People often ask us about the availability of teeth whitening kits and whether we could review them on our website. There are kits available from a wide range of manufacturers and suppliers across the UK including Superdrug and Boots.
In this article we will look at some of the more generic types of teeth whitening kits, how they may work and provide some form of review survey you can decide if you want to go ahead with this form of teeth whitening.
Home recipe teeth whitening.
One only needs to go to you to do a search teeth whitening and you will find a cornucopia of recipes and ways to whiten your teeth from the bizarre to the dangerous!
The first thing to realise is that the best way to begin whitening your teeth is to remove any stains that are on them and to keep your teeth cleaned in the first place. Many people are often surprised to see how white your teeth are when they are completely clean.
Probably the most dangerous home recipe for teeth whitening that we have seen is where a website suggests using household bleach. This is extremely dangerous as the bleach could easily attack your gum margins causing burns to the tissue of your mouth.
Do not under any circumstances use household bleach to whiten your teeth!
Teeth whitening toothpaste.
Generally speaking this toothpastes simply clean your teeth exceptionally well which makes them look whiter. In order to whiten your teeth there needs to be some form of bleaching agent within the gel used.
The problem with including this bleaching agent into things like toothpaste is that the toothpaste gets washed around your entire mouth and does not stay on your teeth. So any active gel needs to be in a very weak concentration to ensure that there is no damage done to any of the soft tissue of your mouth, including your cheek, gum and tongue.
Any active agent that is placed into a tooth whitening toothpaste will be at a reasonably low concentration and so you will need to use toothpaste for an extended period of time – so long as you are aware of this and are using the toothpaste as part of your daily health care routine this could be a good way of whitening your teeth, albeit rather slow and with unpredictable results.
Instant Paint on teeth whitening.
Appearing on the shelves of some pharmacies and chemists are paint on teeth whitening systems. It seems that these simply apply a lighter layer the surface of your tooth which will wash off over time. This would indicate that the paint on systems may not be actually whitening your teeth but just giving the illusion of whiter teeth for a specific event.
‘Non-instant’ paint on teeth whitening.
There are also a range of teeth whitening pens which are still paint on but do not claim to be instant whitening. These paint on pens often do have an amount of active bleaching ingredient in them and so will work.
The only thing to bear in mind again is that the concentration of active ingredient must be kept to a minimum as they are self applied in the home. If the gels were higher concentration, and the user accidentally dripped the gel onto the soft tissue, then they could be potential problems.
On the whole these teeth whitening pens systems can work well so long as your teeth are not too dark or you don’t want a result that is particularly fast.
Teeth whitening strips.
Whitening strips can indeed work quite well, bearing in mind the problems we have previously highlighted to do with the concentration of active bleaching ingredient in any home whitening system.
Teeth whitening strips can work quite well as the active ingredient is held onto the tooth for an extended period of time.
Best teeth whitening kit.
In our experience the best teeth whitening kits available are the ones that come directly from your dentist. We appreciate that they are considerably more expensive than any of the home whitening kits at home, and some people may prefer to go for the shop bought home whitening kit understanding that it will take longer.
With a professional home whitening kit purchased from your dentist is you will have a custom made plastic tray which holds the active bleaching gel against your tooth for the required period of time often between 45 min and two hours, depending upon the concentration of the gel used.
This professionally made plastic tray is designed to keep the active bleaching gel against your tooth only and seals around the gum/tooth margin to ensure that none of the gel leaks onto any of the soft tissue in your mouth such as your gum, cheek or tongue.
Using this process is means the whitening happens quicker with the results being whiter which means that your white teeth last longer.
Teeth whitening from beauty salons and whitening spas.
The act of teeth whitening has been classified as dentistry and as such only a suitably qualified dental professional is able to provide teeth whitening legally in the UK.
When you go to have your teeth whitened it is important that your dental professional ensures that your overall dental health is suitable for the invasive procedure of teeth whitening. If your dental health is not good enough then teeth whitening is contraindicated.
For example, if you have plaque on your teeth then we need to remove this plaque before going ahead with the whitening, otherwise it is simply the plaque that is getting whiter and it will quickly go back to the dark colour again- not to mention it being unhealthy with plaque on your teeth.
The only person trained to completely recognise all of the oral health conditions this a dental health professional registered with the General Dental Council.
If you go to anybody else to have your teeth whitened always ask for their GDC registration number, if they can’t provide one for you that they are not registered and we recommend that you do not go for teeth whitening at this establishment.
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