Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: Halitosis - Worst Smell Ever?

Episode Date: November 2, 2019

Occasional bad breath is one thing, halitosis is another. Or is it? From its odd origins as a marketing ploy to modern weight loss diets that can induce this embarrassing condition, you can learn all about bad breath in this classic episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren in Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca. On the podcast, HeyDude the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the

cult classic show, HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to HeyDude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Good morning, everyone. I hope you've brushed your teeth because if not, you may have stinky breath.

And this is not about stinky breath from not brushing your teeth. This is about halitosis, which is a real thing. And people that are afflicted with it can't help it. It's really kind of sad. So from April 24, 2014, please listen to halitosis colon or smell ever. Welcome to Step You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.

Do you realize some people might, this might be the first episode they listen to, and they've already turned it off, and they're writing an iTunes review of something's wrong with that guy. Yeah, what's up with the main guy? I can't believe they're so popular. How does anyone listen to him? Yeah, what's up with the dude? The weirdo.

Yeah. And how are they in the top 10 on iTunes with that guy? It must be like the AMSR thing. What is that? You know, where people make videos where they're stroking your hair, but it's really, they're just moving their hand by the camera, they're talking like this, and it's really wet and calming. But there's a subset of humans who have a central nervous reaction.

I just had one. But it's pleasurable. They call them like a brain orgasm. AMSR, I think is, or ASR, I think it's AMSR. I don't remember what it stands for. And it's like a meditative video type of thing? I guess to some people, apparently you have like a reaction to it, and it's very pleasurable, but it's non-sexual.

It's... Well, when you just whispered... Neurological. To me, I had a bad reaction. Right. I can imagine so. I don't claim to be one of those people. Man, oh man, this is getting off to a good start.

But we should do an episode on that sometime. People have requested it a few times. Yeah, I want to, I'm going to go find out what it is. We have to go to the trouble of writing an article for it, because there's not one. Oh, that's okay. I got a few of those in the hopper that I'd like to do. I do too. I just haven't been able to get around to them.

You've been lazy. No. I've been busy. I said we. Are you ready? Yeah. Are you familiar with halitosis? With, hold on, I've got a little intro for this.

Okay. You've heard the word halitosis, obviously. Yes. We're about to do an episode on halitosis, so I hope so. Yes. But even before this, you've heard the word halitosis. Yes. Bad breath.

It's like a clinical term for bad breath. And that is true, and it always was a clinical term for bad breath. But the reason, Chuck, that you and I know that the word halitosis means bad breath is thanks to a nice little marketing scheme by the three guys who ran the company that made Listerine back in the 1920s. Yeah. We've talked about Dr. Joseph Lister before, and that Listerine was an antiseptic, surgical antiseptic.

Yes. And it was marketed as a surgical antiseptic and then a household antiseptic, and then they said, you know what, we need to expand our market share, so let's get into other markets. And so they said, mouthwash. We'll start telling people to use it as mouthwash. And they made like their office intern put some in his mouth, swish it around. He died.

Yeah. So they went and reformulated it a little bit. Added a little water. Right. And then, bang, boom, they had Listerine the mouthwash. The problem was, they said, well, nobody's going to just start using a mouthwash for no good reason. We have to appeal to their low self-esteem.

And that's what they did by looking through a medical dictionary, finding the word halitosis and saying, that's it. Yeah. It's an age old trick in ads is to prey upon how bad you feel about yourself on a daily basis. Yeah. So basically using a medical jargon, Michel Foucault called it the medical gaze, where it was basically like if you add something that sounds medically to a problem that your

product can take care of, you got gangbusters right there. Yeah. And it was an archaic term, Latin term that had gone away completely. Yeah. It comes from the Latin halitus for breath and the Greek suffix osis, which is used to indicate abnormality or a disease state. Yeah. But pre-listerine, people weren't walking around saying the word halitosis.

