I’ve found a coupon for a local dentist for a teeth whitening for 199 dollars. I called this morning and was told that the initial visit was to get a mold of my teeth. Then, I would come back in a few days to get the mold. The actual whitening process is something I do at home.
My friend did something like this, but it was done at the dentists office and cost 500 bucks. I’m wondering if I’d be better off getting Crest Nightstrips or something like that and have the same results. How is the teeth whitening system at the dentists office different from one purchased at a drug store?
Anybody with experience, please advise.
By the way, my teeth are stained by tetracyceline (sp) from when I was a child. I asked the receptionist if it would whiten them and she said it would definitely help them.
I haven’t done both, but I did the super White Strips and my teeth look good. I’m a smoker.
My boss just got his done at the dentist. The whole job was done in the office. He had a coupon and paid like $250 and they look faaaabulous. Really great. I think with the stains you mentioned, you might be better off doing the whole enchilada.
I did exactly what your local dentist suggests. (It’s kind of cool to own a mold of your teeth, as uncomfortable as the process was.) I also have tetracycline stains. Please keep in mind that the receptionist is NOT a dentist and really, probably does not know what the hell she is talking about. Bleaching can help tetracycline stains a little, but not significantly. Tobacco, soda, coffee, other kinds of stains: works great and I saw immediate and significant results. I still touch up every now and then and decided to go another couple rounds now that I’ve quit smoking.
I would guess the difference between the white strips is they probably don’t touch tetracycline stains at all. The only real solution to that, I’ve been told by numerous dentists, is veneers, which is pricey and prevents you from biting into apples after that. For life. I’m not in a big hurry to grind down otherwise healthy teeth in order to fit veneers on them to make them prettier. (But that’s just me. I’d rather have all my own teeth in their original condition than be marginally prettier.) Anyway, I think I read somewhere, like in Consumer Reports, that the white strips do help incrementally, but the peroxide solution is far less strong than what the dentist would give you, so you’ll see more result with the $200 method.
Then again, this could all be marketing and my former dentist was merely about taking my money.
My recommendation: go to another dentist or two and see if you get the same opinions. And ask the dentist your questions, not the receptionist and not the hygenist. (who, like McDonald’s cashiers, are supposed to “upsell” or supersize your visits. I swear dental hygenists get paid on commission these days for all spiffy toothbrushes and crap they try to sell you. Remember when a trip to the dentist was about the health of your teeth and gums?)
Tetracycline stains are intrinsic, and bleaching will not help. If your teeth have also dulled or become stained for other reasons, (age, coffee or tea stains, smoking) you might get improvement on some level, but it will only lighten your teeth to the original tetracycline stained color. This is also true if your original teeth were yellow or greyish. Yellow or greyish teeth will never become “bright white.” Also, keep in mind that bleaching does not work for everyone’s teeth. Some teeth are resistant, some resist completely. Some improve dramatically with just one application, some never improve. So far, no one seems to know why.
The good news is, Crest Whitestrips have the same bleaching ingredient that the dental office version has. Not as strong, but WAY cheaper. We always recommend that a person buy the strips first, and just do the upper arch. Those are the teeth others generally see anyway, and it is easier to tell if the strips are working…you can look in the mirror, put your upper and lower teeth together and easily see if the bleach is working. I think there is a sort of color chart in the whitestrips kit, but we haven’t found that patients can really use it effectively. Heh…it is hard enough for dental proFESSIONALS to use those charts effectively, and we use them all the time.
If it IS working, you might want to invest in the dental office version. It isn’t as messy or as much of a pain-in-the-neck, you can almost always keep the same trays for your lifetime and just buy more bleach solution from your dentist when you want a “refresher.” (Which you will, eventually. This isn’t a one time deal.) The trays aren’t “custom fit” to the point that if your teeth move a little you won’t be able to use them. As, for instance, a night guard or retainer would be. If it DOESN’T work, you have only wasted $15.00 (on sale) or so…instead of the $300.00 the tray system will cost you.
We have had patients use the new Crest “Night Effects” bleach with really good results, but there have been no studies done as to the damage that might be done to your teeth…so at this point we are not recommending them. One patient who had excellent results with the “Night Effects” system also had “etched” teeth. This can be caused by other things as well, so my boss wasn’t sure it was the NE…but until studies have been done…I wouldn’t use it.
