So what is the reason behind so many people wanting whiter, healthier-looking smiles?  What do whiter teeth and a whiter smile do for people?

Many people have greater confidence when they have a whiter smile.  A great smile can be a real confidence booster and many people are self-conscious about how clean their teeth appear to others.  Most pile smile all the time and we just unconsciously feel that a whiter smile is better.

This confidence and other people’s impressions are linked to hygiene.  While whiter teeth don’t necessarily mean better hygiene, we subconsciously equate it with that, so people with whiter teeth are generally seen as “cleaner.”  Even people who brush regularly and are otherwise well groomed can feel less clean because their smile isn’t as white as they’d like.

Surveys have also shown that whiter teeth are tied with the impression of age.  The same person, one with stained teeth and the other with a whiter smile, will be judged at different ages by observers with the whiter teeth winning out as a younger impression.

This impression ties in with sexual attraction as well.  The American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry did a study that showed that 85% of adults said an unattractive smile makes the opposite sex less appealing.  It’s likely that this ties in with the confidence and cleanliness issues above.  Whiter teeth do make for better lovers, apparently–at least through the impressions people gave.

Most teeth whitening methods are considered safe if they’ve been approved by the American Dental Association.  While there are a lot to choose from, that’s because a whiter smile can mean a happier, more confident you.

Foods that we eat can stain our teeth, especially those with heavy color pigments in them like soy sauce, some vinegars, most berries, and more.  Citrus and acidic foods can loosen the “caps” that cover the pores in the teeth, causing them to more easily take stains.

Things we drink, like coffee and tea, can also be the reason behind teeth discoloration.  Red wine, some soft drinks, juices from dark fruits, and more are all culprits here.

In fact, a good rule of thumb on tooth staining is that if whatever you’re eating or drinking will make you flinch when it’s rubbed or poured on a white t-shirt, it probably causes tooth discoloration too.

Other habits we put in our mouths like smoking, chewing tobacco, and even chewing gum can cause teeth discoloration.  With tobacco, the more you use it, the deeper the stain until it eventually becomes permanent.

Regular dental hygiene like brushing and flossing is important to keeping tooth staining at a minimum, of course, but over doing it can be just as bad.  Over brushing is often one of the most common reasons that many people have teeth discoloration.  The brushing itself doesn’t cause staining, but it weakens the enamel, allowing stains to more easily set in.

Other factors in tooth staining problems can be medications, diseases that cause minerals to leach out of the body or not be absorbed nutritionally, and radiation (X-rays and chemo therapy) are all things that can cause tooth discoloration in patients.

Finally, genetics plays a role too.  Some people are just born with naturally white teeth, just as others are born with straight or crooked ones and still others are born with an apparent inability to get cavities.

All in all, though, most teeth discoloration and staining can be prevented if you know what causes it.

The Zoom system is basically an in-office bleaching, but it is much faster and uses a whitening gel agent whose bleach is activated by a light.  The agent is much stronger than what you can buy off the shelf or even the normal tray whitening systems that are the usual teeth whitening setups used by people.  Because it’s stronger, the agent with Zoom often works faster and better.

The gel is applied directly to your teeth, avoiding your gums and sensitive spots.  A special frequency light is then shone on your teeth for a specific amount of time (just a few minutes), activating the gel and causing the bleaching action to begin.  This professional teeth whitening system often has fast results, with many teeth whitening clients having the Zoom treatment done over a lunch hour.

The treatment usually takes less than 45 minutes in total.

The biggest advantage to professional teeth whitening systems like Zoom is that it’s done in a dentist’s office where the application, use, and entire treatment can be controlled.  This means the right amount of bleach, the right length of treatment, and the right intervals can be used to maximize the teeth whitening regimen.

The down side, of course, is that it’s more expensive.  Because it’s faster, though, Zoom is often cheaper than the other professional teeth whitening alternatives and generally safer and nearly as effective as even the best of them.

This is important, since most dental plans don’t cover whitening and consider it cosmetic.  So what you pay matters to you.

Most Zoom patients who do normal at-home cleaning (brushing, flossing, etc.) only require Zoom treatments once a year or so to stay white and bright.

The truth is, some remedies actually work while others are extremely dangerous to good oral health.  Lemon juice, often touted as a teeth whitening method, is actually extremely detrimental to your teeth, leeching calcium from them and causing long-term harm.  Most fruit juices, especially citrics, in fact have this same property and should be avoided.

Natural whitening methods that do work are simpler than many would like to think.  One such natural teeth whitening method is the use of wood ash.  It’s not the tastiest or prettiest way to try to whiten your teeth and it’s definitely one of the less pleasant of the natural whitening methods.

The ash of hardwoods (yep, the leftovers from the fireplace) contain potassium hydroxide, one of the prime ingredients in over the counter and in-office dental soaks (tray teeth whitening) methods.  The natural method works, if you don’t do it too often (it could cause sensitivity), but it’s not exactly fun.  It’s ashes, after all.

