Or is restoring a former brilliance of your teeth impossible through normal dental hygiene practices without cosmetic dentistry?
In: Biology
You know that frying pan with the brown spots that don’t go away no matter how hard you scrub unless you literally scrape the top layer off or use harsh chemicals?
Teeth are like that only more porous, and you don’t want to scrape the top layer off or use harsh chemicals.
brushing too much damages your teeth. not only will this not necessarily make them whiter, but they’ll also be irreparably damaged to the point where eventually they’ll completely decay because of the lack of an enamel protection layer.
on top of that, white teeth doesn’t necessarily mean clean or healthy either. teeth can be a wide variety of colors and still be healthy.
as long as they’re not actively decaying and you’re doing routine maintenance, you’ll be fine. don’t fall for the marketing. they’re just trying to sell you products you don’t need
For starters, brushing your teeth too much can actually damage your teeth and gums. Also, a lot stains and tooth discolorations can’t be removed by brushing, no matter how much of it you do. Lastly, the goal of brushing your teeth isn’t to just have white teeth, or at least it shouldn’t be. The goal of brushing your teeth is to remove bacteria and food particles so you don’t get cavities, tooth decay, gingivitis, and gum disease.
Dentin is a material located under the slightly translucent enamel coating on the outside of your teeth is typically yellow. The amount of yellow that comes through is influenced by many factors; enamel wear, age, genetics, etc.
Basically, having yellow teeth (not otherwise caused by staining) is normal.
ELI5: That only works for surface stains. Sometimes the stains are on the inside, too. Scrubbing deep will only reveal more yellow.
You can see this when people get teeth filed down to small nubs before crowns are put on top. Sometimes the teeth are yellow deep inside. It can be from genetics, past medicines, environment, or what have you.
People want them _whiter and brighter_ than they were born with. The early 2000s will be known by anthropologists of the future as a particularly vain period.
Your teeth aren’t a perfectly hard surface. They’re slightly porous. So the stains on your teeth will soak into them.
The answer is dentin. It is the layer of material underneath your enamel (which is mostly clear). The color of the dentin is the color of your teeth.
Surface cleaning only cleans the enamel and not the dentin. It is the dentin that turns yellow, because of things that can permeate the pores of the enamel (smoke, hot liquids, things held to the teeth for a long time like chew or betelnut).
Whitening the dentin similarly requires something that can permeate the enamel, like whitening gel with hydrogen peroxide, that is held in place for a long period of time.
Source: I worked on the launch of Crest Whitestrips. (Which is why I also know that whitening toothpastes are an ineffective gimmick.)
Many people have their enamel stained by a combination not brushing enough and drinking a lot of coffee, and or dark tea. Regular brushing isn’t going to get that out because enamel is pourous.
A recent Huberman Lab Podcast goes into great detail about how brushing isn’t cleaning your teeth, it’s just removing the film of bacteria that damage your teeth, so that your natural ability to build UP your dentine can occur. You are talking about wearing down that Dentine? That’s not how you get better teeth…
I think it’s will worth a listen.
Knowing that I need to brush my teeth isn’t enough to get me to do it. Understanding why I need to is what does it..
[link to the podcast](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1a8838wqGqztgm8nclNF6Y?si=zbdrCt0XR5y0X0iJavwSVA)
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