We all wish we could have fabulous breath all the time, but that's a distant dream for most people. You either know you have halitosis and fight a constant battle with it, or you fear that you have halitosis and take great pains to avoid breathing directly in someone else's face. In Western culture, we seem to have developed a concept of personal space that keeps us a relatively safe distance from the nearest other person.

Still, there are times when your breath fabulous or malodorous is going to contact someone else's nose - at the moment of a kiss on the cheek, or lips, for example, or in a crowded lineup for movie tickets. It would be nice if you could be sure it would be fabulous breath, or at the very least, inoffensive. About the only way to be sure at that moment is to pop a breath mint in your mouth, or a stick of mint gum.

No doubt about it, breath mints, breath sprays, and other breath products that you can carry in your pocket do produce momentarily fabulous breath. All too soon however, the flush of strong mint flavor fades, the gum loses it's flavor, the breath strip disintegrates and you are left with the same old dirty sock taste - your breath fabulous moments ago reverts to bad. For the most part, pocket size breath fresheners are cover-ups: they mask the odor of halitosis briefly, but do nothing to change the conditions in your mouth that are causing the problem.

To make your breath fabulous in a permanent way, you have to change the situation in your mouth. Think of your mouth as a garden full of fragrant wild flowers (the producers of fabulous breath), but with more than a few stink weeds. You encourage the wildflowers when you brush and floss your teeth and take care of your gums and tongue. Sometimes, however the stink weeds get a real foothold and start to multiply, producing a nasty smell that overpowers the wildflowers (in your mouth, the equivalent of stinkweeds are bacteria that produce bad smelling sulfur compounds). To get rid of the smell and have fabulous breath, you need to weed.

So get yourself a good weeding tool - an oral care product that kills the odor-producing bacteria in your mouth - and remember that if you stop weeding and neglect the garden, the stink weeds will come back. You'll have to remain vigilant if you want fabulous breath.