Waiting and whiting
By: Joe Tougas
Special to The Examiner
October 11, 2009
Not so long ago, the only hope of whiter teeth for non-movie stars was a hopeless devotion to Colgate, Crest or Close Up. And waiting.
Those dark -- or at least yellow -- days are gone, and today we are promised whiter teeth tomorrow. With Internet ads in particular offering pearly whites quicker and cheaper every day, brilliant teeth are smack dab in the grasp of the middle class. There's still waiting involved, but nothing money can't shorten.
It was in the 1990s that things changed for the whiter. The chemical compound of carbamide peroxide was shown to be effective in whitening teeth and as something that could be applied at home as well as in dental offices. This mix of hydrogen peroxide and carbamide essentially "bleaches" the tooth to a whiter color. How white depends on the intensity of the chemicals involved, the duration of treatment and the teeth.
Surf the Web» The American Dental Association provides an overview and frequently asked questions on teeth whitening at its Web site, ada.org.
"Teeth come in many different shades and some of those are going to change quicker than others," said Dr. Keir Townsend, a dentist in Mankato, Minn., who recently took part in the 150th annual meeting of the American Dental Association in Honolulu.To the increasing number of patients who ask, Townsend breaks down the options into four tiers:
» Over-the-counter whitening strips in your grocer's toothpaste aisle. "Crest White Strips are probably as good as it gets for that sort of thing," Townsend said. "They're strips, you have to hold 'em. They're impregnated with little activated dots of stuff on there -- the bleach -- and they come off and it's not as efficacious as some other ways of doing it."
» Over-the-counter whitening strips in your grocer's toothpaste aisle. "Crest White Strips are probably as good as it gets for that sort of thing," Townsend said. "They're strips, you have to hold 'em. They're impregnated with little activated dots of stuff on there -- the bleach -- and they come off and it's not as efficacious as some other ways of doing it."
» Professional white strips. Sold only through a dental office, these have a more potent chemical mix. "So it's kind of like jeans at the store where this is 30 bucks and this is 100," Townsend said. "They're not terribly different."
» Creating a mouth guard from an impression of the patient's teeth. The bleaching agent is put into the mouth guard at home and the teeth are bathed evenly.
» In-office bleaching. "In that, the dentist is always in charge of what's happening to the tooth," Townsend said. These in-office procedures also can involve lights or lasers to activate the bleaching process, which can add up the expenses.
The range represents $40 Crest strips to upward of $1,000 for an in-office procedure.
"So it's usually good to have a dentist look at what your teeth are like and what the problem is," Townsend said. "Whitening is a good thing when people come to us, because it often leads to other dental services that they really can use."
Joe Tougas has written for the Blueroad Reader, Minnesota State University TODAY and Static magazine.
