Or is restoring a former brilliance of your teeth impossible through normal dental hygiene practices without cosmetic dentistry?
In: Biology
Stains aren’t the same thing as plaque or dirt. Staining is in the tooth like dye on cloth, not on the tooth like paint on a wall. One of the best ways to prevent teeth from darkening is to simply swish with water after drinking your coffee or tea (or brush your teeth if you’re at home). That way the residue from the tea/coffee isn’t sitting around getting absorbed into the enamel.
Teeth need to be whitened with something that can oxygenate the enamel and allow the bleaching effect to take place. That’s why most at-home whiteners like Crest White strips or whitening mouthwash contain hydrogen peroxide in the formula, as do most professional whitening solutions available from the dentist.
These formulas open the enamel “pores” to oxygen, but this also leaves teeth vulnerable to sensitivity. Some people will experience pain which is why professional strength treatments are only available by a dentist’s prescription. They need to monitor how you are doing and make sure you don’t hurt yourself, you’d be shocked what some people will endure for vanity.
It’s not just coffee or tea either. We had a patient who’s whitening wasn’t working and her teeth were turning a strange pale purple ish color. We figured out it was because she was ignoring the “no colored beverages” rule. She kept drinking bright red and blue Gatorades & somehow didn’t think of them as being a colored beverage. Basically we we giving her a solution to open her enamel and she was pouring dye right in there! She had to pay for even more treatments as a result.
At my old dentist office we would need to encourage people not to keep whitening because the teeth were starting to look unnatural. Nobody naturally has paper white teeth, I would tell them, “no lighter than the whites of your eyes if you want the teeth to look real”.
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