As promised I have taken some photos of my new, whiter smile. The whitening system that I used is one called “Enlighten” and is the one that I now use routinely for all of my patients, who want whiter teeth. The system involves a 2 week home whitening stage followed by a one hour in surgery stage that happens on the 15th day. (Tougher cases such as tetracycline staining and very heavy smoking stains can take 4 weeks of home whitening followed by the one hour surgery visit). I am delighted with smile, but now also clearly very alarmed at the size of my eyebrows!
The result that my teeth have shown is very typical of the results that we are seeing with our patients all of whom seem very happy with the treatment. In a recent entry I wrote about a reporter who was wondering whether she should take up an offer of free whitening that she had won in a raffle. She had been told that it was painful and could damage her teeth. The second part is definitely not true, there is no long term damage caused by whitening with carbemide peroxide gel. The first part, about it being painful relates to the sensitivity that most people experience. Speaking from my experiences I would say that the effects were very mild. If we took a 0-10 scale where 0 is no pain and 10 is the worst agony imaginable then I would say it was around a 1 or a 2 for a few days and then stopped.
This second photo is a close up of my smile with a shade tab in place to show the colour that they were 2 weeks ago. This shade is the commonest shade for adult teeth and represents the colour of teeth in 70% of the population. Clearly most people could expect to get this sort of result in 2 weeks if they chose to do so.
If you would like to know more about whitening then please call the surgery on 01580 752202 and one of the reception team will be happy to help you.
