Cosmetic Bleaching: Life’s a Bleach

Admit it. Are you a coffee drinker? A smoker? Do you indulge in a few too many glasses of cola or red wine? Or even tea!

I’m not here to condemn you for your vices, but putting on my dentist hat (Dr. Jerry Vasilakos, stepping in), I do feel a duty to warn against the teeth stains these habits can cause. However, all hope is not lost.

If you’d like to restore the natural whiteness of your teeth, we have ways of doing just that. The answer is bleaching. At Planet Dentistry our staff, fabricate custom trays that fit snug around your teeth. For one hour twice a day, simply insert these trays loaded with bleaching material, and over the course of a week, you will see a gradual change in the whiteness of your teeth.

The use of antibiotics like tetracycline during the early development years of your dentition can sometimes leave some unsightly brown or yellow stains.

Another common cause of discolour in permanent dentition is root canal therapy—already a massive pain on its own.

A word of caution: this bleaching process cannot be performed on porcelain or white fillings; it only works on tooth enamel. We want to restore the natural colour of enamel.

Now, there are a number of systems out there that offer bleaching in a single session, promising instantaneous results. It’s true, you can be in and out with whiter teeth after the one appointment; however, the stability of the colour is often very poor, often fading after with days of the procedure, leading to follow-up appointments, where you still have to take home bleach trays to redo the whitening process.

Why add the extra step of going in to the office (we know not everyone finds dentist offices as inspiring as we do)? Why not try the at-home trays straight away and achieve longer-lasting results?

Once the process is done, keep the trays, and if you eventually decide to re-bleach your teeth (as, alas, nothing truly lasts forever) all you need to do is acquire some fresh bleach from Dr. Jerry Vasilakos at Planet Dentistry in Toronto Ontario, reinsert the trays, and start the familiar process over.

Bleaching works, it lasts, but it’s also dependent on your habits. If you enjoy your morning coffee or a glass of red wine at dinner and are concerned about staining, we’re here to help you restore your smile.