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Having a white smile has become one of the top accessories and so everyone is always on the hunt for new weird and wonderful ways to whiten their smiles. One of the most common forms of home whitening is the use of baking soda. So, is this a good way to whiten? Does it work? And most importantly could it be doing damage to our precious smiles? Let’s take a look with our dentist in Tunbridge Wells.
What is baking soda?
Baking soda is also known as sodium bicarbonate. It’s a type of salt which is easily available and staple in most homes. Usually it just looks like little crystals or a fine powder and is used in baking and cleaning. You’ll also find it’s commonly used in lots of dental products.
Whitening your teeth
There are two ways most commonly used to whiten teeth either through bleaching the teeth with peroxides or by using an abrasive to remove the stains. The baking soda would work like an abrasive which when rubbed against your teeth will help to remove stains.
Toothpastes with baking soda
If you’ve been looking at toothpastes with baking soda as an option then you’re in luck as there are lots of them on the market. We at Woodbury Park Dental know of lots of gentle and efficient teeth whitening toothpastes and if you speak with our dentist in Tunbridge Wells next time you see us we’ll be able to point you in the direction of some of the safe ones.
As the baking soda only removes stains from the surface level of the teeth and not the enamel it can be passable at removing light stains such as coffee and food, but you might not notice a big difference for four to six weeks.
Other whitening options
If you find that using toothpastes with sodium bicarbonate doesn’t give you the results you want then you could opt for another method. We at Woodbury Park Dental offer a fantastic range of tooth whitening which uses hydrogen or carbamide peroxide and whitens teeth to a professional standard. Teeth will lighten to different degrees depending on how much discolouration was there to begin with. The treatment will again last for a certain length of time depending on how well teeth are taken care of afterwards by the patient.
Preventing discolouration
Here are some tips from our dentist in Tunbridge Wells on avoiding having to whiten all the time.
If you want to keep your teeth looking white then where you can it’s best to avoid food and drinks with high levels of tannins. Examples of these include: berries, spices, tea, coffee, red wine and fruit juices. If you search online you’ll be able to find more examples of what to avoid.
Another less commonly known reason for gradual discolouration is that as we grow older we lose enamel density revealing the dentine layer underneath, this layer is far more yellow in colour. In order to protect the enamel we need to make sure we’re using the right amount of fluoride products and doing what we can to keep the enamel healthy.