Dear Cary,

In keeping with your stream of horse metaphors, it's clear that you are back in the saddle again. Your stream of consciousness digression last week was a sign that your mind is in constant flux, your column responses are never on autopilot, and like all of us, you occasionally are confronted with overload. Keep up your good work.

You rock!

Hello, Cary.

Just a quick response to your recent column about the reader whose mother has halitosis.

The term 'halitosis' is so 1950s. Toothpaste commercials used to shout it out as if it was more like a threat of vd. But, it is not just a matter of not brushing or flossing. And it should not be a source of embarrassment for this mother's frustrated offspring, but a major source of concern for mother's health.

Bottom line: Bad breath can also come from a problem deep in the gut. Like the early stages of cancer. I know, cause I experienced that 6 years ago. A few concerned and happily outspoken friends (God bless the Dutch for their frankness) alerted me that there was something in the air and it wasn't so pleasant. Of course I was aware of it, too, and I fanatically brushed, flossed, and gargled even more than usual. Worse yet, my dentist had no idea where to find the source. He just cleaned my teeth and sent me off. I don't smoke, drink minimally, and eat healthy. Months into it, I finally had a checkup;(my own doctor was on holiday and her substitute said the typical: "You're working too hard, take it easy." Ha! Eventually, when my own doctor was back on duty, she ordered other tests and discovered I was seriously anemic, thanks to a small but aggressive little tumor in my large intestine that, unbeknownst to me, had been wreaking havoc with my digestive system. Fortunately, the rest is all history, but still a cautionary tale.

When my mother died 12 years ago, I also experienced a brief bout of 'halitosis', as the mourning process had evidently created a small uproar in my guts. I went to a holistic healer and embarked on a juice fast for a week, along with lots of vitamins and supplements, which cleared it up pronto.

Disease and infection and spiritual unwellness often come from that deepdown source in one's guts and bowels and eventually manifest into bad breath. It's basically a no brainer when you think about all those juices and acids cooking up a stinky stew in your innards which has no where to go but up (and out); but no one likes to talk about these subjects, because it's just so (sigh) 'embarassing'.

Especially in America's fanatical society about everything being super cleansed and oh so sanitary, from overwhitening to overwaxing, one's exterior gets more attention than one's interior.

Your Wikipedia source was pretty complete, but alas, played down the seriousness of halitosis in terms of it being a major wakeup call to doing some serious screening against cancer, starting of course with some basic blood tests.

Ms. Qwince

Amsterdam

What happened to Salon's supposed standards of quality journalism? What happened to NYU's? Objectivity, balance, tone of voice? Were your editors AWOL en masse?

Your resident hack-in-training needs to be dispatched to the National Enquirer if this is the best attempt at reportage that he can deliver to the Salon site. Instead of an incisive piece of writing, he barely succeeded in creating a hatchet job, though his blade proved rather dull. In my granny's time, they called this muck racking.