Oh, and if the bleach does work for you, keep in mind that if you lighten them TOO much, people will think that you either A) have dentures or B) have had all your teeth crowned. It is sort of like the difference between “you wearing the dress” or “the dress wearing you.” So don’t go to the extreme. You don’t want people to think “WOW!!! rostfrei bleached his (her?) teeth!” Instead, you want them to think…“WOW! rostfrei sure is looking good!”
Keep in mind that sometimes “Super White” teeth can be almost disturbing. A friend of mine had his done at the dentist’s, and they are whiter than printer paper. He has a big smile (which I guess is why he did it) and it usually freaks people out when they see it for the first time. It’s almost blinding.
It’s not like I hang out with a lot of yellow toothed slackers and the comparison is stark. The degree of whiteness that his teeth have does not occur naturally, much like pale girls with jet black hair. It stands out. Just a thought.
My dentist’s office fas a special- $150 bleaching if you had the trays made while you were doing impressions for a crown. Well, unfortunately, I had a root canal and now have to get a crown, but it meant that I got the discount, and since I’ve been feeling somewhat self consious about my teeth (I drink a lot of tea/diet coke, so they’re kind of off-white.) I thought I’d go for it.
I noticed a definite change after about a week of bleaching for about an hour each night (minus one, I think.). It’s not a fake, glow-in-the-dark white, but a natural white.
Question for you Scotticher. )I didn’t know you were a dental professional – good to know!
Regarding the tray method of bleaching. I was told “don’t swallow too much” while using the system. This made me paranoid about swallowing at all, so I only bleach when at home where I can find a sink or some place to spit as saliva builds up. I can taste the stuff that drips out of the trays while it’s doing its magic. Can I swallow normally or is the spitting a good idea? They weren’t really clear at the dentist’s office and I never asked them because I refuse to return for reasons unrelated to this thread. (Currently looking for a new dentist.)
Second question: One of my bottom teeth is visibly cracked. When I bleach, I can feel the solution seeping into the crack, which HURTS. Even if I put the solution everywhere in the tray but the location of that one tooth, it still seeps into that area. Should I have that tooth fixed? Don’t bother bleaching the bottom teeth? Bleach anyway if I can stand the pain, and don’t worry about it?
My real question is: What, exactly, is this bleaching stuff and how dangerous is it? ('Cause it’s not actual bleach, right? More like hydrogen peroxide? And if the latter is true, what’s the difference between the peroxide you use to bleach your teeth and the peroxide you can buy in the little brown bottle at the drugstore?
I’ve used the strips before, but like Dogzilla with the trays, a lot of saliva builds up because I try not to swallow. It tastes pretty nasty, but is it dangerous to swallow it? I’d only done about 5 days of the 14 before I got sick of having a mouth full of saliva for a half hour at a time.
My advice pales in comparison. (heh, heh, pun intended)
My dentist told me that it wasn’t worth the money to have him do a “professional” job. He says I can get just as good of results using the Crest White Strips. My dentist even uses the White Strips. He told me he’d gladly bleach my teeth and take my money, but he’d recommend not doing it. He claims that the in-office bleaching doesn’t last any longer than the do-it-yourself approach.
I did try the brush on stuff (is that the Night Effects?) and it was a waste of money. My dentist said he tried it too and agreed. I haven’t done the White Strips yet, but the rest of my family has (wife and twenty-somethings son and daughter) and their teeth look terrific.
You can swallow. First of all, if you are putting enough of the bleaching gel in the trays that you are tasting it a LOT, you are using too much of the stuff. Which isn’t a health hazard, but why waste it? It isn’t all that cheap. You should be putting a little blob of the stuff (about the size of a tiny pea) in the very bottom of the tooth shape and then pulling strips of it up the tooth front side of the tray with the syringe tip. (Don’t touch the tongue side, why bother? Who sees the tongue side of the tooth? If they told you to do both sides they were just wanting you to buy more gel from them…money hungry twits) then put the tray in and GENTLY tap the front of the tooth from the bottom up, toward the gum, to distribute it evenly. Don’t SMASH, use your little fingers to GENTLY tap.
You’ll still taste it, but the little that escapes shouldn’t taste STRONGLY. You know what I mean? It won’t hurt you to swallow your saliva. For heaven’s sake, do you think the makers of the bleaching gel want to get sued right and left? Honestly, sometimes people are postively MADE paranoid by “Doctor God” type dentists, who want you to think you don’t have the sense God gave you, so you have to view them as …oh, never mind me.
