In order to maintain your teeth whitening results, it is important that you follow up with maintenance treatments. There’s really two products for maintenance. One is the customizable trays, which are made for you. And the second is a bleaching pen, which is really just like a lip gloss, with a little brush at the end, which you can paint over your teeth, really on a weekly basis to maintain the nice bright white smile. A good analogy for keeping or maintaining results would be, for example, like going to the car wash. If you’ve gone to the car wash, you know, you can get some dust in your car immediately thereafter, and you can easily take a rag at home and you can actually wipe the dust clean from the car. Same thing with your smile.

The outcome of a teeth whitening procedure really depends on the person’s enamel and dentin color. So really, whatever they’re born with, that’s where they’re gonna end up with. We cannot really make that tooth a lot lighter. So the intrinsic color, we say, of the tooth really matters in terms of the final result.

Some alternatives to teeth whitenings (although for sure you will not get the same results) could be whitening toothpaste that are on the counter or just simply putting some baking soda on your toothpaste and brushing your teeth. I’m not a big fan of whitening toothpaste because a lot of times they can cause sensitivity because of the abrasiveness of the toothpaste. So you’re better off just using regular baking soda a couple of times a week.

Other methods of whitening teeth are, for example, tooth whitening, dentifrices, or it could be baking soda. I’m not a big fan of toothpaste or a whitening toothpaste because it can cause a lot of sensitivity, especially if you use it twice a day. For example, baking soda could be actually very good to give you like a little pick-up of your beautiful bright smile. The easiest way to use baking soda to give you a brighter smile is just to simply take the baking soda powder and sprinkle it on your toothbrush together with toothpaste or it could be by itself. Research shows that tooth whitening is safe and doesn’t hurt the enamle, although it can cause some sensitivity – this is usually transient. Teeth whitening with the more modern advancement in this process is not painful at all. However, some of the older processes can actually cause sensitivity even while you’re in the dental chair. Ask your dentist a little bit more about what kind of system do they have? Is it laser teeth whitening or is it a different system? Because every system is so different and you might want to do some research yourself about that particular system that your dentist has.

The biggest problem with teeth whitening is that it causes sensitivity. And I remember even myself when I did the first treatment of teeth whitening several years ago, I had so much sensitivity the next day I couldn’t even breathe in air. So I was really looking even from a personal standpoint, as well as for my patients, for something that’s safer. Let’s talk about some of the treatments that are available over the counter. So we have different trays that actually are not meant (customized) for your mouth and we also have the white strips that some of you probably have tried. The biggest complaint I heard about the white strips is that it could cause some gingival or gum sloughing off, and the gums become really red – meaning you actually have a burning of the gum. Luckily, today we have a 20 minute tooth whitening treatment. It’s laser-based that causes zero sensitivity and we have very high success rate with that.

Nobody really needs tooth whitening. But really, when you’re looking at somebody’s smile, you automatically make some assumptions when their smile is nice, bright, and white. If somebody has a nice bright smile, we automatically think they’re healthy. If somebody has a yellow smile, you think they’re sick. So going for a job interview, going on a date, you know, that first impression really matters. Teeth whitening treatments are quite popular. We have people that come in here literally every week. Anyone is a candidate for tooth whitening. You know, it could be a teenager, it could be older adults, but you can get it once a year – it really depends on someone’s level of staining. Sometimes the enamel of the teeth can be more porous, so you can pick up stains faster, so you need to do more of a maintenance or sometimes, some people have a whitening one time and it can last for several years. It really depends on their diet.

Teeth whitening procedures are not covered by your insurance because there are deemed as cosmetic procedures. Usually teeth whitenings can be from $200 all the way to $600, depending on the treatment you are getting.

If you don’t like what you see in the mirror, I highly recommend that you try teeth whitening. Teeth whitening, especially in the dental office where we can really protect the gums. They’re safe. They can cause some sensitivity occasionally, depending on the system you’re using, but overall, you really can benefit from it – especially right before that job interview or right before that date.

All natural teeth can be whitened. However, if you already have some existing bonding or some veneers or crowns, those do not bleach properly. So what you will get is the natural teeth that will actually whiten and your old fillings that will not whiten. So we have to be very careful – you don’t want to end up with mismatched colors. Typically, enamel is not endangered when the whitening material is placed, but it really depends on the length of the time that the material is placed. Therefore, we’re going more towards shorter treatments – more like 20 to 30 minutes and not overnight treatments, or like an hour and a half treatments. So it really depends on the material and the length of the treatment that is left over the teeth.

My name is Dr. Sanda Moldovan. I’m a periodontist and a nutritionist. What a periodontist is, is really taking care of all the surrounding tooth structures, such as the gums, the bone, the sinuses. Beverly Hills Dental, Health, and Wellness is really a hub for overall health. So we really have dentists, specialists such as endodontists, periodontists, and biological dentists, as well as chiropractors and nutritionists to help with the overall wellness, such as periodontal disease, we treat a gingival inflammation, we treat the other gingival issues such as recession. So if you see the really long teeth, then you might need a gum graft. Also, people that have cosmetic issues such as gummy smiles. For gummy smiles, we use laser procedures to be able to reveal a beautiful smile and not see all those gums.