Teeth whitening is becoming more popular year on year, it pulls in major revenue for the companies that serve it and it’s hard not to enter a social media feed these days without being bombarded with some new advertisement for some new whitening product. But are these safe and how do you know which products you can or should be using on your teeth? 

There’s plenty of reasons for this but when we really break it down, it's because it’s been sold to us. It's just that we’ve been told time and time again through the media and content creators that anything other than white teeth is deemed unattractive. Yellow teeth are associated with smoking and poor dental hygiene and so we should all be trying to avoid it and sure to a degree this is true but it’s certainly not as bad as the media converge makes it out to be. It’s perfectly normal to have a little bit of discoloration and you shouldn’t feel ashamed or self-conscious about it. 

Of course, in some cases the only way you’ll move past this is if you do address the discolouration and that’s ok too. Your teeth, your body, your choice, as long as it’s an empowered choice by you then it’s a good one. There are heaps of whitening options out there and so it can be super tricky trying to navigate which way to go. As a general rule it’s always recommended that whitening is done by a professional and your dentist in London will have multiple whitening options available to you. The dentist in London will likely offer it at home or in chair whitening or even a combination of both depending on which look you are trying to achieve. The dentist will be using industry approved products that are reliable and safe. 

However, dental whitening comes with a price tag and we’re seeing more and more young people invest in these online trends and untested products in order to get their teeth super white. The main issue with this being we just don’t know if the products are safe and a lot of them appear to be using just poor bleach which will cause serious damage to the tooth's enamel. There are some great over the counter options and sometimes even just a good whitening toothpaste can do the trick in bringing back a little shine to the teeth! It’s seriously worth a try. 

One option that is greatly overlooked for whitening is a good old scale and polish with the hygienist. For some reason this is often neglected and not looked at but time and time again people leave a good clean comment on how clean and white their teeth are and in actual fact no whitening products have been used and you’ve actually invested in the health of your teeth through a good deep clean too! It's a double win. Could a simple scale and polish be worth a go first of all?