What Might be Wrong with Commercial Teeth Whiteners?
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.
