When Tom Bailey began suffering from bad breath at age 15,
everybody let him know. "Girls would tell me my breath stank,"
says Bailey, who lives in Northern California. "I tried every
bad breath remedy I could find -- mouthwashes, sprays,
gingivitis chewing gum ... I even had my tonsils removed. I felt
helpless." Decades passed before Bailey found the help he
needed. Then he walked into the California Breath Center, one of
a dozen facilities that have sprouted up recently to fight
dragon breath. Along with dentists who treat halitosis, they're
bringing new hope to the estimated 25 million Americans who
suffer from this socially toxic malady. The clinic's co-founder,
dentist Harold Katz, had Bailey breathe into a tube connected to
a device called a halimeter, a breath-measuring machine that
dentists began using about four years ago. His readout was sky
high. As Bailey learned, most bad-breath problems occur when
your mouth harbors a surplus of anaerobic bacteria, which emit
smelly sulfur compounds. "The bacter