Archive for May, 2010

Tooth Whitening: Myths and Facts

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Now that my teeth are lighter and brighter, I will never have to whiten again.

teeth whiteningThe color depends on your genetics, how well you clean your teeth, the frequency and amount of consuming foods or beverages that stain, (chromogenic foods) and if you have stopped the tobacco habit. In all cases it takes much less time to do a touch-up than the original whitening process the first time. Teeth will also continue to lighten with consecutive whitening and prevent the bounce-back from colored foods. Sprays for administering gels are faster than trays but both using a dental gel is better than just brushing with a whitening paste that is abrasive or a paint on pen  where you are only removing only the extrinsic stain and not the real stain inside your teeth, the tooth tubules. This intrinsic stain is deep inside the tooth and takes more time to penetrate than just brushing or pen style paint on whiteners. Therefore whitening all tooth surfaces is better than whitening just the front surface. Teeth are translucent so stain on the inside or back surface will darken the effect of any whitening where only the outside front surface is effected with strips or paint on whiteners.  This is where a custom tray is best that covers all tooth surfaces and whitens all of the tooth structure front, back and the sides for more complete tooth whitening.

Tooth whitening will make all my teeth, fillings, veneers, crowns and bridges white.

Tooth whitening only makes vital (real) teeth whiter. No whitening products affect crowns, bridges, veneers, bonding to more than ½ of a shade change with no change in lightness to fillings. Caution: you may end up with light teeth and dark restorations that will need to be changed to a lighter shade. Please note if you require any dental work, consider tooth whitening before you begin any treatment, so that your restorations can be made to match your newly acquired white teeth!

Only a dentist can get my teeth their whitest.

During the past eighteen years we have improved tooth whitening to a science and not just an art. Since the fee for Teeth Whitening is quite expensive in a dental office, as a manufacturer we have stayed up with the latest tooth whitening techniques at home and in the dental office.
In a comprehensive university-based double blind study (dentist and patient did not know which product they were using) of all major tooth whitening systems, published in a peer-reviewed dental journal (Compendium), Published by Dental Products Reports the results were…
Statistically there was no difference between home teeth bleaching and dentist tooth bleaching for the vast majority of the patients. From that point on, after examining patients and verifying that their mouths are healthy, recording the existing teeth color and helping both dentist and patients set realistic expectations most dentists started recommending over-the-counter tooth whitening products.

People of all ages can whiten their teeth.

The tooth nerve chamber is very large in children and adolescents and decreases by 50% from age 12 to age 18. Because of this, they may experience an increase in sensitivity, and are more likely to have problems and complications albeit rare can ensue. We do not recommend tooth whitening for children under 14 years of age and the use of Amorphous Calcium Phosphate is recommended for young patients and adults. This fills the tubules naturally with the minerals teeth are made from so material from dental gel to water cannot go into the nerve where sensitivity will result.
These vitamin and mineral supplements will keep your teeth and mouth healthy and will have a brilliant vital shine to them we once had as children!

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Methods of Teeth Whitening at Home

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

Whitening strip teeth bleaching products were the first popular method to be introduced into the home via the over-the-counter retail market was with Crest Whitestrips ®. Whitening strips offer a quick method and implementation of teeth whitening and can be performed without the use of a soft or rigid bleaching tray. The carbamide peroxide-based chemistry involved with the use of whitening strips is essentially the same as that employed by a tray teeth whitening system, but the whitener is held in contact with the tooth surface via the use of an silicone or acrylic adhesive in the strip mixed with the peroxide on the strip instead of placing the peroxide it in a tray method.

The most popular over-the-counter teeth whitening kits available are “tray” whitening systems. These products come with a stock bleaching tray that do not fit all people and that the end-user customizes so it fits over their teeth. The first were called “Boil and Bite” where boiling water made the EVA plastic soft and malleable.  But if the temperature was not perfect the tray was not made to fit well.  They would usually add another extra tray because of the prevalence of that not fitting tray were common and a draw back to the method. Later silicone trays were used that made an impression of the teeth and were perfect in fitting, no heat was necessary to make the tray soft but was naturally soft and no discomfort were experienced by the consumer from bad fitting or misaligned trays.

The “tray” is then filled with carbamide peroxide gel and changed later as people got educated about whitening formulas, a hydrogen peroxide teeth whitening gel were used and subsequently worn for that treatment time recommended. Treatment trays per the product’s instructions were worn over hours, days or even weeks as the whitening effect progresses.

As their name indicates, paint-on teeth whiteners do not make use strips or trays but instead are painted directly onto the surface of the teeth. This is accomplished in similar fashion as polish is brushed onto nails but unlike nails the material would come off the teeth rapidly so their effect was not as good as the strip or tray method because the peroxide would stay on for a short period of time and usually not long enough to whiten teeth well. Colgate ® introduced this relatively fast and inexpensive whitening technique to the over-the-counter marketplace in 2002 with the introduction of their Simply White ® product. Since then they have introduced another paint-on tooth whitener, this one named Colgate Simply White Night ®. Crest ® has also entered the field of paint-on teeth whitening with their product named Crest Night Effects ®. Other have followed using a pen or other means to dispense but with little effect on the teeth compared to longer methods that have the peroxide in contact for a longer time duration.

Tray-based at-home teeth whitening using carbamide peroxide as the whitener became popular in the dental community after a clinical study detailing this technique was published in 1989. The article described how a dentist could:

  1. Create a plastic bleaching tray that had been fabricated so it fit comfortably over a person’s teeth. Later to find the tray fit so well it removed most of the peroxide from the tooth surface so reservoirs were created in the tray to hold more material on the teeth.
  2. Dispense a peroxide-based teeth whitener to the patient in syringes; usually with a10% carbamide peroxide was all that was available at that time.

When a dentist is involved with their patient’s tray-based teeth whitening efforts the procedure includes the following steps:

  1. The dentist performs a pre-treatment oral examination.
  2. The dentist takes a dental impression of the patient’s teeth from which plaster molds are made.
  3. Customized bleaching trays are made on the patient’s dental molds out of a thin, soft plastic usually (EVA) ethyl vinyl acetate.
  4. The dentist dispenses a carbamide peroxide bleaching gel, at that time usually a mild 10% formula to the patient. Instructions are given so the patient knows how to place the gel whitener in the tray and how long to wear the tray during the treatment.

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