Why Teeth Get Darker?

Teeth whitening would be less popular, perhaps, if people did not do things likely to stain their teeth. Dark teeth usually arise from genes, aging or the consumption of teeth staining substances or all of these combined. All people are not born with white teeth and in general the color of your teeth depends on your genetic makeup. It’s not uncommon for a child to have dark - lightened shades of yellow, gray and brown primary teeth and more often than not these grow into the permanent teeth.

Smoking or chewing tobacco are huge teeth staining substances, as are black tea, black coffee, cola drinks, blueberries and red wine. These types of stains can often be removed during routine professional teeth cleaning. If these stains continue for years however, they may not come off this way.

Even too much of a good thing, specifically fluoride, can lead to teeth that have brown or yellow splotches on them. Children end up swallowing fluoride toothpaste rather than rinsing and spitting which can lead to stained teeth later in life. Certain rural areas, like northern New Mexico, also have a high fluoride content in the water, which also leads to a stained set of choppers. Trauma to a tooth can also cause internal darkening, and teeth simply get darker as we age.

Professional Teeth Whitening

Prior to the 1990’s substantially the only tooth bleaching option that was available to people was in-office professional tooth bleaching performed by the dentist, when dentists bleached teeth with special equipment in their dental chair. A professional tooth bleaching starts from putting by your dentist a rubber dam around your teeth to protect your gums. Then, the teeth whitening gel is painted onto your teeth and a special, bright light is pointed at them. This light speeds up tooth bleaching process. The whitening takes one to two hours. The effects of in dentist office tooth bleaching are immediate.

Teeth Whitening at Home

Home teeth whitening is a more recent phenomenon today. It has become more and more popular because of fast growing of tooth whitening products, such as gels, and tooth bleaching systems and techniques. For “professional” home teeth bleaching you make your personal mouth guards, so that they fit your teeth precisely, and apply bleaching gel from tube and follow the instructions on how to put the gel in the mouth guards. You will need to wear the mouth guards for a few hours each day. It may take a few weeks to achieve the color that you want.

Home tooth bleaching has some advantages over in office professional tooth bleaching. The whitener that is used typically contains a much lower concentration of peroxide, thus making the potential for problems associated with side effects of whitening teeth less of an issue.