Want to Whiten Your Teeth the Best Way Ever? A dentist shows you how to get that virgin toilet bowl shine
Don’t flush your hard earned cashola!
Disclaimer: The information presented in this article is for educational purposes only and is NOT intended or implied as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment from your dentist, physician, or any other healthcare professional. You should NOT use the information presented here for diagnosing or treating any health problem or disease. Never disregard advice from your personal medical care provider(s) or delay contacting your dentist/other healthcare providers because of anything you read or heard here. Reading this article and/or utilizing any of the information presented in any way does NOT create a doctor-patient relationship between you and the article creator or with any of the healthcare professionals in any way affiliated with this article. You use this information at your own risk. You should contact your dentist/healthcare professionals before beginning any new treatment or practice to address a health problem or improve your health. The author is not responsible for information on external websites linked to from this article or for the information on external websites that link to this article.
If you maintain an interest in health care policy and politics, particularly the minutiae thereof, you may be aware of the 2015 Supreme Court ruling declaring it was unlawful for the dental board in North Carolina to bar non-dentists from offering tooth whitening services to patients. If you think that sentence I just wrote is boring and dumb, how about this one: The Supreme Court basically said that dentists were lying to patients and using the monopolistic privilege afforded them by their dental licenses to upcharge poor schmucks desperate for pretty white teeth. Was that sentence any more interesting, or do you still think I suck?
How about this hypothetical dialogue summary of the situation?
Dentists in North Carolina: “We go to school for years to learn everything about teeth. We’re the only ones qualified to take care of patients’ teeth.”
Patients: “I don’t care what you think you know about teeth. You charge way too much for me to have white teeth. I need white teeth so I can fit in with an American culture that has been brainwashed into thinking the only way any of us will ever be lovable is if we have white teeth. You’re all in cahoots with the fashion magazines and the celebrities to distort my self-image and steal all my hard-earned cash!”
Dentists in North Carolina, whispering among themselves: “Fiddlesticks…these average citizens are getting smarter. Someone call Vanity Fair and ask them to put Ryan Reynolds on the cover. That goofy-ass Canadian has a nice smile. Make sure one of the blurb quotes on the cover talks about how much he loves his dentist. We gotta nip this in the bud before our business model falls apart!”
The U.S. Supreme Court: “Too late. We agree with these average citizen shmucks with their coffee, wine, and tea stains. You filthy dentists have had it good for too long, and we’re coming to take you down a peg. We went to law school, and we don’t get to make all the laws. Why should we let you dentists do all the tooth stuff, hmm? There are robot lawyers online now. Ever heard of LegalZoom.com? We gotta deal with that crap!¹ So now you gotta deal with this whitening liberation movement ya tooth punks!”
Patients: “Huzzah! Now I will order my blue light whitener thingy off of Instagram!”
Dentists: “Bah humbug! That’s it. I quit. I’m not gonna do this dentisting thing anymore. I’m sick of it. I’m going to write articles and make videos online instead.”
Ok, so now you know my origin story. Welcome to my online play place. Today’s lesson: How to whiten your teeth in the new unhinged free market of online teeth whitening. As a certified dentist man,² I’m here to offer you the inside scoop on all things whitening. Why would I do that? Because if I don’t, you’re going to fall victim to some sexy young thang hocking blue light “whiteners” on Instagram. Those blue lights don’t do anything. It’s a scam. I’ll teach you how to whiten your teeth properly below. Or you can watch this video.
And look, I don’t have anything against sexy young thangs. We all work with the variety of talents we have. If I looked that good with a blue light in my mouth, I wouldn’t be wasting my time trying to convince any of you with words on this screen right now. Many times I’ve been scrolling through Instagram and been distracted by that blue light glow in some beautiful internet lady’s mouth. I’ve watched her dance around with it knowing full well it is a completely useless device. Her teeth will not be changed even a fraction of a shade by that contraption. That’s not the point.
Advertising works because she’s sexier than me. I don’t have a sexy message for you. I’m sorry. I wish I did. The painful biological and social reality is that I’m much more likely to get #metoo canceled for sliding into one of those blue light girls DM’s than I am to convince you of the proper way to whiten your teeth by jiggling my booty in front of my camera. Perhaps one day, I will perfect my booty jiggle, but until then, I’m going to have to rely on my goofy-ass sense of humor.³
“I need white teeth so I can fit in with an American culture that has been brainwashed into thinking the only way any of us will ever be lovable is if we have white teeth. You’re all in cahoots with the fashion magazines and the celebrities to distort my self-image and steal all my hard-earned cash!”
