That bad breath problem might be down to your troublesome jeans

MY patient wanted to know how to fix his bad breath – so I told him to buy looser-fitting jeans.

It’s a strange treatment alright but I was confident it would work.

This chap visited the surgery last week with a range of symptoms, of which bad breath was one.

The most troubling wasn’t his breath, or a bloated feeling, or the mild pain in his chest – it was the painful heartburn coming from some particularly burny acid reflux.

An endoscopy – a wee camera down the throat – eventually revealed the patient had developed an hiatus hernia.

These are actually pretty common, but most people who have them don’t experience any symptoms so are entirely unaware they have it.

You probably know your food travels down your oesophagus into your stomach.

The oesophagus passes through a flat muscle called the diaphragm, which separates the upper body and lungs from the abdomen.

With a hiatus hernia, some of the stomach bulges above the diaphragm.

Stomach acid can then start to leak up into the oesophagus, causing problems like heartburn, pain, bad breath – it can even annoy folks’ asthma.

It can be caused by obesity, so losing weight is a good idea. Smoking and drinking can make symptoms worse, so it helps to give up cigarettes and cut down on alcohol.

Raising the head of the bed can keep acid down in the stomach too, but if these don’t work, antacids and proton pump inhibitors reduce the amount of acid being produced.

Avoiding pressure on the stomach is a good idea too. Too bad fashionistas. That means no corsets or especially tight jeans!