My Story

Hello, I'm Anthony Korson.

I'm 57 years old, and I've been dealing with a coated tongue, a constant bad taste in my mouth, and bad breath since I was around 15 years old.

Deep down, I've always considered myself a very social person. But this condition gradually changed who I became. I became increasingly self-conscious about being close to other people and constantly worried about what they might be smelling. Over time, I began avoiding social situations, and an intimate relationship felt almost impossible. Looking back, I believe this condition had a much bigger impact on my life than most people ever realized.

I did everything I could to avoid speaking with people face to face. When I couldn't avoid it, I often kept conversations as short as possible or instinctively turned my face slightly away while speaking. Even then, I found myself watching the other person's reactions. Over the years, I experienced enough comments, facial expressions, people stepping back, and people touching their noses that I no longer questioned whether they could smell my breath.

The condition even influenced some of the biggest decisions I made in my life. I became a truck driver because it dramatically reduced the amount of time I had to spend speaking with people face to face. Looking back now, I realize just how much this condition influenced the decisions I made throughout my life.

Like most sufferers, I wanted a permanent solution. Over the years I visited doctors, dentists, and specialists. I read books, searched the internet, and tried virtually every recommendation I could find.

I brushed thoroughly, flossed, cleaned my tongue, used mouthwash, experimented with different products, and tried countless suggestions. Some helped temporarily, but the improvement never lasted.

At one point, an ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialist believed my problem might be caused by a deviated septum. Hoping this would finally be the answer, I underwent surgery to correct it. Unfortunately, it made no difference at all.

Years later, another ENT specialist discovered that I had tonsil stones. He believed they were the source of my bad breath, and for the first time in years I genuinely thought I had finally found the answer. I underwent a tonsillectomy, which turned out to be an extremely painful surgery and recovery.

After everything healed, I waited for the bad taste and bad breath to disappear. They didn't. I was devastated. After decades of searching and two surgeries, I was right back where I had started.

But there was still one thing that none of those explanations had ever answered.

The flossing, brushing, tongue cleaning, and even those surgeries had never explained one thing that continued to bother me.

Within an hour, and often within just a few minutes, of thoroughly cleaning my mouth, the bad taste and bad breath would begin returning. That was the part I couldn't understand.

I knew that bad breath is caused by bacteria breaking down organic material. But if I had just finished thoroughly cleaning my mouth, how could those symptoms come back so quickly? The explanation I kept hearing didn't seem to match what I was experiencing.

That question stayed with me for years.

One day, while trying to better understand where the odor was coming from, I pushed the back of my tongue as high as I could into each upper corner at the back of my throat. What I noticed surprised me. The taste there was far stronger and far more unpleasant than the taste in the rest of my mouth.

That observation made me question everything I had been told. If the strongest odor wasn't coming from my tongue or the rest of my mouth, then where was it coming from?

Over time, I came to the conclusion that the main source of the odor was rotting bacterial biofilm trapped at the back of the nasal passage and high up behind the soft palate, in the nasopharynx. It also became clear to me that this biofilm was continually releasing odor-causing bacteria and by-products into my mouth, which explained why the bad taste, coated tongue, and bad breath returned so quickly after cleaning.

Once I was confident I had identified the main source, I expected to find explanations of how to address it. Instead, I couldn't even find a single website that mentioned the nasopharynx or the area behind the soft palate, let alone explained how to properly clean and exercise those areas. I eventually developed my own methods, and some of them aren't available on any other website.

Over the years, I discovered there were multiple factors contributing to this biofilm becoming trapped in that area. Simply cleaning it wasn't enough. I needed to understand why it was becoming trapped in the first place and how to reduce that trapping over time.

That eventually led me to develop not only a method for properly cleaning the area, but also a facial and jaw exercise designed to help keep that area more open, making it less likely for biofilm to remain trapped and become stagnant.

Eventually, I decided to document everything I had learned in the hope that it would help others with this problem avoid spending decades searching for answers like I did.

Sincerely,

Anthony Korson