Please don’t cancel me. I’m too young. I’ve got my whole life ahead of me. But also go ahead cancel me if you want to. I don’t care. I kind of wonder what life is like among the canceled, the modern lepers we have cast out of society. Maybe if I become a leper, I’ll have a chance to hang out with JC? He was fond of that, right? Leprosy, blindness, that kinda thing? What was I saying?
Enough already. The point is you now can whiten your teeth on your own without being required to buy the goods off of a licensed dentist. I’m going to teach you how to do that effectively without hurting yourself or wasting your money.
The #1 Bestest Way to Whiten Your Teeth In the Whole Wide World, Fully Explained⁴
1. Whitening Your Teeth Doesn’t Mean They Are Healthy
Your teeth can look the bomb.com in terms of being bright and white, but that doesn’t mean they are healthy. Therefore, let it clearly be stated: I strongly advise seeing a dentist to make sure you have a clean bill of health before whitening your teeth. You don’t have to see me. In fact, I would prefer you don’t see me. I can kinda already tell that I don’t like you. You probably smell weird.
There are lots of other better dentists besides me that you can go see, though. I’d recommend you check in with someone legit to make sure you don’t have any problems with your teeth and gums, but because this is America, you’re still free to do whatever you want. Yeehaw! Also, I fully realize that lots of people can’t afford to see a dentist, which sucks, so I’m doing my best to help you out if you’re in that ‘sitch.
Be aware:
Whitening will not change the color of crowns, veneers, or fillings. If you’ve had previous dental work and you whiten your teeth, all of a sudden, that other dental work may appear more noticeably different from your natural teeth.
If you have cavities on your teeth or stained fillings, whitening isn’t going to fix that.
Once you get the go-ahead from a licensed expert, whiten away.
2. You Should Use Custom Bleaching Trays for Ideal Results
I know I just told you that you don’t have to see a dentist to whiten your teeth. That is true. There are ways to deliver bleaching gel to your teeth without custom trays. I just don’t think any of them work as well as custom trays.
You can buy whitening strips. There are products that you paint onto your teeth. You can buy trays that are generically sized. None of these have the same comfort and convenience of custom whitening trays made to fit your teeth. Also, over the long term, all of those products will cost you as much, or honestly, more than just getting a set of custom trays and then buying the whitening gel off Amazon.
Depending on where you live, the trays will probably run you around $50–100.⁵ Yes, that’s an upfront expense, but you can use them for the rest of your life if you take care of them and take care of your teeth. Then all you have to do is get the gel refills occasionally.
The alternative is to keep buying uncomfortable strips that cost more over the long term and don’t work as well. Trays made from molds of your own teeth will fit better, minimizing the amount of gel you need to use and preventing more gel from getting onto and irritating your gums.
Again, you don’t have to see me to get a set of custom trays made (Remember, I don’t like you. Why would I want to see your ugly face?), but I would recommend seeing a dentist to do so. Preferably a dentist who doesn’t pre-emptively hate your personality (and your face).⁶
Your teeth can look the bomb.com in terms of being bright and white, but that doesn’t mean they are healthy. Therefore, let it clearly be stated: I strongly advise seeing a dentist to make sure you have a clean bill of health before whitening your teeth. You don’t have to see me. In fact, I would prefer you don’t see me. I can kinda already tell that I don’t like you. You probably smell weird.
I’m so happy, both inside and out! Must be my teeth!
3. What About Whitening Toothpastes?
“Whitening” toothpastes only remove surface stains. They do not bleach the teeth. They do not change the actual color of the tooth underneath the stain. They polish the surface. If you scrub too hard with whitening toothpastes, you can damage your teeth and gums.
Gel whitening treatments can be effective on both extrinsic (surface) and intrinsic (internal) staining. Gel also won’t hurt your teeth or gums in an irreversible fashion the way a whitening toothpaste sometimes can.
Would I recommend using a whitening toothpaste? No. Not really. If you want to read everything I think about toothpaste, click here. If you want to see and hear everything I have to gesticulate and blather about toothpaste, click here.
4. What Type of Gel Should You Use?
Carbamide peroxide. That’s the active ingredient you’re looking for. Carbamide peroxide.
