Should You Use Fruit For At Home Teeth Whitening?
People who seek to avoid using chemical tooth whiteners often advocate using a more natural method of lightening tooth color instead. Baking soda is probably the most commonly known suggestion for an effective at home teeth whitening method, but many people also advocate using certain fruits to serve the purpose. For example, some suggest using mashed strawberries to brush the teeth. Others swear by a mouthwash of lemon juice and salt, or even wiping citrus peels across the teeth. But do these natural fruit methods really do the job?
The most effective use of fruit for dental whitening appears, at first, to be provided by lemons, whether using the juice as a mouthwash or rubbing the peel directly on the teeth. Yet what the citric acid actually does is pull calcium out of the enamel. This makes the tooth appear whiter, for a while, because calcium is one of the things that adds a darker tinge to the color. But losing calcium eventually makes the enamel thinner, weakening the teeth. As an at home teeth whitening method, lemons look promising at first, but could produce devastating effects in the end.
Are strawberries any better as a natural teeth whitener? Not really. Its seeds are abrasive and can abrade and harm your teeth, plus the acid may have a similar effect to that in lemons. Indeed, the acid in strawberries actually softens the enamel. That is why it’s suggested that someone will want to wait twenty minutes after eating them before cleaning the teeth, to give the saliva an opportunity to restock the minerals in the enamel. Using actual strawberries to brush your teeth, particularly on a regular basis, might be not the ideal method of achieving whiter teeth.
There’s an irony involved in using at home teeth whitening methods that make tooth enamel thinner and weaker. For the most part, the yellowish color of teeth comes from the dentin inside, and the color shows through the enamel, which is translucent. So if that enamel gradually becomes thinner, this yellowish color will eventually become more prominent. A tooth whitener designed to remove yellow may ultimately make it more pronounced instead. It would seem that even though they sound healthier, using strawberries or lemons don’t serve the purpose of whitening teeth very well.
In fact, with the majority of the teeth’s color dependent on the dentin, it might not actually be feasible to whiten teeth much more than they naturally are. The more important task is to keep the teeth healthy, and a continuous application of either lemons or strawberries is not likely to accomplish that objective.
Teeth whitening products and treatments have become tremendously popular in recent years. More and more, people are realizing that a white smile is an easy way to look more attractive, and even younger! Find out what your alternatives are when it comes to teeth bleaching systems at the Teeth Bleaching site.
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