Have you ever considered whitening your teeth at home using commercial products?

Let’s talk about the options your may have.

Why do your teeth become discolored?

There can be a number of reasons for that. There are usually divided into extrinsic and intrinsic.

Extrinsic

These are the outside factors, for example the food you eat and the beverages you drink may affect the color of your enamel. It is usually recommened to go easy on red wine, coffee, tea and food with dyes.

Moreover, smoking contributes to staining as well.

Such discoloration may be treated with special whitening toothpastes.

Intrinsic

These are the inside factors such as infection, childhood illness, trauma, aging or medication. Such stains may require professional bleaching procedures at your dentist’s.

Teeth Whitening

There three scenarios for your teeth here:

• You can buy a commercial product and apply it by yourself
• Your dentist may dispense a particular product to use at home
• A more serious method administered by  your dentist in his/her office

Let’s talk about at-home-options sold over the counter.

Whitening toothpaste

Whitening toothpastes change the surface color of your teeth with different substances, for example abrasives or the chemical blue covarine. It takes some time for whitening toothpastes to work.  Blue covarine toothpastes may be effective after just one brush.

Whitening strip

Whitening strips contain hydrogen peroxide, but less than professional products. You apply these strips one or two times a day for a set period.

Whitening pen

A new format for an old kind of product. Essentially very similar to whitening strips, these are pens containing carbamide peroxide. It is convenient to take this pen anywhere you go and apply it whenever you have too much red wine 🙂

Home-based methods

In our previous post we discussed some home remedies such as soda and eating more raw fruit and veggies. Such methods do take much longer time for you to see the result, but anyways consider changing your diet, improving your hygiene and taking supplements to better your overall dental health.