It had gone the way of the dodo as a word. No. And even still, it was kind of like people weren't really doing a lot to take care of their breath anyway. It wasn't a thing until this group from the Listerine company said, we're going to make it a thing and we're going to make using mouthwash to combat this thing, a thing. And they did. Within a decade, it was just basically like that's what you did, you use mouthwash every

morning. Yeah. And they, I thought it was pretty funny. How did you get that cracked? Yeah, cracked. Yeah. It was a great article. And they said they went on to use other words in advertising later on, like, homotosis,

which is, if you didn't have a tract of furniture, and bromodosis, if you had smelly feet. Yeah. And I don't think they didn't catch on as well. Not like halitosis. For some reason, halitosis did catch on. As a result, there are people out there who have halitophobia. Yeah. I'm one of them.

Oh, yeah. I don't need to see a shrink, but my first girlfriend had halitosis, and I think I can say that because I don't think she listens, and I don't think she knows she was my first girlfriend. Okay. Like I never said, you're my first girlfriend. But yeah, she had bad, and I say halitosis, to me, there's a difference between everyone gets bad breath occasionally, but there's a certain tang that's very identifiable that

I call halitosis. She had it, and I felt like I had to kiss her and stuff, because this is my first girlfriend. I had to learn how to do that, Jon. Yeah. Yeah, man. And it was, I have dreams to this day, halitosis kissing dreams, that I'm like, we'll see some like gorgeous girl in my dream, and I'll go to kiss her, and she has like this awful rotten breath.

Like it's a recurring dream. So I guess I have halitophobia. I'm very aware of it, and that's why I have a tongue scraper and all that junk. Well, apparently that's one way to treat it. Yeah. Oh, we're getting ahead of ourselves. Spoiler. And I should say, I have had a mild case of halitophobia.

It may or may not have been warranted. I don't know. I have my own microphone cover for that reason. I know, but it's not because you're protecting other people from your halitosis, right? You don't want your nose and other people's stuff, right? Yes. Okay. I have a cover at one point, smelled really bad, and I got revolted, and I ordered one

the next day. Right. So, halitophobia refers to your fear of your bad breath. You're fearing other people's bad breath? Yeah. Yeah, that's a different thing then. Okay. Yeah.

No, I was worried I had bad breath. I guess part of me, like, I have that concern because of other people's bad breath about myself too, though, I think. That's why I'm like manic about brushing my tongue. Oh, yeah. That's where I really got it. I sat next to a movie, I sat next to some dude in a movie theater once, and he was facing forward.

I was facing forward, and I almost couldn't sit next to him the whole time because it was that bad. You should have moved. I don't know why I didn't. Yeah, that's become my go-to. I'm just self-punishing, I guess. No, I used to do that. Like, at concerts, I always said that I would just always, 100% of the time, be next to

the most obnoxious drunk in the place, and it used to just bother me and get under my skin, but then I was like, you know what, I'm just going to start moving. Yeah, this didn't make me like, I wasn't mad at the guy. I felt horrible for him, almost to the point where, like, I was going to get in my car and follow him home, and then, like, after he got into his house, I was going to come in after him, and then sit him down, and then maybe we'd have, like, some milk or something. Get him all calmed down, let him sleep, and then when he woke up the next morning, I'd still be sitting at his kitchen table, and then I would say to him, I have something

to tell you, and then I would say, you have really bad breath, man. And he'd say, no crap, dude, I have a condition. Well, that's why you don't necessarily want to say anything to anybody, because they may. Yeah. So let's get down to this, garlic, onions, these are the things that people frequently associate Halis Hose's with. Yeah, which is a bunch of BS. Well, no, I mean, like, it can give you bad breath.

Yeah, but to me, that's the temporary bad breath that one gets just from food. Yeah, and the reason why you do get bad breath from, say, like, onions in particular is because or garlic, I'm sorry, garlic contains something called allicin, which in the stomach is converted to allylmethyl sulfide, which is not metabolized, and which comes back up as gas from your gut. So when you have bad breath from onions, it's not onion particles in your mouth still. That's gas leaking out of your gut into your mouth and just kind of stick in there for a couple hours. You ever take garlic pills?

Yeah. That's weird. Yeah, I'd just rather eat garlic any day of the week. Yeah, I mean, I eat tons of garlic. I love it. But I have taken garlic pills in the past year in there, and I will forget that I've taken one. And then you burp up like, did I have lasagna or not for breakfast?

