Are you ready to get serious about whitening your teeth? The annual tooth whitening market in the United States is worth nearly $4 billion, and it’s only continuing to grow. A bright, white smile is at the source of so many individuals’ confidence and personality, and daytime talk shows are filled with guests who promise a bold, new solution for treating dental stains and discoloration. You could achieve the same look too, just opt to polish your teeth with the dentist in sarasota FL.

You don’t need to worry about getting tied up in the hype of some new whitening fad. That’s because the number of whitening methods that are actually proven to be effective is actually quite limited. FDA-approved ingredients for tooth bleaching mostly consist of variants of hydrogen peroxide.

Is Teeth Whitening Safe?

As long as you’re buying from a company that follows FDA regulations, absolutely. Fortunately, it isn’t easy to dodge the FDA. Not every tooth whitening kit that you find on your grocery store’s shelf will necessarily whiten your teeth to your satisfaction, but they can all be safely used by adults.

You can even swallow a little bit of the gel that’s used for teeth whitening and still be okay. With a few exceptions, teeth whitening is totally safe.

What Are Those Exceptions?

Remember how we said that teeth whitening chemicals are perfectly safe for adults? There’s a decent chance that they’re safe for infants and fetuses too, but little research has been done into the subject. But it’s important to remember that many teeth whitening kits are thick with chemicals, and babies absorb what passes through their mother’s bodies.

To make things as clear as possible, dentists recommend against teeth whitening while pregnant or breastfeeding. The lack of evidence for negative side effects doesn’t preclude the chance of negative side effects, and medical history is littered with seemingly innocuous chemicals that only proved their lethality years down the line.

How Do They Work?

The main component in a home tooth whitening kit is almost always a gel. Finding the formula for a whitening gel is a difficult task that requires a competent understanding of chemistry, but the results can be pretty magnificent.

Applying the gel, however, can often be quite messy. Some kit designers are better than others at creating reliable application methods. We’re particularly fond of the approach taken by Dr. Brite – wherein pens with gentle brushes are used to apply the gel to your teeth. If you see a syringe in a teeth whitening kit, there’s no need to have a panic attack. It’s just for refilling the pen.

Applying the gel is simply the first stage of the process. After that, a light is applied to the surface of your teeth and your gums that helps the peroxide or other bleaching ingredients really set in. UV lighting is commonly used and has been approved by the FDA, though at-home devices with genuine UV lighting tend to be pretty expensive.

LED lighting trays will be more sensible for individuals who want brighter teeth without having to break the bank. The actual effectiveness of many of these lights is an open question, so be sure to look up reviews before picking a new brand. You don’t need a shoddy kit to sour your whole impression of the teeth whitening process.

Are OTC Solutions Effective?

Don’t let the risk of falling for a cheap scam turn you away from the idea of whitening your teeth. While a professional visit with your dentist will offer the most thorough and brilliant whitening in most instances, there are circumstances where the at-home whitening market is actually catching up with the pros. Dr. Brite has shown results that are comparable to what you’d get with a $600 professional whitening.