Why are we less aware of our own bad breath than a person standing close to us?
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you just slowly get used to it until your brain’s like “yeah we know this smell is here, it’s not helpful to tell you about it anymore”
just like if you have pets your house probably smells like pets but only people who don’t have pets will be able to tell you
I don’t know the technical answer, and this probably isn’t the best phrase for it but I’ve always heard it as becoming ‘nose blind’. If you’re around a smell constantly you eventually don’t notice it anymore.
So like people who work jobs around smelly smells eventually become nose blind to the smell and it dosen’t bother them.
Or the folks who hoard cats eventually don’t notice the smell of cat waste.
Firstly your nose and mouth are connected via the pharynx so you aren’t really able to independently smell your own breath.
You also become desensitised or adapted to the smells around you, eg if you own a dog, you won’t smell the doggy smell but a visitor may notice a smell. Or you work in a factory with strong smells, you get used to the smells while others will smell it on your clothes.
Is the same with bad breath
To check if you have bad breath., try licking the back of your hand, leave it for a few secs then smell
You notice how when you take a dump it’s not so bad, but when your wife walks in to do her makeup she says she’s worried about your health? Same thing.
Give yourself a lick on wherever you choose. Smell it. That’s what your breath smells like.
Brush your teeth, gums, and tongue. Floss.
/s Ya filthy animals. /s
Same reason you’re less aware of how your own house smells than other people’s houses. When you’re smelling it nonstop it gets classified as irrelevant and you stop noticing it.
Also the same reason you aren’t aware of feeling your clothes against your skin until thinking about it. Your brain can’t process all the info it’s receiving, so it’s always prioritizing. Constant repeated stimuli are given low priority. The feeling of clothes. The sound of a clock. The smell of your house or breath.
Wow, great timing on this question! This video just came out today and it addresses your question perfectly!
You get used to it. Your brain is very good at filtering out information it doesn’t actively need. For example, you can’t feel your toes right now, right? Your breathing? How about your temperature?
There’s this thing called nose blindness where your brain filters out smells that have been smelling for a while. This is why you can’t smell your own bad breath because your brain knows it’s there and been there for a while, and decides to ignore it.
This is a bitof a wider issue than odors. The brain sorts out all your sensory inputs and filters out all the ones that are constant and never change. You have blind spots in both eyes because your blood vessels and the ocular nerve are in between your cornea and your receptors, the brain filters them out without bothering you. Pain that never dulls or wanes becomes more invisible eventually unless it’s quite extreme.
There’s even a mechanism where it’ll filter out the feel from you touching your own skin. You get ticklish when others touch your skin because your brain can’t filter it out. You would constantly hear your own blood flow from the vessels close to your eardrums if your brain didn’t filter it out.
Your breath is just one more element to filter out because it’s irrelevant and/or constant and unchanging.
I think almost everyone is missing an important factor here.
You don’t smell it as well as people in front of you because the flow of air goes away from your nose. If you speak or breath out of your mouth, you are by definition not inhaling. Someone in front of you however will be inhaling the flow of air.
Try putting on a fitted mask, breath out of your mouth and breath in through your nose right after. You can definitely smell your breath this way.
Now as others have said, you get accustomed to everything once you are constantly exposed to it, but there is a very simple physical explanation that seems to get completely overlooked here.
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