But it doesn't taste like good garlic. It tastes awful. I love it. It's medicinal garlic. I didn't find it. I mean, the pill didn't taste like anything, but my burps definitely tasted garlicky. See, it was, for me, I just thought it tasted different. Yeah, I'd just rather cut the top off of a whole bulb of garlic, put some olive oil

on it, wrap it in foil, or put it in your clay garlic baker, and put it in the oven for a little while. And chow down, baby. Yeah, just squeeze those things right into your mouth. Yeah, it's delicious. So good. And so good for you. We are in sync today.

So you say, your bed is that your garlic and onions don't count to you for halitosis. Well, no, I think there is bad breath you can just have because maybe you forgot to brush or obviously morning breath, which we'll get to. And then I think some people, unfortunately, have a constant state of this very specific bad breath. Yeah. I think one in four people have actual halitosis, right? That seems a little high, but maybe people are just doing a good job of masking it.

Maybe so. But some people aren't. So what it comes down to ultimately, Chuck, halitosis is as simple as the bacteria in our mouth. Yeah. The fact that we have bacteria, it's the same thing as our armpits, why they smell. They're breaking down stuff from our bodies, beneficially into stinky little gases. Yeah.

And giving off little bacteria toots. Yeah. The average person has 800 types of bacteria in the mouth and they don't need like, it's good thing they don't tell kids stuff like this growing up in school because French kissing probably wouldn't happen, you know? Well, then maybe they should tell kids in school that, but it's really kind of a disgusting thing. Like you don't see people licking armpits.

Some people might. Ben Stiller. Yeah. What was that in? Was it Ben Stiller who was into it? No, I saw it. Or was it a movie? Right.

Yeah. I've seen that. Flirting with disaster. Ben Stiller movie. Flirting with disaster. But I can't remember if it was Ben Stiller who was into it or if his wife was into it. I don't know. It was Josh Brolin was into Patricia Arquette's armpits.

That's right. Yeah. And Patricia Arquette was married to Ben Stiller, that's why. Yeah, and she let him lick her armpit in the shower. What a weird movie that was. I love that movie. You can't catch the wind. You remember that part?

Yeah. All right. Back to the mouth and how disgusting it is. They say if you magnify just a single cell on the surface of that tongue, you would see about 100 types of bacteria. Just on that cell. So this bacteria, when you eat and you swallow food after masticating it, which isn't dirty, it means chew, you leave little particles in your mouth that get stuck in your teeth.

Maybe if you have a beginning periodontal disease, it might get stuck in your gums along your teeth a little bit. The very least, it's going to get stuck to the back of your tongue and it just kind of sits there and the bacteria in your mouth love this stuff. It's food to them. Yeah. They're going into particles and particles and they're like, this is pretty good, but I can't get the energy from it fully.

So I'm going to break down the amino acids even further and then bam, when I do, I'm going to basically emit sulfuric gases. And that's where bad breath comes from. There's sulfuric gases that are again a byproduct of the bacteria eating the food particles in your mouth. Yeah. Leftover proteins. Yeah.

And the mouth is a great breeding ground for it because it's clammy and warm and it's just got everything that the bacteria loves to produce those stinky, stinky smells. But dry mouth can also cause halitosis because that's what you get overnight and why you have stinky morning breath. Because your saliva production decreases when you sleep, otherwise you'd just be a drooling mess. Right. I wonder why that doesn't work during naps on your school desk.

I don't know. I guess because you don't go to sleep enough maybe or if your face is pressed against wood, it's a signal in your body to increase saliva production. Yeah. Wake up. The teacher's coming. All right. But chronic dry mouth is something that can affect people during the daytime as well.

It's called zero stomia and if you have zero stomia, you're going to have a harder time fighting your bad breath because your mouth is always dry. Like the mouth, the saliva just acts as a natural mouthwash. Right. It not only rinses away like food particles, it rinses away bacteria, it rinses away the dead skin cells and dead mouth cells that the bacteria also eat. And yeah, the drier it is, the less that action takes place and you got stinky breath. Yeah.

