Teeth Whitening Products Reviews

You see the products everywhere: teeth whiteners that promise to get rid of stains and yellowing in a matter of weeks, sometimes even days. It’s really no wonder, since so many of the things people consume today have a discoloring effect on their teeth. Nicotine used to be the number one culprit, and it’s still high on the list, but it’s been joined by another big one, which is all those cups of coffee consumed at home and by workers everywhere. As coffee sales have risen dramatically in the last couple of decades, so has the visual effect of the drink on people’s teeth.

With these and other factors constantly contributing to teeth discoloration, it’s no wonder that sales of teeth whitening products have also skyrocketed. But are these products actually good for you? Some people are starting to worry that the ingredients they contain may not only produce whitening benefits for your teeth, but might be accompanied by some rather bad side effects. The very ingredients these whiteners contain may ultimately do you more harm than good, and many advise that you should turn to natural whitening agents instead.

In 2004, a group of scientists from the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC, did a study on the instances of younger oral cancer patients. The reason they focused on younger adult patients was that these people did not yet have an extended life history of smoking and drinking alcohol that often accounts for oral cancer in older adults. The quest was to discover whether there was any connection between the use of commercial tooth whiteners and the incidence of oral cancer. And the focus was particularly on the type of peroxide used in the whiteners, which had been known to cause cancer in mice.

What the researchers found was that the sixteen percent of their test subjects who did use teeth whiteners all had a regional lymph node disease. What the study suggests is that the peroxide creates free radicals as well as aggravating the oral cavity. This alone doesn’t cause cancer, but the reaction of the free radicals with the aggravated tissue makes the cells behave in odd ways. If these reactions lead to cancer forming in the lymph system, it’s very easy to spread from there. However, the scientists concluded that this one study was too small to prove anything conclusively, so more research was obviously needed.

A year later, the American Dental Association made a statement that teeth whiteners weren’t actually harmful, yet shouldn’t be used by anyone under eighteen. The Association even suggested that the whiteners might “enhance teeth’s natural healing ability” by opening natural pores in the teeth and allowing the minerals in saliva to replenish the enamel. This didn’t address the concern about oral cancer, but tried to allay other fears that commercial teeth whiteners made teeth white by stripping enamel from their surface.

The oral cancer question hasn’t yet been answered conclusively, and not all fears have been allayed about tooth enamel. It’s possible that only a generation of use will produce results to demonstrate what the final effect of these whiteners will be on people’s teeth. In the meantime, what are you to do if you can see discoloration on your teeth, yet don’t trust the commercial products? Many people have suggestions about using natural whiteners instead, like baking soda, the old standby. So if you’d rather stand on the sidelines until the research on the commercial products is finally in, do a search in reliable health food and health product websites to find a natural alternative.

There are a lot of options on the market for getting whiter teeth. For starters, there are several home care products that you can pick up at your local drugstore and use nightly in the comfort of your own home. Then there are the various methods used by dentists nationwide. Going to the dentist though, isn’t cheap. Getting your teeth whitened that way can run you a few hundred dollars, most or all of which won’t be covered by your insurance.

So now you want to guard your money but still have a nice white smile. The question you are left to ponder is which is the most affordable teeth whitening product out there. The answer isn’t as clear cut as simply looking at the boxes and price tags that line the oral hygiene section of your favorite pharmacy. You have to look a lot closer to get the whole story.

Consider the whitening gels. These work by having you spread the gel into a little tray and then leave the tray over your teeth for ten or twenty minutes. You repeat this several times over the course of a few days and in the end your teeth are supposed to be whiter. All of this sounds great except for one thing. These gels represent the most expensive whitening option you’ll find in stores. They can actually run you upwards of a hundred bucks.

That’s why your eyes will likely wander to the teeth whitening strips. These are the more affordable of the teeth whitening products that hold anywhere close to any industry respect. They work in the same way the gels do, offering the same type of active ingredients, but apply themselves in a different way. With the strips, they wrap around your teeth and you tend to wear them over night.

There is a lower concentration of teeth whitening chemicals on the strips though. They also tend to miss spots if you don’t use them properly. This means you’ll find yourself doing one of two things. Either you’ll go back and buy more strips, hoping to better finish the job, or you’ll choose a different option. That different option will likely be more expensive, possibly even those gels you passed on the first time.

The least expensive teeth whitening option pushed on consumers are the toothpastes. Every major toothpaste brand offers their own whitening formulas, and they all claim that they will give you a better smile. The truth is, they offer such a low amount of whitening chemicals you won’t really see much difference, if any at all. At best, you can possibly expect the toothpastes to help you from losing any of the white you already have.

When you add all of that up, you’ll find that the most affordable teeth whitening product is actually the one that carries the higher initial price tag. That’s because it works right the first time, and won’t require any further action or investment on your part. To find the best gels for the money, talk to your dentist or pharmacist. They’ll point you in the right direction.

