Teeth Whitening – How Effectively Does It Work?

Grey or yellowing teeth

Do you suffer from grey or yellowing teeth? Stained teeth affect your appearance and lower your confidence, making you less likely to share your smile with others. Age, diet, medications and illness can all contribute to staining and tooth discolouration, but a professional whitening treatment at your dentist can restore your pearly white smile in a single session. If you want a radiant smile, read on to find out more about how teeth whitening works.

Types of Tooth Discolouration

There are two types of tooth discolouration, each of which needs to be treated with different procedures, including professional teeth whitening, cleaning, or cosmetic dentistry.

Extrinsic Stains

Extrinsic stains are the discolourations you see on the outside of your teeth. They are typically yellow or grey, but they can also show up as bright white patches. Surface stains are caused by a number of different factors, including:

• • Diet

The enamel of your teeth is porous, and when you consume acidic or sugary foods, the enamel wears down and absorbs the colour pigments from the foods you eat and the beverages you drink. Coffee, red wine, tea, chocolate, berries and tomato sauce, as well as many other foods, contain strong pigments that can easily stain teeth if not removed quickly by brushing or rinsing after eating.

• • Smoking 

Tobacco smoke, as well as chewing tobacco, can cause tooth discolouration as the compound contained in the smoke and tobacco leaf penetrate the tooth enamel and build upon your teeth giving them a brown or dark yellow appearance.

• • Poor Oral Hygiene

Not maintaining a proper oral hygiene routine can cause a build-up of plaque and tartar. Plaque is the byproduct of bacteria that live on your teeth and feed off the sugars in the food you eat. This sticky substance combines with minerals naturally occurring in your saliva to create a hard, calcium deposit on your teeth called tartar. Tartar is yellow or brown and can only be removed with professional cleaning.

Intrinsic Stains

Intrinsic stains are those that originate from within the tooth. They are often a result of age-related thinning enamel which exposed the yellow dentin layer underneath. However, some other causes of intrinsic stains include:

• Chemotherapy and high blood pressure medications and some antihistamines.
• Some diseases and health conditions.
• Trauma that affects enamel development in children, or trauma that damages enamel in adults.

How Teeth Whitening Works

At Available Care Dental, we offer two different teeth whitening treatments: An at-home teeth whitening kit and in-chair laser teeth whitening.

At-Home Teeth Whitening Kit

For mild staining, we recommend our simple, easy-to-use teeth whitening kit. The kit features a custom-fitted mouth tray which helps to focus the bleaching agent on your teeth and reduce gum exposure.