So if you're on antihistamines or antidepressants or painkillers, dry mouth is a side effect to some of those drugs. So you might have a harder time. And if you're sick anyway, you're going to have stinky your breath too. Like if you're fighting a sinus infection, let's say, it's gross, stinky breath. Because that mucus trickles back from your sinuses down to your tongue and sits there and gets eaten up too. Nasty stuff.

It is. This whole thing, I'm just cringing. I'm going to have one of those dreams tonight. You could a stinky, halitosis breath dream. Yes. The hot girl, bad breath. It's always the same. Does Emily know you're having dreams about kissing hot girls with bad breath?

Yeah. She thinks it's funny. She thinks it's because of my repressed religious upbringing, repressed sexuality. Like I won't even in my dreams allow myself to kiss the model. That's hilarious. Like she'll have, I call it vomit tongue. It's so gross. Oh yeah.

That is pretty bad. Yeah. They're the worst dreams. I can't explain to you. Because they're really headed in the right direction at first. You know. And it's terrible. And when you're an old Mary, man, that's all you got.

I got you. You know? Yeah. Vomit tongue. No. Just, you know, your dreams. You can't be. I know it to me.

I'm just teasing. You can't be assaulted for having a dream. I guess you could, but that's not a very nice wife. Give me my dream time. Right. I'm going to sleep. I'm down a slippery slip right now. Let's pull out with the keto acidosis man.

Okay. Chuck, when you have, when you eat onions, when you have garlic, when you have food particles, all this stuff, that's normal bad breath stuff. There's also other things, metabolic things often that can give you like a different type of breath that may or may not be bad. One bad one is if you have liver problems, your liver shutting down, you're going to have what's called mousy breath. Can you imagine what mousy breath smells like?

No. Like apparently your breath smells like live writhing mice. Interesting. Mousy breath. I can't think of what else it would denote. I don't know what a mouth smells like. Sure. I mean, have you ever smelled like a rodent cage?

Yeah, but they smell like cedar and poop. Is that what it smells like? That's what they mean is cedar. So is ketoacidosis the no carb effect? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that is something they will warn you about if you are trying to attain what's known as ketosis with like an Atkins type diet.

Some people when they are reached that blissful level of fat burning, it also takes its toll on their mouth and their breath. Yeah. It's like a fruity, acetone smell. Okay. That sounds better than mousy. Yeah. It's got to be better than mousy.

When you're in ketosis, when you deprive your body of carbohydrates, it doesn't have that energy to burn right there. So it starts turning inward and going after your fat stores and when the body burns stored fat ketones are what is released as energy or burned as energy. Stinky ketones. Yeah. The smell from burning ketones is what gives you that fruity breath. Yeah.

And websites, they now have the articles, of course, if this is the diet you want, this is how you can help yourself. And one of the things that's always eat bread, it's like, yeah, but all of a sudden you're not on that diet anymore. Right. Yeah. So that's no solution. Yeah.

You can get knocked out of ketosis pretty easy. I'm sure. Yeah. I think eating bread would do it. Hey, everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren and Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb

her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So let's say you are sadly just one of those people that just has that funky breath. One in four, right?

Yeah, if you're among that 25%. That does seem high. Yeah, doesn't it? And that's like chronic halitosis, right? Yeah. Where it's not just like brushing your teeth isn't going to do the trick. Right. 25%.

Yeah. That sounds like a fact brought to us by the Listerine Company. It might be. But like I said, maybe 15% of those people are really trying their hardest so you don't notice it. Gotcha. And other people are just smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee all day. Which is a bad combination.

Yeah, it's a pretty bad combination. Somehow they become greater than the sum of their parts, you know? But that's breakfast for college students, you know? Sure. Coffee and cigarettes. So what do you do if you're going to battle this stuff, if it's more than just something like just a breath mint can handle? What's going to happen here?