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There are many who advise against using commercial teeth whitening products, suggesting several natural alternatives instead. One of the most popular alternatives that gets mentioned almost every time is fruit. Two fruits in particular are favored: lemons and strawberries. The idea is that you can use a mix of lemon juice and salt, or perhaps even rub the inside of a lemon peel across your teeth, or else you can mash up some strawberries and actually brush your teeth with them.

So how well do they actually work? Those who advocate the use of these fruits as natural whiteners often claim that a noticeable improvement in the color of the teeth will be seen as early as a few days after you start using them. And this may indeed be the result. But despite these glowing reports, using lemons or strawberries may not turn out to be the best solution after all, healthy as they both seem.

What happens with lemons is that the citric acid leeches calcium from the tooth enamel. It’s actually this calcium that causes the teeth to be a sort of off white rather than white color, so removing it will certainly fulfill the promise of helping to make the teeth much whiter. Yet your teeth need calcium to be strong and healthy, so this use of lemon would in fact be making them weaker. The enamel would become thinner, and you know that fruit contains sugar, so obviously more cavities would be the inevitable result.

And unfortunately, strawberries don’t fare much better. To begin with, the seeds act as an abrasive and can scrape and damage the teeth by being brushed across them too vigorously. And these berries, just like lemons, contain acid that can damage the enamel on the surface of the teeth. In fact, the acid actually makes the enamel softer, even when you’re merely eating strawberries and aren’t mashing them across the teeth. Because of this, even after simply eating these berries, some advise that you wait twenty minutes before brushing your teeth, which would give your saliva a chance to replenish the minerals in the enamel. If this is a worry after only eating strawberries whole, then actually using a mashed strawberry pulp to brush your teeth is not a good idea at all.

There are some things anyone must consider when looking for a non-commercial teeth whitening method. One is that not everyone’s natural tooth color is pure white, so any measures they take to try to make their teeth that color will inevitably be damaging to their teeth. The enamel is semi-translucent, meaning the color of the material underneath it is what determines most of its color. And that material, the dentin, is often yellowish.

This means that another side effect specific to using lemons or strawberries is that as the enamel on your teeth erodes, it will become easier to see the deeper layers beneath it. And that, in turn, means that the final color of your teeth will likely be more yellowish than it was when you started. It may turn out to be much more important that you keep your teeth healthy than that you make them whiter. But if you still want to try, using lemons or strawberries is not a good idea.

When you’re wondering if natural teeth whitening agents can be as effective as the more commercial products that are out there, perhaps you’re asking the wrong question. It’s possible that the question shouldn’t involve a comparison of the two types of whitening methods at all. The real question might actually be whether any product whatsoever can claim that it whitens teeth.

The reason that some skepticism might be in order is that the natural color of the enamel on most people’s teeth isn’t even white to start with. The usual color is at best, a sort of off white, but usually ranges somewhere between yellowish and grayish white. This should be an immediate eyebrow raiser, prompting you to wonder how a tooth that never was naturally white to begin with could be made white, without somehow painting the color on from the outside.

One of the reasons for the natural variation in the color of the enamel is that it’s made of minerals, with some water and organic material thrown into the mix. Some of the mineral composition of the tooth enamel is determined by foods you eat that help create the minerals in your saliva. These are absorbed by the tooth and help build it up and strengthen it.

But other minerals come from outside the tooth, coming into direct contact with it as you eat and drink. This is why dentists often give external fluoride or cleaning treatments by using “teeth painting” methods, or putting solutions in little trays that people have to clamp around their teeth for several minutes. It’s also why people living in areas where the water is mineral rich often have very hard teeth. The enamel doesn’t just absorb minerals externally from the saliva, but it also takes them straight from whatever you put into your mouth. This means that it’s largely your own lifetime environment and diet that have determined the color of your teeth, and you may not be able to undo those effects.

Another element that determines tooth color is the fact that tooth enamel is semi-translucent. This means that you can partly see through it, so that much of its color is actually determined by what’s underneath. That material is called dentin, and in many cases, it tends to be yellowish in color. So you could have perfectly clean and clear enamel that still looks rather yellow, because of the underlying material that supports it, whose color is coming through.

Does this mean that it’s impossible to get teeth any whiter if they have yellowed? Regular brushing and a yearly cleaning at the dentist may accomplish something close to this by taking away any genuine stains that have discolored the enamel. And some commercial products claim to be able to whiten the underlying dentin as well as the enamel. However, they tend to be very acidic and as they remove minerals, the teeth may become weaker and more prone to decay. It might be that you simply have to learn to live with your natural tooth color, and concentrate instead on keeping your teeth clean and healthy rather than a white that is not natural to them.