Laser Tooth Bleaching - An Alternative To Whitening Strips

If you've been considering whitening strips for your teeth, you may also want to take a look at laser tooth bleaching as well. Does seeing your teeth in a mirror give you an unhappy picture? Or does the thought of having your picture taken make you cringe?

This happened to me last summer while looking at a series of pictures taken on my vacation. I’m sure the color of my teeth in the picture had something to do with the flash, and also my two decade long coffee habit, but I was still uncomfortable with how yellow they appeared to be in my mouth. I’d heard of laser bleaching, but I decided to try the whitening strips you can buy over the counter at the drug store first before doing anything drastic.

Well, after using the strips for a couple of weeks, I was not seeing any results, and my teeth still weren’t looking as white as I wanted them to, so I decided to call a local dentist to ask about laser bleaching. He told me that the laser bleaching process takes about one hour, and the action of the bleach is accelerated by the use of the laser. It didn’t seem so high tech to me after learning about it, and I tried to understand what could possibly be so complicated about it that it would cost hundreds of dollars to get the process done.

That’s when I realized that it is the laser itself, which most people don’t have access to at home, that makes the process so expensive. I reasoned that maybe it costs a lot of money to fire up a laser and point it at someone’s mouth for an hour. I don’t really know much about lasers, as you can probably guess.

I made my appointment and everything went well. It was as painless and easy as I’d expected, so there were no surprises in the laser bleaching process itself. What I didn’t anticipate was the after effect of expensive laser bleaching for my teeth, and that is I found myself unable to eat anything with color in it.

I started drinking only iced coffee and using a straw to protect my teeth. I started drinking white wine exclusively after learning that red wine would stain my teeth. I took things a bit too far when I found myself not even able to consider eating a cherry because of the potential stains it could leave on my teeth. And that’s when I realized that maybe I shouldn’t be so concerned about the color of my teeth. It’s not normal to have glowing white teeth in a world where there is so much you put in your mouth that can stain. I didn’t want to give up coffee or red wine or certain fruits and desserts with a high potential for staining.

I finally decided that I could get the laser bleaching once every couple of years and that should be enough to keep my teeth white without worrying about every drop of colored food I put into my mouth. If you've been wanting whiter teeth, I'd recommend looking into laser tooth bleaching as a great alternative to strips.