Dr. Sanda Moldovan compares teeth-whitening methods from toothpaste to in-office bleaching. Whitening strips work well but can damage gums if they touch them. After bleaching, your enamel's pores stay open temporarily, making teeth more sensitive and prone to staining, so use desensitizing toothpaste and avoid red wine and coffee for a few days.
Hi, everyone. I'm Dr. Sandha. Welcome to my channel. I wanted to talk to you about whitening. Is it dangerous for our teeth? Can it hurt our gums? These are all questions that a lot of you might have. You know, sometimes you put on that whitening strip and you see that the gums turn white. Is that damaging to your gums? These are all the questions that I want to answer. But first of all, let's talk a little bit about the different whitening products that we have. One, we have a whitening toothpaste. Does it work? Not that well. And actually can cause sensitivity to your teeth because it has more abrasive particles in it. We have white strips, for example, that you could buy over the counter. And then you can actually just press on your teeth, and you leave them on for maybe half an hour, 45 minutes. An hour, and you get the whitening. Those white strips actually work very well. But you have to be careful that you don't press the gel on the gums. You really want to press it on the teeth and stay shy of the gums. Sometimes I even recommend actually cutting it if you feel like it's overlapping way too much of your gums. And why is that? Because when we put the peroxide over the gum and the gum turns white, part of the cells there on the surface actually die off. Is that dangerous? Not so much. The gum will regenerate, but it could be very sensitive. And not only the gums turn white, but afterwards they will turn red because they want to regenerate. And that's just not a good look for you to have. So the next thing, we have actually the trays that are made in the office. And sometimes you can make them yourself at home, but they're not so precise. We recommend the office ones because then you get a precise fit of your teeth. And then we give you something like this, which is a whitening gel that you could put inside the tray, and you can just pop it in like so. So with a tray like this, you can actually talk and you can actually drink liquid. What I do recommend is that you try a gel that's a lower concentration first, just to make sure you're not sensitive, and then also make sure that you don't get the gel to overflow over the gums. And then what happens to the teeth when they're whitened? It actually creates little micropores. It opens up the pores just like, very much like you have on the skin to take out the stain. So during this time that the teeth get bleached, they're more sensitive to getting stains actually. So what can we do to protect our teeth? Teeth is one have a white diet we call. So stay away from things like red wine or chocolate that can stain the teeth or even coffee can do that. What you should know is that the teeth can get really sensitive, especially if you go to the office and have an in office bleaching. So how do we go around? It is for you to use something that's desensitizers to close up the pores, pores that were opened up during the bleaching. So we do this with either a sensitive toothpaste that you can find on the market or we have certain products such as MI Paste, which contains calcium hydroxyapatite without fluoride that has been shown to remineralize the teeth. And that's one, that's the one I really recommend because I am not a fan of fluoride products. I find that the calcium hydroxyapatite which has actually research behind it, can help remineralize the teeth and decrease the sensitivity. If you have any other questions on whitening, Tweet me at askdrsanda or go to my website at DrSandaMolevan.com until next time, keep smiling.
