Back to the lovely white teeth you once had
Remember how your teeth used to gleam? How they really were pearly white, when you were young? Those were the days, eh? Now, they’re dull and a bit yellowy grey and nothing like how they used to be back in the day.
But that’s getting old for you, isn’t it? Nothing you can do about it, is there? Well, yes there is. Your teeth may have aged and the colour may be a bit dimmer as the enamel has thinned from years of brushing, but a lot of the discolouration is, in fact, removable.
Here at The Old Windsor Dental Practice in Berkshire, we wish more older people would get their teeth whitened, and not just leave it to the young, who hardly need it anyway.
Your teeth are that colour through decades of having a nice cup of tea and a sit down. They are stained from drinking coffee. They lost their gleam because red wine is also a terrible tooth stainer. Then there are all the rich, tomatoey sauces, maybe even certain medications. All of the above have dark pigments that get trapped in the pores of tooth enamel. Tooth brushing doesn’t get rid of them. Even the hygienist won’t be able to able to shift them entirely.
But teeth whitening treatments can because they work differently. These gels contain hydrogen peroxide, which when placed on discoloured teeth gently lifts traces of pigment out of the tooth enamel.
How it works
When you come to us for whitening, we will start by making sure that the staining is the kind that whitening treatments will work on. If they aren’t, we may suggest having veneers instead.
If they are, the next step is to make you some gel trays by taking impressions of your teeth. Then we can either treat you in the clinic, which takes around an hour using a fairly powerful gel, or we can give you a take-home kit.
This one you do yourself, wearing the gel-filled trays for a short period every day. The gel is less concentrated, so treatment takes a couple of weeks.
Whitening is not permanent, so you will need to top it up every now and then.
