Whitening Toothpaste

Factual Questions
1

This has bugged me for ages…

I have a couple of crowns with a porcelin veneer, if I use a whitening toothpaste, will it also whiten the crowns?

2

I believe that in most whitening toothpastes, the whitening agent is peroxide. So if the crowns react “whiteningly” (huh…?) to the peroxide, they would whiten.

3

I was going to post a question about a similar subject. I’ve only seen the commercial for these things once and have yet to see them in a store, but has anyone out there tried teeth STRIPS that are suppossed to whitten teeth? I THINK its made by Arm & Hammer and they are clear plastic strips with God knows what on them and suppossidly clean and whitten below the enamel (sp?).

  1. Has anyone else seen or tried these things?

  2. Do they actually work?

Patty

4

I don’t think whitening toothpastes do anything. The best way to whiten your teeth I know of is to go to your dentist and have him/her make a plastic shield for your teeth in which you put peroxide drops and leave em in for half an hour or so every day for about ten days. Does a great job. There is also something similar in the grocery store (a peroxide whitening treatment - not toothpaste), but not sure if that works as well as the kind you get from your dentist.

5

Whitening toothpaste won’t whiten the veneer. When your veneer was made, the dentist had already decided what shade it needed to be in order to match the surrounding teeth; I don’t know of any way this shade can be altered while the veneer is still in your mouth.

If you’re talking about simple surface stains though, I think a baking soda toothpaste is all you need.

6

Jeep is correct. If you look at a dentist that advertises whitening service it clearly states whitening will only effect natural teeth.

I got 7 teeth broken and when the put the crowns in it took 3 years to get them in (I didn’t have insurance at first so it took a while to pay for them.

My crowns always matched when put in but now 3 years later the crown is still the original color but the teeth next to it aren’t. And because each crown was done later than the others none of the color really matches well.