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Teeth Whitening Discussed by Shelby Township Dentist

Posted on:December 3, 2012
Posted in:Cosmetic Dentistry, Whitening
Posted by:Heather

Teeth Whitening Discussed by Shelby Township Dentist

Hi, I’m Dr. Heather Pranzarone Stratton at HPS Advanced Dental Care. We’re located in Macomb County in Shelby Township, Michigan. I wanted to talk a little bit today about teeth whitening. A lot of people ask how can I get my teeth whiter? I’ve been using this whitening toothpaste or Crest white strips and, and those do work.

What we do at the office is a little bit stronger material for teeth whitening. You know? I kind of wanted to go in through the different types of teeth whitening that you can do because we get a lot of questions about teeth whitening. The toothpaste that you buy over the counter, Crest with whitening or, what not, there’s a lot of whitening toothpaste. Those toothpastes are just a little bit more abrasive. They have almost like a sand like material that’s in them. So they have a little bit thicker grip to them than a non whitening toothpaste. So when you brush your teeth with those toothpastes, it polishes surface stain off of your teeth. So when people say I drink a lot of coffee, or a lot of tea, or I eat a lot of chocolate, drink a lot of red wine. Those things that we know that stain your teeth more than maybe, water or milk or something. When you brush your teeth with those whitening toothpastes, it removes that surface layer of stain off your teeth.

The same thing will happen when you come in and you get your teeth cleaned. You know when the hygienist cleans your teeth with the little spinning prophy angle that they do? The same idea. It’s polishing those surface stains off your teeth. So, lots of times after people use those whitening toothpastes, yeah, they look a little whiter but they still are not as bright as I’d like them to be.

We have to move on to the next level. One thing we know about teeth whitening and the color of our teeth, as we all get older, which none of us are. But, as we all get older what happens is, the dentin; we have three layers of our teeth: the enamel, which is the outside that we see on our teeth, the dentin, which is second the layer of our teeth. The dentin holds all the color of our teeth. The enamel is actually pretty transparent, it’s translucent. You can pretty much see through it. So, genetically, we’re all born with a certain color of dentin.

That dentin over time gets thicker and thicker and thicker. Our nerves get smaller and smaller and smaller. So over time as a process of aging, our teeth get darker.

One of the ways to fight that aging process as the dentin gets thicker and thicker is, we have products here in the office that you can use. There’s whitening trays, or bleaching trays as some people call them, that you put some carbamide peroxide solution in, that you get from our office. You put that layer of whitening in, or, layer of whitening gel in there, and you wear those. And actually, what it does is, we know with peroxide it bubbles when you put it on your skin. It’s basically oxidizing things. So it’s oxidizing or whitening that dentin layer. Over a few days to maybe a week or 2, your teeth are much, much brighter.6 to 12 shades whiter usually after you wear those trays.

If you don’t feel like wearing those trays a couple hours for a couple weeks, what you can do is, we also have a system here in the office called Zoom. Or Zoom AP. Which, you come in and after about 2 hours of being here from start to finish, you’re here about 2 hours. The whitening actually takes place in about an hour. You leave, and your teeth are 6 to 12 shades whiter. So, for those people who are, like, “you know what? I don’t feel like wearing those trays every day.” You can use the Zoom, which is a fantastic process as well. So either way, there are lots of different ways to whiten your teeth. Some work better than others. We also have a program here at the office which is free whitening for life. So as long as you don’t have cavities in your teeth or anything like that, you get free whitening gel, every 6 months. Just our thank you, instead of getting a star and getting your picture on the wall for knowing cavities, you get free whitening trays, or free whitening gel instead.