Another method often mentioned for natural teeth whitening is strawberry juice.  This is not really adviseable for teeth whitening, though it does work.  The problem is that the sugars and acids from the strawberries can cause erosion of the enamel, which is definitely not good.  If used sparingly and thoroughly brushed and cleaned away with regular toothpaste, though, this natural whitening method can work.  It’s a lot of trouble, though, to save $10.

Finally, the often-touted and old faithful baking soda is mentioned as a natural whitening method.  In reality, baking soda does little for teeth whitening, but it does thoroughly clean teeth.  It’s abrasive, so using too much is a bad thing, but if you just wet your toothbrush and dip the end of the bristles into the baking soda (or bicarbonate of soda), it’ll do.  Most toothpastes contain some amount of baking soda, in fact.

Fast laser treatments have been all the rage in teeth whitening, but new studies are showing that while it’s a faster treatment than in-clinic soaking (tray bleaching), it’s not necessarily better.  Or as good, even.

What’s being found is that the tooth whitening is not necessarily a bleaching, as previously though, but is actually a dehydration of the teeth from the intense light of the laser.  This dehydration leads to whitening, of course, but the laser tooth whitening can fade quickly as the teeth rehydrate after a few days.  Further questions of what it might be doing to affect enamel are also being raised.

Here’s why that is: bleach gel is usually applied to the teeth and then the laser is used to “burn off” the gel, theoretically forcing it into the teeth through heat.  In reality, most of the gel evaporates into the air, doing nothing to aid tooth whitening.  Some of it does, of course, get forced into the teeth as well.

The problem is that in most cases, that bleach is not enough and is not there long enough to do anything beyond a slim surface whitening.  The deeper coloration of the teeth (call the intrinsic coloration) is unchanged.  Further, the bleaching is so light it may not have any visual effect at all.

Most of the laser tooth whitening effect on many teeth appears to be the forcing of water from the teeth, dehydrating them.  This naturally lends a whiteness, but this new tooth whitening lasts only a few days while the teeth recover.

This is why the longer tray whitening methods seem to have a longer-lasting effect, though it is slower to appear.

There are soaking methods (bleaching), lasers, gel and light pulses, and so forth.  So which one works the best?

That question can’t be answered de facto.  Professional teeth whitening is more than just a method, it’s a consideration of your dentist’s examination of your teeth, what will likely work best, and what you can afford to use.  No method is the same for everyone, so one might be effective for one person, but a different teeth whitening system might be better for someone else.

Dentistry, like medicine, is all about probabilities.  Most dentists can’t say for certain that one thing is going to work all of the time, every time.  Fillings sometimes fall out, surgeries sometimes fail, methods sometimes are ineffective.  That’s just how it is.  Just as a doctor can only guess what type of medicine might work to help you, a dentist can only make an educated guess about the best tooth whitening method for your mouth.

With all of that, the best professional teeth whitening always comes from one source: a professional.  Your dentist can tell you which one will probably work for you, which one likely won’t, and what kind of benefit you can expect from one or the other.

Other services like teeth cleaning and scrubbing can often lead to the best tooth whitening you can find.  The dentist can also tell by the underlying color of your teeth (everyone’s is different whether a particular professional teeth whitening method is going to work well or not.

Overall, it’s your dentist who will be best consulted for the best tooth whitening for your needs.  He may prescribe a take-home kit, an intense in-office professional teeth whitening system, or something elese.

At the dentist, these trays may be formed specifically to fit your mouth while over the counter versions will be generically sized.

How well the tray fits will effect how well the whitening works, of course, but in general if the tray covers the teeth up to the gums, it’s likely to work well enough.

Obviously, the fitted ones at the dentist will do a better job and will also minimize sensitivity to the gums and gum line–a common issue amongst those who have whitening done or do it themselves.  Often, the take-home trays that the dentist might provide, which are form-fitted, can be re-used with over the counter whitening gels (which your dentist may even recommend) after being sanitized.

The common kits usually contain the tooth trays themselves, teeth whitening gel in either one dose or multiple dose tubes, and optionally a rinse agent, which is usually a sensitivity reducer.

Tooth trays have been around since the early 1900s and are not new.  They’ve evolved and become more sophisticated, of course, but are basically the same in concept as they were in their early days.  The formulas for whitening, while based on the same chemicals, have advanced considerably, however.

Teeth whitening is big business and the company with the best formula (and marketing to go with it) will stand to reap great rewards.  Tooth trays and tray whitening kits have almost always fronted the market in use for in-home whitening.

For the money, most agree that tray whitening is still the most effective way to conduct teeth whitening for most people.  The custom-fit trays you get from your dentist are proven to be the most effective tooth trays, so many consider them worth the little bit of extra effort and money.

Tray whitening methods are definitely here to stay and will likely never be replaced by fancy laser or light-sensitive methods used in-office.

