president of the Levin Group: "Today, we must look at all possible avenues of dental productivity and expansion. In looking at the future of dentistry, I predict that most practices will carry and sell dental-related products."

I think we can all go along with Roger on this one. Obviously, if one is to fulfill his mission as a health care provider (formerly known as "dentist"), one is going to focus a little more shrewdly on what priorities are most likely to impress one’s accountant.

Why we have been so lax in this department is a puzzlement. Looking back in the dental literature and advertising of 20 years ago, references to bad breath and its deleterious effect on the nation’s social structure and the ensuing depletion of the ozone layer are conspicuously absent.

What then, has exacerbated the problem to the point of requiring dental publications to devote hundreds of column inches expatiating on the crisis? We may surmise it is the increased consumption of chili cheese burritos or perhaps a consumer rebellion against tedious exhortations by dentists to floss more often, but we suspect it has more to do with the fact that somebody discovered we are supporting a $4 billion-a-year business in breath disorder products and treatments.

Dr. Louis Jay Malcmacher, a Cleveland dentist and international lecturer on a number of topics, including breath disorders, estimates that bad-breath treatment fees can hover somewhere between $550 and $700. Insurance companies that are still having problems with covering porcelain veneers have promised to look into the matter of halitosis treatment benefits sometime toward the end of the new millennium.

Not a problem, avers Dr. Malcmacher, "We have the patient pay our office in full before treatment begins. With these bad-breath cases, money is generally not an issue; most patients have gladly paid for an effective treatment of their halitosis problem."

Don’t for a minute imagine this whole phenomenon is not being closely scrutinized by other health professionals. The American Podiatric Medical Association, for example, is keeping an eagle eye on the success of dentists. Its lukewarm in-office merchandising of Odor-Eaters and Dr. Scholl’s Foot Powder has languished far short of the $4 billion windfall accruing to dentists. Before long, you can look for a friendly anonymous suggestion in the mail that your feet could perhaps benefit by some advanced scientific knowledge judiciously applied in a conscientious effort to enhance not only your life, but those of the persons near and perhaps dear to you. Nike, Reebok, Converse and Keds have gone into Full Red Alert Merchandising mode. Can Gas-X and Arrid be far behind?