I typically use a gel that ranges from 16–22% carbamide peroxide. Make sure the syringes you buy have a thin tip you can use with them so that you don’t waste gel dispensing excessive amounts into the tray (the rule with both toothpaste and whitening gel is that a little goes a long way).
You only need a little bit of gel for each nightly treatment — a little drop on the inside front surface of your tray will do the trick. If you need a demo, you can watch this video.
You should watch the gel spread over the front surface of your teeth as you insert the tray. Excess that gets up onto the gums should be wiped away with tissue paper.
The gel is active on average for a total of about 4 hours. I usually just wear my trays at night; that way, you don’t have to even think about the timing. If you wear them during the day, that’s all you think about. “The timing! The timing! The blasted timing! How much more timing do I have to wear these accursed trays?” Just wear them at night. Timing anxiety is for the birds.
Carbamide peroxide decomposes over the course of those 4 hours to hydrogen peroxide and urea (you may have questioned my clean white toilet bowl analogy in the subtitle of this article — that’s starting to make a little more sense now, huh?). Hydrogen peroxide whitens your teeth. Urea is just along for the ride. You now have a weird new fetish. Congratulations.
The other reason to whiten at night is that there is less salivary flow (less spittle in your mouth) at night, which means less dilution of the whitening gel, which means faster results (At least theoretically. I don’t have a study to cite for you on that one.).
There are also hydrogen peroxide whitening products available at higher concentrations. That will speed up the whitening process, but you’re also increasing your risk of sensitivity. If you already have sensitivity with your teeth, I would say stick with carbamide peroxide products at lower to mid-range concentrations.
You don’t want to swallow a large amount of bleaching gel. Most things you get from the dentist, don’t swallow them. You’d think I shouldn’t have to explain that, but then I remember that there are teenagers out there eating Tide Pods, and I become reasonably cautious.
5. How To Use The Gel
Refrigerate the syringes of gel. It can keep for about 2 years stored in the fridge. Don’t put it in the freezer. Don’t pour orange juice on it. Don’t put it in your cat’s litterbox. Just keep it in the fridge.
Brush and floss before you use your whitening trays. You want to be working with squeaky clean teeth. The last thing you want to do is trap food debris underneath your trays with dental plaque all night long. Welcome to cavity city. If you’re trying to avoid the big dumb fart-faced dentists like me, you do not want to take a trip to cavity city.
If you don’t know how to brush and floss well, check out this video here and that video there. Did you watch the videos? Consider yourself edjumacated and on the train to healthy tooth town.
Dispense a small drop of bleaching gel on the interior surface of your whitening trays on the teeth you want to whiten. I don’t bother whitening my back teeth, but who knows, maybe those are the important ones for you. You do what ya gotta do, champ.
If excess whitening gel gets pushed up onto your gums when you insert the trays, wipe it off your gums using tissue paper. Use less gel the next time.
Just like toothpaste, you don’t want to swallow a large amount of bleaching gel. Most things you get from the dentist, don’t swallow them. We don’t give you things to eat or drink for the most part. You’d think I shouldn’t have to explain that, but then I remember that there are teenagers out there eating Tide Pods, and I become reasonably cautious. Don’t eat toothpaste, whitening gel, or Tide Pods. If you can manage that, you’ll probably do alright in life. Try to avoid getting hit by large buses also. Then again, you do what ya gotta do champ. I’m not tryin’ to hold anyone down. Fulfill your destiny, whatever it may be.
6. Dealing With Side Effects
It’s pretty hard to hurt yourself by whitening your teeth. Don’t get me wrong: you absolutely could do it. People have injured themselves with more benign substances before. I’m not ruling out the human capacity for innovation when it comes to inflicting unintentional self-harm. I’ve seen America’s Funniest Home Videos. I’ve ridden my bike into a parked car. I’ve concussed myself by slipping on a soccer ball. I know how dumb we can be.
That being said, unless you’re a particularly adept innovator, the only real harm you can cause yourself with whitening gel is that you can develop cold sensitivity with your teeth, and you can irritate your gums.
To prevent sensitivity, start using a sensitivity-reducing toothpaste 2–3 weeks before you start whitening your teeth. Look for the active ingredient potassium nitrate or stannous fluoride. You can read all about toothpaste here. You can also put a little bit of the anti-sensitivity toothpaste in your custom whitening trays and wear them for 30 minutes during the day—another reason to get custom whitening trays that fit your teeth well.
