Ask the Warrior Dentist: How Your Dentist Whitens Your Teeth

There are actually several different approaches that you dentist will take to help whiten your teeth, based on your personal preferences, your tooth color now, and the goals you have both in terms of affordability and whiteness results. The first way – which your dentist or dentists have been doing every since you first went to the dentist as a child – involves a thorough and professional cleaning. This kind of whitening, as you probably notice, gives you immediately better looking and whiter teeth. They look much better, have a sparkling polished appearance, and it is fun to run your tongue over them and see how silky smooth they feel.

But that doesn’t happen by accident or magic. The dentist follows specific procedures that get you from that gray or dull look to a sparkling smile, and those typically fall on the shoulders of a trained and certified dental hygienist or dental assistant. The dental hygienist is the person that many patients think of as the dentist’s nurse, because his or her job is to assist the dentist. One of the main jobs is to help do the routine cleaning and whitening of your teeth, and the hygienist accomplishes this by doing a comprehensive brushing – sometimes using a high tech water pressure tool that sprays water to pressure wash your teeth. Then she or he will use various types of special toothpaste and tooth polish that contain slight abrasives. These gritty substances help to rub off stains and dig down beneath layers of built up discoloration. Sometimes the hygienist will also use manual tools to scrape away plaque from the tooth enamel. Taken together, all of these steps can significantly whiten your teeth.

If you want to go to the next level of whitening, your dentist can use special peroxides – which are rather intense chemical acids – to etch down deeper into the tooth surface and literally eat away at bad stains. Of course the dentist knows how to dilute the chemicals so that they are not harmful to your teeth or gums, and using these teeth whitening products can make for an outstanding and really gorgeous white tooth smile.

These days there are take home versions of whiteners that the dentist can recommend, too, so that you can be given special whitening trays to apply to your teeth at home. Over time your teeth whiten more gradually than they do in the dentist’s office, but the result is almost the same degree of bright whiteness.

Advanced cosmetic laser dentistry is also sometimes used to treat teeth and clear away the stained outer surface to reveal a brighter and whiter tooth, and dentists can also apply special veneers – which are super thin surfaces – to the outside of the tooth. Once the veneer is in place it stays there as an indistinguishable part of the tooth. Nobody knows it is there but you and your dentist, and it does an invisible job of giving you much whiter teeth.

To get the whitest possible teeth for the best possible results and the prettiest smile, just ask your dentist about all the ways he or she can treat your teeth to ensure ultimate tooth whiteness. And don’t forget to play your own part by brushing and flossing regularly.