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How Does Teeth Whitening Work?

January 14, 2020

Filed under: Uncategorized — whiteclayteam @ 2:33 pm
woman pointing to her white smile

Your teeth have been yellowish for years now. You’ve tried multiple store-bought options, from whitening toothpastes to bleaching gels to whitening kits, but none of them seem to produce the long-lasting results you want. Fortunately, there is a solution that is all but guaranteed to work – professional teeth whitening in Newark. These take-home trays, coupled with a powerful bleaching gel, can help you achieve the bright smile you’ve always wanted. Keep reading below to learn just how they work and how they can help you.

The Reasons Teeth Become Discolored

Your pearly whites might be stained for a multitude of reasons, such as:

  • Consuming staining foods and drinks like wine, coffee, tea, berries, and richly pigmented sauces. A good rule of thumb is that if it will stain a white shirt, it will stain your tooth enamel!
  • Taking the antibiotic tetracycline while your permanent teeth are developing.
  • Ingesting too much fluoride as a child.
  • Poor oral hygiene that leads to accelerated wear and tear of the enamel.
  • The natural aging process which leads to thinner enamel, exposing the underlying yellowish layer of dentin.

How Take-Home Teeth Whitening Works

For the first step of the professional whitening process, your dentist in Newark will take impressions of your teeth and use them to design customized trays that will fit quite snugly over your teeth. Your dentist will then send you home with a bleaching gel much more potent than anything you can find at your local drugstore. Place some of the gel inside the trays and wear them for a prescribed amount of time each day, usually half an hour or so. You should start to see results you can be proud of after just a couple of weeks.

How You Can Maintain Your Results

Since you’ve just invested in having a brighter smile, you don’t want your results to fade away and your teeth to become discolored again. There are a few steps you can take to ensure that doesn’t happen, like:

  • Avoiding consuming too many staining foods and drinks
  • Using a straw to drink staining liquids so that the drink bypasses the fronts of your teeth
  • Quitting smoking, as it can discolor your teeth
  • Touching up with your whitening treatment every once in a while
  • Brushing your teeth twice a day with whitening toothpaste

Now that you understand how teeth whitening works, why not schedule an appointment with your dentist to get your smile shining bright?

About the Author

Dr. Timothy Ganfield graduated magna cum laude from Temple University’s dental school. His professional affiliations include the American Dental Association, the Delaware State Dental Society, and the University of Delaware Health Services. He regularly pursues continuing education every year to stay abreast of the latest techniques that modern dentistry has to offer. His practice, White Clay Dental, also offers take-home whitening kits to brighten up your smile. To schedule an appointment, click here to visit his website.