Need White Teeth ?

No More Natural Tooth Color

Not so long ago, dentists always encouraged their patients to select a color for their dentures or bridges that matched natural tooth color.  But no more…today folks want white  teeth the brightest possible, and here’s where some problems could arise.  It is of vital importance that a person has adequate tooth enamel because the enamel on a person’s teeth can wear thin over time.  Enamel is the hard protective part of your teeth, and if you are blessed with good genes, it will have a very light ivory color which we see as white, while on the other hand, the enamel may have a darker appearance, probably the result of too many cigarettes, too much red wine or black coffee.

There are many other foods which contribute to the staining of your teeth, but actually our discussion is stain here which are pigments in the enamel that can be chemically bleached.  All of the tooth whitening products you keep hearing about do a great job of removing stains, even for people whose teeth are grey or yellow.

But if your tooth enamel is thin and you want white teeth whitening won’t help because the thinner the enamel on your teeth gets, the more the layer that’s underneath it starts to show through it.  That second layer, called dentin, is typically yellow in color or even brown in some cases, and teeth whitening products do a very poor job of whitening dentin.

So how does tooth enamel wear so thin that you can “see through it”? The most obvious answer is from brushing too hard, and/or with too abrasive a tooth paste (and too hard a brush). Picture the worst case scenario: you’re a smoker with a compulsion towards keeping your teeth white and your breath fresh. So, you buy yourself the hardest bristle brush you can find, and stock up on an abrasive toothpaste formulated for smokers. Every chance you get, you’re running to the bathroom to scrub that nicotine stain and odor away, and you figure the harder you scrub, the better!  You want white teeth at any cost.

There’s one more important way you can lose precious enamel from your teeth. It’s from consuming foods with a high acid content. Citrus fruits are big offenders. After that comes tomato sauce. And carbonated drinks (soft drinks are high in phosphoric acid) can be the worst, because of our tendency to sip or “nurse” them. That just prolongs contact between your teeth and the “acid bath” you’re treating them to.

There are a few precautions you should be aware of before starting to use teeth whiteners.  In your pursuit of white teeth you will find many products and all of them are good, they all use peroxide as their main ingredient to produce white teeth.