Well, the breath mint, it's a good thing to mention that. That can provide a little temporary relief, but it's just masking the funk underneath. Right. So you're really not going to get very far as a solution? No, because all it's doing is creating the sensation of freshness in your mouth. Because I don't know what breath mints do. I've frequently wondered. What does like menthol do?

Does it open up your pores so like the air feels colder and fresher? Oh, I don't know. Like what creates that sensation? You don't know? Yeah. That sounds like a don't be dumb episode to me, buddy. I think it might be. What you want to do is get to the root of the problem, which is that bacteria.

And like we said, food particles in your teeth is a big cause. So brushing and flossing and the old tongue scraper and brushing the back of the tongue. You scraped the tongue? Oh yeah. Doesn't that make you gag? No, it doesn't bother me. Huh. I've gotten used to it.

I mean, you know, occasionally if I overreach that might be a little, but I'm not like retching in the bathroom every morning. I think we should keep a webcam in your bathroom when you're getting ready just to catch those times that you do. Yeah. Yeah. Just make a vine compilation, that'd be hilarious. So attacking the source of the food particles, and you know, I have the fake tooth now.

So I have to be extra careful to really brush along there because. Why I think it would be like they've made it out of some new super polymer that like reflects bacteria. No, the tooth itself is not the source, but it's, you know, where it meets the gum is not a natural tooth. So I just have to like really brush the crap out of that area of my gum, you know. Get the crap out. I don't use mouthwash though, which is interesting.

Yeah. No, I just do toothpaste. Well, apparently it's not necessarily, and plenty of mouthwash is a suggestion for this. Specifically types that contain, according to the British Medical Journal, chlorohexadrine gluconate. Okay. Chlorohexadrine gluconate are what you want because they kill bacteria. I take issue with this.

Yeah. One of the main functions of mouthwash isn't to just go in and kill bacteria, although most mouthwashers do that. Yeah. It's the swishing action loosens food particles and gets them out from in between your teeth. So you should mouthwash before you brush? What I'm saying is, is you don't necessarily need to use a mouthwash that kills bacteria because you kind of want healthy bacteria.

Sure. It's called an oral ecosystem in your healthy oral ecosystem or ecology in your mouth. You want, remember the poop shake episode, the poop transplant, fecal transplant episode. We ended up talking about the microbiome and how important it is to humanity. Same thing with our mouth. Yeah. You don't want to kill all that bacteria. No, and there's plenty of bacteria that causes problems like streptococcus mutans is what

gives us cavities, but there's also plenty of beneficial bacteria where you would have a mouthful of dead skin cells all over your tongue if it weren't for this helpful bacteria breaking the stuff down, it's your problem. Everybody wants to kill bacteria. That's not necessarily a good thing. As a matter of fact, I think we're learning more and more that it's not a good thing. So I say avoid the mouthwash that kills bacteria and just use some sort of mouthwash that maybe has a minty flavor, but it's just really just swishing the food particles out and getting

rid of the bacteria's food that's creating their stinky sulfur ducts. Yes, exactly. Because getting rid of the food is a big part of it, I would suggest brushing your teeth after lunch too. Don't make it just when you get up and before you go to bed. I say go for three times a day. Whoa, man. Who has time for that?

Me. Another good trick is to drink a lot of water. Just keeping your mouth hydrated on a daily basis is going to help. You said that saliva is like a natural mouthwash. Water helps. It does the same thing. Loosens food particles, gets rid of dead skin cells. And the back of your tongue apparently is like ground zero for it.

I think there's like 20 times more bacteria there than elsewhere because it's like this bumpy surface that's out of the way of all this other stuff. So things really stick and accumulate back there. So that's an area you want to target apparently with the tongue scraper. Yes, and you could just brush it as well. I do both, but if you are a grown adult and you are not either brushing your tongue or using a tongue scraper, then you're not doing it right. Is that right?

Yes, somebody needs to teach you. I give a quick clink. That's part of it. You know, brush with my toothbrush over my tongue, but I worry about killing taste buds. Like I love tasting things. You're not going to kill any taste buds. Sure you can kill taste buds with that. Well I haven't killed any.

