If you’ve ever tried whitening your teeth you might have come away from the experience skeptically. A lot of the patients we see at Anderson Dental Care think teeth whitening is just a shot in the dark but it really isn’t! You’d be amazed what professional teeth whitening can do – it’s the over-the-counter kits that are the real problem!
We’re proud to offer professional teeth whitening services at our Cincinnati dentist office. To help you understand the big differences between professional whitening and commercial kits we’re going to cover some of the most common problems with teeth whitening solutions. We hope we can help you understand how successful professional whitening can be!
What’s The Active Ingredient?
Take a trip to the drugstore and you might notice a wide variety of products available. Many of them have different active ingredients but teeth whitening should really only have one thing in it: hydrogen peroxide. Sure, there are alternatives out there with varying levels of success but only hydrogen peroxide is really going to deliver the results you want.
Many over-the-counter whitening kits feature carbamide peroxide. This peroxide product is more stable than hydrogen peroxide, which is why many over-the-counter kits prefer it. There’s one big problem with it though: it will never be as strong as hydrogen peroxide!
Whitening gels are designed to break down in your mouth. Hydrogen peroxide breaks down into water and oxygen, which scrubs away stains. Carbamide peroxide first has to break down into hydrogen peroxide and urea, adding an extra step and leaving you with less hydrogen peroxide, and therefore less effectiveness.
The products we use at Anderson Dental Care don’t just use hydrogen peroxide. We use professional strength products you can’t find at the store. We give you tried and true products that work, and that are more effective because of the professional strength we are able to prescribe. The results are incomparable!
One Size Fits All?
The most common and reliable ways to whiten your teeth is with hydrogen peroxide gel and a set of trays that fit in your mouth to spread the gel around. Commercial kits usually contain these exact ingredients but with a serious oversight: they’re meant to fit anyone who buys the kit!
Hydrogen peroxide is sensitive. We want it to break down in your mouth but there is one big problem: your saliva neutralizes it almost instantly! Any saliva that makes its way into your whitening trays can completely kill the process, leaving you with spotty results and uneven whitening, if any at all!
We eliminate this problem by custom building your whitening trays. Not only do the trays we offer at Anderson Dental Care fit your teeth to provide an even distribution of whitening gel, they also completely seal out saliva. Custom whitening trays are a standard in the professional whitening world – just another way we eliminate the risks and uncertainty of commercial teeth whitening!
Gimmicks, Gimmicks Everywhere!
There are plenty of whitening gimmicks available. One of the most common to take the commercial whitening industry by storm are LED whitening lights. These lights are supposed to maximize the whitening effect of your gel, and in principle they can work – just not in the form of the lights you get in your average whitening kit.
Professional light whitening sets use specially tuned ultraviolet light to duplicate the effects that the sun has on hydrogen peroxide. Think of the bottle in your medicine cabinet: it’s opaque because sun causes a breakdown in hydrogen peroxide. By using specially-tuned whitening lights we can accelerate the speed of teeth whitening. These lights are expensive, power-hungry, and often quite large because of how strong they need to be. A small battery powered unit can’t duplicate that effect!
We choose not to use lights because of their history of being inconsistent. Our whitening products contain what we know works: custom-built trays and strong hydrogen peroxide gel.
Get A Whiter Smile With Us
Whitening your teeth can go two ways: unreliable guesswork or an easily successful visit to our Cincinnati dentist office. We’re confident you’ll be amazed at the results we can get you with our custom take home whitening kits.
To start the whitening process call Anderson Dental Care today at (513) 817-0763 or request an appointment by filling out our online form. We’ll see you soon!