If you still develop sensitivity despite those precautions, discontinue use of the whitening gel for a couple of days and then start whitening again, but instead of wearing the trays at night, you can wear them during the day for shorter periods of time. Start with 30 minutes to an hour and work your way up from there if you’re not getting the results you want after a week or two.
Ibuprofen can also help reduce sensitivity with your teeth during the whitening process. You can take 400 mg (that’s two of the 200 mg over-the-counter ibuprofen tablets) every 6 hours as needed for your sensitivity. Make sure you read the ibuprofen safety precautions for use before taking this medication.
To avoid irritating your gums, wipe excess gel off the gums with tissue paper. Another reason to avoid whitening adhesive strips: they are harder to conform to your teeth and avoid your gums. If you fail to remove the gel from your gums, you may notice a localized “burn” or reaction to the hydrogen peroxide. This may be a little uncomfortable but typically won’t cause any serious harm. Unless you consider being a little uncomfortable to be being seriously harmed, in which case, I guess it would cause serious harm. Pain is relative. Sorry. Either way, wait until the area heals before continuing with any whitening. Unless you enjoy pain. Then, I guess, keep on going? Weirdo.
How old do you need to be to whiten your teeth? A safe bet would be to wait until age 14. Have a younger kid complaining about not being able to whiten his or her teeth? Join me in fighting all the teen magazines and Instagram influencers teaching children that they need to use cosmetic products to change their bodies. In my opinion, it’s only us adults who the media should manipulate into having debilitating body dysmorphia. Who’s with me?
Also, there is a general recommendation to avoid whitening your teeth while pregnant because the topic has not been thoroughly studied. Are we sure there are any negative side effects to doing so? Nope. We just tend to be overly cautious when babies are involved.
7. What Kind of Results Can You Expect
How much can whitening your teeth improve your smile? Technically, that’s a cultural opinion. In America, we tend to think it’s pretty helpful.
Whitening your teeth will not:
Change the shape of your teeth
Change the position of your teeth
Change the position of your gum tissue
Change the color of any dental restorations (fillings, crowns, veneers)
Fix any of your cavities
Whitening can:
Remove surface stains from your teeth (coffee, tea, wine, tobacco)
Lighten the shade of your teeth overall to be a brighter/purer white as opposed to a yellowish hue
You should keep in mind that most people’s teeth do have a hint of a yellowish hue. This is natural. It isn’t a natural look to have a uniform porcelain toilet bowl white color to your teeth. That’s why sometimes you can tell patients’ teeth look “fake” when they get veneers. If you’re smart, you’ll listen to a dentist when she or he (preferably she because, generally, women have better color perception than men) tells you that you don’t want the brightest, whitest teeth. You want your teeth to have a subtle gradient of color. Teeth are most translucent and brightest at the tooth's bottom edge and become gradually slightly more opaque and yellow moving toward the gum line. That’s a natural, healthy look.
Most people need 2–4 weeks to see results. Occasionally, bleaching may need to be combined with abrasion techniques or bonded restorations to address stubborn areas that are too bright white (this is often a result of fluorosis or “white spot lesions” from having braces).
Whitening of nicotine-stained teeth may take 1–3 months.
If you, or your momma when she was pregnant with you, ever took certain antibiotics such as tetracycline, you may have tetracycline-stained teeth. These are a son of a bee to try to whiten. It can take anywhere from 3 to 15 months (depending on severity) of continuous whitening treatment to see results with tetracycline stained teeth. That’s a marathon, and you have to stick with it diligently. You’re going to want to follow the sensitivity protocols outlined above.
When you bleach tetracycline-stained teeth, you often won’t see ANY change for the first month or two, and then the teeth will start to lighten. Stick with the process. With tetracycline staining, you should continue whitening for a full month after you cease to see additional changes in the shade of your teeth.
Dark gray or blue stains are the hardest to lighten. Yellow and brown stains are easier.
Even if you get a significant shade change with tetracycline staining, you may still be interested in having veneers placed to change the appearance of your teeth further. It is still smart to try to whiten the teeth first because this will make it easier to achieve an ideal tooth shade with your veneers.
8. What if You’re Not Happy With Your Whitening Results?
Pro tip: In order to show yourself how drastic a difference whitening is making for the color of your teeth, consider whitening only the top teeth first. Then you have a point of reference to see how much things change compared to the bottom teeth. I see many patients who don’t think their teeth have changed color at all when they come back to the office, but then you look at pictures of where they started, and it’s a big difference. You may not notice it as readily because the change is gradual.