Well, I can’t really answer that. Is it a molar? For some reason I think it is. If so, why are you bothering to bleach it to begin with? We tell people to only bleach the teeth that will show, which usually means bicuspids forward. If it is not a molar, then the answer is that I don’t really know if it is actually dangerous. I guess my thought is that if it hurts, you shouldn’t do it. My doc is on a river rafting trip this weekend so I couldn’t ask him if bleaching gel could hurt a cracked tooth. I’ll get back to you next week with a better answer.
The truth is, people are mostly only going to see your top teeth anyway, unless you have an unusually wide smile. So until I have an answer for you, quit bleaching the lower teeth and just do the uppers. Which are probably the only ones that show, anyway.
Sheesh, you think I am a chemist, too? Well, I went all the way over to the office to check it out…no, don’t thank me, it’s okay, I had nothing better to do…I really don’t mind [sub]send chocolate[/sub] and unfortunately all I can say is that the stuff we sell is Carbamide Peroxide. I am sure that it is probably related to hydrogen peroxide, but not exactly the same thing. It also has a fluoride additive, which is to prevent sensitivity…which can happen for some people with bleaching. Also, the hydrogen peroxide you buy in the store wouldn’t stay on your teeth long enough to do any good, even if it COULD. It’s too liquid, just like water, and wouldn’t cling to the teeth. I don’t think it would work, though, anyway. I could be wrong, but I don’t think it is the same thing at all. Just in the same general family.
As far as the safety of dental bleaching, it is perfectly safe. The only side effect that I know of is tooth sensitivity, and that can be handled with fluoride gel or using the trays every other day. It never hurts to be using a fluoride toothpaste, which we recommend for everyone anyway. Rembrandt[sup]TM[/sup] has a good whitening toothpaste that you should be using along with the gel. There are others, too…Ultradent is the gel we are currently using, and they have a toothpaste to use along with the kit, but I do not know if it is available OTC.
And Algernon, the trays are much less of a pain-in-the-neck. So if the strips work for a person and they intend to keep doing it, it makes sense to do the tray system. Also, the dentist version is stronger so it doesn’t take as long to get the desired result. Particularly when you “refresh”, it takes MUCH less time to use the tray system.
I think I already said that it doesn’t last forever, but if I neglected to say so…it doesn’t. Everyone’s teeth react differently, and your consumption of tea, coffee, cigarettes, cola and so forth will make a difference as to how long it takes before you need to do it again.
Oh, and Dogzilla? If you are looking for a new dentist, there is a thread about it somewhere around here. I’ll try to find it and email it to you. It is never a good idea to ask your friends and family…some of the worst dentists I know of were so charming that they had huge referral practices. Their patients loved them until the guy retired and the patients found out they had had years and years of crummy dentistry. Then there are the dentists who are very charming and do unnecessary dentistry because they need a new car. Recently we had one of those…she was told she needed $15,000.00 worth of work…we did everything that needed to be done and her final bill was $3480.00. And my boss is anal-retentive, too…if he thought it needed to be done, you can be sure he would have DONE it. Anal-retentive isn’t always fun to work for, but it is a VERY good trait to have in your dentist.
Oh dear, I found the thread and discovered that I had missed a question someone asked of me. I answered it (regrettably late) and so bumped it. Therefore, instead of emailing it, here is the thread.
Commercial off-the-shelf products you can buy and use for yourself at home, nothing to do with the dentist, including ‘whitening’ toothpaste, special strips etc. For most people, most of the time, these are going to be as good as useless. Any improvement will be very slight, and only work on stains that weren’t so bad to begin with.
Less expensive dental option - make a mold, then you use this yourself at home with the bleaching agent, as directed. Costs a fair amount, but less than option 3. I tried this, and in my opinion it’s a waste of time and money. It’s a slow process; the novelty of doing it at home soon wears off; the bleaching agent can feel very uncomfortable if it spills over on to gums or if you deviate even slightly from the prescribed application (both being bound to happen eventually); results not all that noticeable. I paid quite a lot for this and was very disappointed.
More expensive dental option - one mega-expensive session where they do it all at once using strong bleaching agent and gel activated by UV light. I think this is the only worthwhile method. Yes, the bad news is that it costs more. But in the long-term I think option 2 is a false economy because it just doesn’t work very well. If you’re serious about getting this done, shell out the extra bucks (save up! take out a loan!), get it done properly, get it done all at once, and get it done by a pro who specialises in this sort of cosmetic work, has the right bits of paper in frames on their wall, and who can refer you to satisfied customers.
