Whiten Your Smile with Professional Teeth Bleaching

Everybody wants whiter teeth. Years ago when people were not whitening, kind of a yellow teeth was accepted. But now a majority of the population is whitening, so what used to be considered a light colored tooth now is really not light anymore. People always want whiter teeth. It makes them look more youthful, healthier, sexier, younger. I've never heard a patient come in and say "I don't want those things." A lot of patients would benefit from tooth whitening, but there are some situations where it may not be ideal for that particular patient. You have to have a healthy mouth to start. Your gums have to be healthy. Your teeth have to be cavity free. So you have to start with the basics. If patients have really heavy staining, maybe Tetracycline staining, something that's so dark that the bleaching would overall lighten the teeth but you might just see colored bands or strands on the teeth, that bleaching is not the best thing for them. Patients that have crowns existing on their teeth that are older crowns, we cannot lighten an existing porcelain crown. That's why there are other cosmetic procedures that would benefit those patients, either new crowns or veneers. There's a couple of different ways to bleach teeth. I think the most common one, the one I have the most control of so I can really watch the color and monitor the process, would be an in-office bleaching. A brand name that's very common is called Zoom. That's where a patient comes in the office, they sit in a chair, we prepare the mouth, it takes about an hour and a half or two hours, and we slowly bleach the teeth as we're monitoring the process.