Teeth whitening

External whitening is the most common. What does it consist of?

Talking about teeth whitening we will find that there is external whitening and internal whitening. External whitening involves placing a gel that releases oxygen on the surface of the tooth enamel. This gel is placed with a bucket or directly with a brush on the tooth and has different concentrations. We activate it, or slowly placing it on the tooth, or using a light source, which is a heat source, either an allogeneic light, a plasma light or a laser light. The more powerful that light is, the faster the product will activate, but it must be borne in mind that it will also give much more sensitivity to the tooth.

And internal bleaching. What is it and why is it used less?

The internal is the whitening, not of the enamel, but of the dentine and is used only in endodontics teeth that have been discolored with time, the typical dark tooth. It consists of making a hole through the back of the tooth and placing a very powerful gel, which will remove all that coloring of the inner layer of the tooth. In this way, the tooth will recover its luminosity and will become whiter.

How long is the treatment?

The treatment of a total arcade lasts about 20 days because first a diagnostic visit is necessary where we are going to take some models, we will see that the teeth are fine and we will check that they can be whitened. With these models, the technicians will make some buckets and the patient will come to a visit to the consultation, which lasts an hour and a half, in which the patient will be reading, listening to music, and during that time will have placed a very powerful gel. Then, the patient will take some syringes to use at home for about 15 days. When all the syringes are finished, the patient returns to the office and the powerful gel is replaced for another hour and a half.. With that is enough for an archway to be white. When should we reinforce it? I calculate that every 2 years with a reinforcing syringe is enough for the teeth to have the initial tonality.

Do whitening pastes and gels serve themselves or are they a complement to whitening performed by specialists?

By European regulations, any paste or gel that can be sold in pharmacy or parapharmacy can not be irritating. The products that are sold in these establishments do not have any similarity with what we use in the consultation, since professionals can not consent to any patient being harmed by misuse of a product that is irritating. All these products are based on perborates, which are products that can remove stains from the tooth, such as tobacco stains or coffee stains, but will never clean the enamel or leave the tooth whiter.

Are there harmful side effects?

The concentrations that we use in dental consultations are very variable. Depending on the sensitivity of each person's tooth, we will use a specific gel for each case. That is why monitoring is so important, but they are gels that are not toxic, they can be ingested in minimum quantities, sometimes they give some irritation, especially in the gums of the lower teeth, but nothing else. The important thing is that they are monitored because the abuse of these products will only get a white chalk color, but not because it is whiter, but because we are dehydrating the tooth and remains this way. Apart from this, the technique does not have any major problem.