Some people who come to malodor clinics claim that they can smell their own breath. They do this in a variety of ways some ingenious. The most common thing to do is just to cover your mouth and nose with your hands and take a deep whiff. Some people are able to detect odor in this manner. An easier thing to do is to lick your wrist.
Some people smell their odor on the telephone receiver after a conversation.
Others rub their gums with their finger and smell it. One woman claimed to be able to smell her own bad breath by covering her head with a blanket. The problem with all these techniques is getting an objective viewpoint of the odor coming out. In a recent study, we asked 52 to smell their own bad breath and score it on a scale. In general, the results showed that people were unable to score their own bad breath in an objective fashion.