Little White Lie #1
The Lie: Brushing your teeth with whitening toothpaste is the best way to whiten your teeth.
The Truth: No one would argue that you shouldn’t brush your teeth regularly and whitening toothpaste certainly couldn’t hurt. Brushing your teeth is vital to the health of your teeth as well as being a basic tenet of good hygiene. However, the ingredients in whitening toothpastes just don’t spend enough time in direct contact with your teeth to provide the kind of results that people tend to believe that they have.
Your saliva prevents the whitening agents in these toothpastes from being in contact long enough to do any real good in terms of tooth whitening. The active ingredients in these toothpastes are also usually present in such low concentrations that even if they did spend enough time in contact with your teeth, they still wouldn’t be terribly effective. They’re a great idea, but whitening toothpastes really don’t do anything that regular toothpastes don’t.
Little White Lie #2
The Lie: The best way to whiten your teeth is to have your dentist perform a whitening procedure.
The Truth: “Best” can be an ambiguous word sometimes. It is true that your dentist can perform tooth whitening procedures for you. However, it’s not necessarily the case that this is the best way of whitening your teeth. The whitening agents which dentists use in these procedures are generally hydrogen peroxide or carbamide peroxide: the same whitening agents found in at home tooth whitening products.
The degree to which any tooth whitening procedure is effective is dependent on how concentrated the whitening gel is and the amount of time that the gel spends in contact with the surface of the teeth.
The same results that you could get from a whitening procedure performed by your dentist can be gotten with an at home tooth whitening system as well. It’s simply a question of using a highly concentrated whitener for a short duration versus a less concentrated whitener for a longer time.
Of course, there is one other thing to consider here: price. The cost of an office visit and whitening procedure performed by your dentist is far higher than the cost of a whitening treatment which you can administer yourself at home. The results are the same, but the price of doing it yourself is usually 25% or less than the cost of having your dentist perform the procedure. Knowing this, it should come as no surprise to you that more and more people are choosing home tooth whitening systems.
Little White Lie #3
The Lie: All tooth whitening products are the same.
The Truth: There is a lot of difference between tooth whitening solutions. Some products are very effective and others are nearly worthless.
The difference generally comes down to the ingredients used in the product. Different whitening gels differ in their concentration of active ingredients – and thus in the degree to which they are effective. Before making a purchase, you should look at the different products; some are made for specific types and levels of staining.
Little White Lie #4
The Lie: Tooth whitening can damage your teeth and gums.
The Truth: There is no risk of damage to your teeth or gums from using tooth whiteners. The whitening gel is applied directly to your teeth, where the whitening agents oxidize the organic deposits which cause staining. While it doesn’t cause any damage to your teeth or gums, it is possible to have some sensitivity in your teeth following the procedure; however, this is only a temporary effect. You can reduce this sensitivity by reducing the amount of time that the whitening gel is in contact with the surface of your teeth.
It’s possible that these whitening agents can irritate the gums, but this is typically due to poorly fitting whitening trays that cause the gums to come in contact with the whitening product. For this reason, it is highly recommended to use at home whitening systems that use custom whitening trays.
Little White Lie #5
The Lie: Using whitening strips is the best way to get whiter teeth.
The Truth: Our teeth are as unique as we are. This means that it’s impossible to design a whitening strip which can actually maintain contact with the entire surface of our teeth. Even in a best case scenario, these strips can only help whiten the front surface of your teeth, with grooves in the teeth and the gaps between your teeth left unaffected by the whitening strip. What these strips cause is uneven tooth whitening, leaving a striped appearance, with stains apparent on the parts of the teeth which they don’t cover. Many consider this to actually be worse than the original problem!
Little White Lie #6
The Lie: Thermoform trays are cheaper and work just as well as custom whitening tray.
The Truth: This is just simply not true. Thermoform trays have the same problem as do whitening strips; they don’t take into account the fact that everyone’s teeth are different. After all, you wouldn’t expect someone else’s dentures to fit. Custom whitening trays are designed to perfectly conform to your teeth and as such, they don’t leave behind unwhitened areas like a thermoform tray will, since they stay in contact with your teeth. Custom trays also have the advantage of reducing the possibility of gum irritation, since little to no whitening gel can escape from the tray during the whitening process.
Little White Lie #7
The Lie: The paint on tooth whitening products are the easiest and therefore the best at home tooth whitening products
The Truth: The paint-on whiteners are definitely easy to use, but unfortunately they’re not effective. They have the same fatal flaw as whitening toothpastes. Your saliva washes away the whitening agents, meaning that the whiteners aren’t left in contact with the surface of your teeth for a long enough time to do much, if anything to whiten them. The whitening agents in these products is also present in a very low concentration so as to prevent irritation – so even if they did spend more time in contact with your teeth, they are of very little use. At best, these paint on tooth whitening products leave you with very limited whitening results and have an uneven, unnatural look.
There are other products of this type which don’t really whiten at all, being nothing more than a cover-up which does nothing to remove stains.
Little White Lie #8
The Lie: Whitening products which use electroluminescence are more effective, since they activate the tooth whitening agents in the gel
The Truth: These products are nothing new; what they are is ineffective. The electroluminescence used in these products don’t do anything except for look pretty. There is no added effect to these products by virtue of this light and it’s not necessary to remove staining and get whiter teeth. This is a marketing ploy, plain and simple.
Little White Lie #9
The Lie: Tooth bleaching produces the same results for everybody.
The Truth: Every individual is different and so are their teeth; including their staining. Some stains are easier to bleach than others. Yellow stains are the easiest to remove, followed by brown staining. Teeth which are stained to a grayish shade are the most difficult to whiten by the use of a bleaching procedure.
Little White Lie #10
The Lie: If you swallow tooth whitening gel it can result in internal injuries.
The Truth: There’s no way to whiten your teeth without swallowing a little gel. No matter which whitening product you use, it’s going to happen. The only side effect is the strange taste that these gels have; though there is no risk of injury from swallowing a little tooth whitening gel. Obviously, it’s not recommended to drink the gel in large quantities, but swallowing the small amounts used in tooth whitening procedures isn’t going to hurt anyone.
Before you purchase any teeth whitening items online please make sure you visit Teeth Whitening for further important health and purchase information.Also see more information about teeth whitening at home.