May 11, 2007
View Comments | Post CommentASL For "Mint?"
You know how whenever you wake up in the morning you have bad breath? I do, and I'm pretty sure you do, too, since someone invented a term for it.
But morning breath isn't limited to mornings. Same thing happens after you take a nap. Even a brief nap. And the phenomenon isn't necessarily sleep-related, either. The same thing usually happens when you go to a movie theater, and sit there for a couple hours staring at the screen, breathing through your nose. In fact, it appears to me, based on extensive reflection, that so-called "morning breath" is common to all situations wherein one keeps one's mouth shut for extended periods of time.
But that observation makes me curious: do mutes have terrible breath?
Does anyone know any speech-impaired individuals, and if so, can you confirm or deny this hypothesis? Or better yet, why don't we just ask them and let them speak for themsel—uh, nevermind.
Posted at May 11, 2007 2:10 AM | Comments (4)
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I've always thought it was unrelated to mouth open/mouth closed, but instead linked to you simply not moving your mouth/tongue/face around for extended periods of time. My guess is that throughout the day you unknowingly do a certain amount of oral cleanup using some combination of stretching, moving your tongue, and generating saliva that fixes the morning breath phenom.
I'm not sure I've experienced it after movies, but I have experienced it after tests where I was focused enough on trying to go quickly that I guess I neglected my unconscious oral hygiene duties for three-odd hours. My mouth, though, I'm fairly certain isn't closed during that time.
Posted by: Ingen Angiven at May 11, 2007 8:56 AM
Right, I also think it's associated with not moving your face around. You can open/close occasionally, and the overall effect is still the same. It's situations in which we don't really use our mouths much. Hence, the curiosity about mutes.
Posted by: Barzelay at May 11, 2007 12:52 PM
Do you mean "ASL for Mint"?
Posted by: Bravo at May 12, 2007 10:12 AM
Yeah, I guess I do. I was thinking "English Sign Language," but I guess that that doesn't have much meaning in this country, if anywhere.
Posted by: Barzelay at May 12, 2007 10:46 AM