Are you sure? Think about what kind of a super taster you could be without your tongue scraper. If I didn't use my tongue scraper. No, I do worry about that. I'm kind of like, I'd rather have low level bad breath and be able to taste great stuff than have no bad breath whatsoever and not be able to taste. I would rather have no bad breath and still taste everything. Well, yeah, that's the holy grail.

What kind of like flim flam world are you living in? It's called Chuck's life. It's nice. It is nice. If none of this stuff works for you, you may have a problem. Like you might want to go see a dentist and maybe even a doctor. Well yeah, the dentist might say go to the doctor. Yeah, go to the doctor because you have a mousy breath, which means your liver is shutting

down and find a new dentist. You know there's a smell test that they do that dentists do. Oh really? Yeah, what they'll do is they'll say, okay, this is going to be gross, but I want you to breathe through your mouth and I'm going to sniff close to your mouth. And then they say, okay, now I want you to breathe through your nose and I'm going to sniff close to your nose. And they can determine whether it's a nasal, like a problem in your nasal cavity that can

give you bad breath. You can have stinky sinuses. So gross. Or if it's in your mouth and then they can further deduce like... Really? Yeah, if it's not... And this is the dentist doing this? Yeah.

And if it's coming through your nose, it suggests possibly not just your sinuses, but it could be pulmonary too, like you could have some sort of lung problem that's creating gases that stink and are coming out of your nose rather than your mouth. So I guess they train you to do that in dental school, huh? I guess. Like you'd have to. That's not a very popular day. No.

You know, everybody pair up. Oh my God. And there's the one guy in the corner like eating a sandwich. Yeah. It's like what? Hey friends, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn?

So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba, who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home. Now the extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host. On the podcast, Hey Dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and

dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Is that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Can I give two more tips? Yeah, please. Get 10 more. If you eat a crunchy breakfast like granola cereal or something like that, it's going to clear out a lot of the gunk from the night before. You just want to make sure you get rid of all those food particles afterwards. And then if you're interested in a mouthwash that is not antibacterial really, it's certainly not harmful.

Are you marketing your own now? You take a half a cup of warm water, an eighth of a teaspoon of cinnamon, and one teaspoon of honey. Swirl it all together and swish it around and gargle it. That's like old-timey mouthwash, apparently. Yeah, and we could probably recommend apple cider vinegar just for anything. That's like the wonder liquid, it seems like. Dude, I was once on my way to a full-blown kidney or maybe urinary infection.

Bladder infection, something was going on and it was starting to go downhill fast. And Yumi was like, drink this and drink a lot of it. And I started drinking apple cider vinegar and raw cranberry juice, like the real cranberry juice over like about an eight to 12-hour period, like really hit it and gone. And it was happening, like the happening was going on and I thwarted it. He stopped the happening? Yeah. I do a shot every morning now of apple cider vinegar.

Oh, vinegar. Yeah, and don't get just the stuff in the store that you should be cooking and cleaning with. I can't remember the brand, but there's the super potable one, it's like really thick. The one that you'll find at a health food store. Yeah, I can't remember the name of it, but there's like one brand that everyone goes to. Right.

And it's tough, man, if you ever just do a straight shot of it without diluting it, it's hardcore. Yeah. Yeah, everything I was doing was taking maybe a shot and then diluting it in like eight ounces of water and it's still very difficult. Yeah. You can do it though, especially when you're fighting off some sort of infection. Yeah, and you want to brush your teeth after that because vinegar smells gross.

Just brush your teeth all the time. If you want to learn more about halitosis, I don't know what more you could possibly learn, but you can try. You can type that word into the search bar at howstuffworks.com and it will bring up this article and since I said search bar, it's time for a listener man. We're going to address our April Fool's prank officially here with this one. I want to say first of all, Josh, you and Ben, I've was blown away by the performance. Thank you.

Thank you. You guys sold it so hard, like, and we just threw it together. We were like, hey, let's just try. It wasn't some big plot we... There's no practice. ...planned for weeks and weeks. Right. Like, hey, maybe we should do an April Fool's joke this year and I said, hey, maybe I quit

the show and Ben took my place and you guys just winged it and like nailed it, man. I was sitting here beside you and I felt like I was watching my own funeral. Yeah, I know. It was weird. Yeah, you kept going like, cut, cut, stop, stop. We're like, no, we have to press on. So we're not jokesters typically, but it was, I think it was our only one to be released on April Fool's Day.