This doesn’t not mean that the effectiveness of whitening toothpaste options has changed much, however.  While a few brands with better formulas have appeared, most are basically the same as they were a few years ago when the teeth whitening toothpaste market exploded.

What most people don’t know is that the scrubbing action of most types of tooth whitening toothpastes, thanks to added silica agents like dicalcium phosphate), are really doing most of the work.  The whitening agents are generally so mild (usually sodium tripolyphosphate or carbamide peroxide) that they do little or nothing to whiten teeth at all.

There are several reasons for the low concentrations of bleach agents in teeth whitening toothpaste.  The biggest of these reasons is tooth sensitivity and the difficulty of keeping a stable whitening formula (neutral pH/acidity levels) in the complex mix of things that make up most whitening toothpaste formulas.

The more neutral or stable the whitening bleach agent is, the better it works and the longer it lasts.  This is not an easy thing to accomplish and is the chief reason that the expensive whitening bleaches used by the dentist are usually more effective and cause less tooth sensitivity.

In tooth whitening toothpastes, though, the scrubbing action is the key to whiter teeth.  This means that the “less sensitive” formulas of regular toothpastes are not recommended most of the time.  The more scrub, the more clean, and the whiter the teeth.

This is why many regular toothpastes can be just as effective as teeth whitening toothpaste formulas.  With the prices being about the same, there’s little reason for concern between the two anymore, however, but you’ll likely experience less sensitivity with a non-whitening formula paste that has more scrubbing particles in it.

Whether you get your teeth whitening done at the dentist or you use an at-home method, it’s common that you experience tooth sensitivity after treatments.  There are reasons that this happens and knowing them will show you how you can be treating sensitivity issues to make for a better, less painful teeth whitening experience.

The tooth sensitivity that comes with teeth whitening is caused by your personal genetics, the stability of the bleaching process used, and the acidic reaction of the chemicals involved.  Most of the sensitivity comes from the changes made to the teeth themselves during the bleaching process.

As the figure shows, your teeth have millions of microscopic dentinal tubules, which extend from the pulp (nerve) out to the surface of your teeth.  These tubes are filled with fluid and movement of that fluid is what causes sensitivity.  Normally, minerals contained in your saliva plug the tops of these tubes (as shown), but bleaching usually dissolves those plugs, opening the tubules.

This creates tooth sensitivity as the fluids inside them moves.  Most liquids like bleach solution gels cannot penetrate into the tubules.  However, when the fluid inside them escapes and leaves a void, this void is often very painful.  Most of the time, tooth sensitivity is merely the movement of fluid as some escapes before new plugs are formed.

Some people, genetically, are more predisposed to this tooth sensitivity than others: especially fair-haired people and those with larger, thicker teeth.

The plugs dissolving are not due to the bleach itself, but the acidity of the bleach instead.  Usually, higher-quality gels and treatments will not cause much tooth sensitivity as they are formulated to be as acidically neutral as possible.  Lower-cost gels and bleaches, however, do not go through the processes required for thsi and are usually slightly alkaline or acidic.  This is the main cause of tooth sensitivity.

Desensitizing agents are commonly used in treating sensitivity and are available in toothpastes, as after-appliques for whitening, or are in the whitening gels themselves.  Finally, newer desensitizers include oxalates and HEMA-based products for restoring the plugs.

Tooth sensitivity during and after teeth whitening is not a big issue if you understand how to be treating sensitivity issues before they become painful.

Bleaching is the process of removing color from a substance.  Seems like kind of a dumb semantic difference, but it’s important in one aspect: teeth bleaching does not necessarily mean teeth get whiter, just that they have color removed.

The reason this is an important difference is because cosmetically, teeth bleaching can only remove color, but the base color of the teeth will remain.  People generally have an undertone of light brown, gray, or yellow to their teeth due to the coloration of the substrate underneath the enamel.  Coloration on that level (under the enamel) is usually called intrinsic coloring, referring to the “base” coloration of the teeth.

Usually, only the deep “intrinsic” bleaches used in a dentist’s office can really change that base color.  So most teeth bleaching will not make teeth “white” per se, but they can reduce the discoloration that makes them appear dirty.  The everyday coffee, tea, tobacco, and other stains that make most of our teeth’s discoloration can be reduced or eliminated with teeth bleaching.

For true teeth whitening, however, you’ll likely need to see a dentist and take part in a more intensive therapy to remove the discoloration.  No matter what your teeth whitening plans, you will want to get a good cleaning before you start as even teeth bleaching can only do so much for very dirty teeth.

When you are shopping for a teeth whitening solution, make sure that you look for the seal of the American Dental Association (ADA) so you know that you’re getting something that’s been approved to be safe for your teeth.  The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) only tests over-the-counter teeth bleaching solutions to be safe for ingestion (food) as they are not considered medicines (drugs).

So be aware of what you will be using and whether it is effective and safe to use.