Yellow Teeth Treatment: How To Get Your Teeth White Again

Yellow teeth can be embarrassing. It can keep you from talking, smiling in a natural way, even from meeting new people. You may not even realize that you are over-compensating for the color and condition of your teeth, until one day you wake up, fed up with having to “work around” your discomfort with your own teeth. Fortunately, there are ways to whiten your teeth, depending upon the reasons why your teeth are yellow to begin with. (For more information about the causes of yellow teeth and ways to prevent them, see Yellow Teeth: Causes and Prevention.)

If your teeth are yellow because of poor dental hygiene, you can rejuvenate your brushing and flossing routine. Brush twice and day and floss thoroughly at least once a day. Try using an electric toothbrush, which brushes more vigorously than a handheld toothbrush (but don’t hurt yourself!). Avoid the things that may be causing your teeth to yellow, like drinking coffee and/or tea and smoking or chewing tobacco.

If your teeth can’t be whitened by the methods mentioned above, speak to your dentist about other options that he or she may provide in his or her office. If appropriate, your dentist may speak to you about whitening procedures that he or she offers as part of the practice. In-office whitening procedures are chemical whitening solutions. They are faster than an over-the-counter solution, which could take days or weeks to get results. They are, however, not cheap. Once your teeth have been cleaned and polished and a special lining placed on your gums to protect them, a whitening solution is placed on your teeth, either hydrogen peroxide or carbamide peroxide. This solution is left on your teeth for 30-60 minutes. Once your teeth have been whitened (or after the maximum allowed time for the solution to be on your teeth), they are rinsed with water.

Your dentist may recommend bonds or veneers, depending on the condition of your teeth and whether or not your dentist believes that a whitening procedure will or will not work for your particular situation. Bonding is a process by which a tooth-colored putty is applied to the surface of the tooth to fill a cavity, fix a crack, fix a chip or fix discolored teeth. The putty is placed on the surface of the tooth after the tooth has been prepared and an ultraviolet light or laser is than used to cure and harden the bonding material. This is often the cheapest and easiest procedure for fixing discolored teeth.

Veneers are thin shells, custom made to perfectly fit the outer surface of your tooth. The veneers are made of porcelain or a resin composite and are fit to the surface of your tooth with dental cement. Porcelain resists stains better and look more like the natural surface of your teeth than the resin composite, but the resin composite is thinner and therefore requires less removal of the surface of your tooth for fitting than the porcelain. You should speak to your dentist about all of these options and the pros and cons of each one before deciding on a plan of action to whiten your teeth.