It was the first time we had the opportunity to release one on April Fool's and look out two years from now because that'll be a Thursday. Yeah. But if we do like Josh left the show, everyone would be like, no, no, no, or they'll be expecting that. Oh, yeah. And they'll be like, well, wait a minute, they thought that I would think that, you know, maybe we could just give you like, I don't know, you could have a heart attack

on the show or something. But anyway, we got an outpouring of people because I was dead or missing. I know people really, really reacted to that. Like a lot of people said they didn't realize how much they needed you until you were gone. And yeah, there were plenty of people who said like, Josh, if it had been you, I would have felt the same way. But. Well, I got to play the martyr.

I got the plum roll. It was nice. It's like I had to do nothing and just get showered with adulation. But it was, it was very neat to see like people like never leave, don't ever do that again. And it was pretty cool actually. And also I want to say on behalf of Ben, he asked us to let everybody know whenever we could that he actually was purposefully sounding terrible. Yes, he was.

At what he was doing. He like that was play acting. Yeah. Yeah. The whole point was like we wanted it to be super awkward. Right. Yeah. Okay.

So, so go ahead. Back from the dead Chuck. So this is from Matt from Athens, Georgia. Go dogs. Hey guys, my girlfriend and I have been listeners for years. I didn't realize just how important the show was to us though, until your April Fool's Day show. I'd listened to the episode before she did and he didn't even tell her.

That's kind of mean. He did. And I was keen on setting her up for the gag. So I sat her down at the kitchen table and told her that stuff you should know, it's some big news. I knew she'd be sucked into the prank, but was not prepared for what happened next. She started to cry and denounce the show with one of you gone saying she would stop listening. She was worried about Chuck.

I even have people are worried about Emily. They were like, they thought Emily was in the hospital or something. It was awesome. Chuck started, she said she would stop listening and was worried about Chuck and started tossing out possible explanations like the best of conspiracy theorists. She was so sad that it had to fast forward to the reveal. After her surprising yet pretty cute reaction, I was hoping to swap out her emotional connection for a birthday shout out.

She's a contemporary dancer and uses the ideas in your podcast and her classes in choreography. Think dances about Alan Turing. I got to see this. Yeah. It's crazy. I admit this is a pretty crass way of getting a happy birthday, but I think it's worth a shot. So Matt, you didn't tell us your girlfriend's name.

So we're just going to say happy birthday to Matt's girlfriend from Athens. Happy birthday, Matt's girlfriend. I'm going to guess Jennifer. Matt, enjoy sleeping on the couch this evening. You know, we fooled some of our friends, even Joe Randazzo texted me and said, you guys actually fooled me for about eight seconds. Is that right? Yeah.

Yeah. We got a lot of people who said like, I didn't fall for anything all day and the only people who got me was stuff you should know. That's because you guys just like destroyed it. And then the ones- You fooled me for a minute. I thought I was going off the show for a second. Do I have to leave?

Yeah. The ones that I felt bad about though were the ones who listened to it like after April 1st. Yeah. Yeah. And we're like- Like Australians. Yeah.

And they didn't realize it was the- Yeah. Exactly. But yes. So everyone, thank you very much for the outpouring of emotion. Yeah. We both feel very loved. Yeah.

Sure. I mean, we know people like the show, but when you hear stuff like that, it's like, wow. Yeah. People kind of depend on this. And we know now that we're not allowed to ever leave. Nope. It's we'll go out and murder suicide if anything. Okay.

Cool. Agreed. So if you guys love us so much, you can hang out with us outside of the podcast too on social media. We're on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter. Just search Stuff You Should Know, S.Y.S.K., Josh and Chuck, and any of those. And it will bring us up and you will love it. And if you want to send an email to Chuck, Jerry, and me, you can address it to Stuff

Podcast at HowStuffWorks.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life.

Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.