Harder situations to get good results with whitening:
Grayish teeth
Bluish teeth
Spottled/mottled/multi-shaded teeth
Teeth with white spots (from fluorosis or white spot lesions from cavities starting while in braces)
Teeth with discoloration toward the gumline of the tooth
Easier situations to get good results with whitening:
Yellowish teeth
Brownish teeth
Even-toned/monochromatic/uniformly shaded teeth
Teeth with discoloration toward the bottom edge/biting surface of the teeth
If you’re not happy with the final shade of your teeth after you whiten them, you can talk to an evil knievel dental person about veneer options to improve the appearance of your teeth to your liking. Veneers today can be completed in both porcelain and composite filling material. Porcelain is more durable and often gives the ideal final result. Composite filling material is not quite as pretty or durable, but it can still offer significant improvements depending on the situation. White composite is also less expensive.
If you do decide to have additional cosmetic dental treatment after whitening, you should wait at least 2–3 weeks before doing so. The hydrogen peroxide activity from whitening can mess with the bonding process of composite materials so that they don’t adhere to the teeth as strongly. It is also smart to wait a bit after you finish whitening because your teeth' shade will peak during whitening and settle to a shade that isn’t quite as white after you finish active tray use. That’s the shade you want to match for any new dental restorations.
You should keep in mind that most people’s teeth do have a hint of a yellowish hue. This is natural. It isn’t a natural look to have a uniform porcelain toilet bowl white color to your teeth. That’s why sometimes you can tell patients’ teeth look “fake” when they get veneers. If you’re smart, you’ll listen to a dentist when she or he (preferably she because, generally, women have better color perception than men) tells you that you don’t want the brightest, whitest teeth. You want your teeth to have a subtle gradient of color. Teeth are most translucent and brightest at the tooth’s bottom edge and become gradually slightly more opaque and yellow moving toward the gum line. That’s a natural, healthy look.
Summary:
See a dentist for at least one visit to make sure you don’t have other problems before you whiten your teeth
Use custom made bleaching trays for ideal results
Whitening toothpaste ain’t that great
Use carbamide peroxide gel to whiten your teeth. You can order it off Amazon
Refrigerate the gel. Use a small amount. Wipe excess off your gums with tissue paper
Use an anti-sensitivity toothpaste with either potassium nitrate or stannous fluoride as the active ingredient
If you don’t get the results you want, be brave and see a dentist in person about additional options
Hopefully, this was helpful. Hopefully, I didn’t scar you for life.
Thanks for reading.
Mood.
Footnotes:
¹ What we mean to say is, there has to be wiggle room for free market innovations.
² Or woman. Well, I suppose I’m not actually a woman, but you’re sexist for thinking that I couldn’t have been! There’s a lot of female dentists that are way better dentists than I am. There’s also a lot of female writers that are a lot better at writing than I am. Who’s to say one of them couldn’t be using a male pen name and a fake profile pic to catfish your ignorant butt right this very moment? This is the internet. Anything is possible. Trust no one. Believe nothing.
³ See, I’m trying to learn something from Ryan Reynolds. He’s much closer to being able to pull off a booty jiggle than I am, but even from his position, I think that would be a move with the potential to derail his career. Reality is a cruel and bitter mistress. Why can we not all just be free to booty jiggle? You can if you have the confidence, but if you have my booty, it takes an Elton John level of confidence to move it around for the world to see online. I may have an Elton John level of confidence in some of my skills. I do not have an Elton John level of confidence in my booty.
⁴ As endorsed by Kim Jong-un, Donald Trump, and Katy Perry.
⁵ Don’t quote me on this. I can’t speak to the cost structure in every dental practice across the country. I’m ballparking. A quick search on Amazon shows me you can get whitening adhesive strips for anywhere from $30 to $150. Most of those products only last a week or two. If you buy a batch of the gel and use custom trays, you can make that last more like a year or two if you use it properly/depending on your needs.
⁶ If you don’t like that, I keep telling you I hate you even though I’ve never met you and don’t know you at all, get over it. People tell me the same thing every day. It used to bug me too. Now, it’s just become my natural way of greeting people too. If ya can’t beat ’em, join ’em. By the way: I hate your face.