I was thinking about whitening my teeth. I know not to use household bleach. A friend of mine tried that and it ended up a disaster. I recently read an article about people who use lemons to whiten their teeth. Lest I go the way of my friend with the bleach, is this a safe option?

Tara

Dear Tara,

For those reading who may not realize why you don’t use bleach to whiten your teeth, it is because bleach is a base, like lye, which is very corrosive. It can eat away at organic material. In fact, many dentists use it to do just that in cleaning out dead organic material in a root canal treatment.

As for the lemons, I don’t recommend that either. Lemons contain citric acid. What the citric acid will do is etch your teeth. While this can scrub off some surface stains, it also damages them. That damage makes them pick up stains much more easily, which will make them darker than when you first started.

There are over-the-counter whitening kits that work, like Crest Whitestrips, however they are much weaker. It will take a large number of kits to see any real difference. In the long run, that doesn’t save you much money. The safest and most cost effective way for you to whiten your teeth is using professional teeth whitening through your dentist.

You can get results much faster under the watchful eye of a dentist to ensure that nothing else goes wrong while you are getting the white smile you want. There have been cases of people needing a root canal treatment because of an over-the-counter treatment. That is the last thing you need when you are just trying to get a white smile.

This blog is brought to you by Phoenix Dentist Dr. Hillary Peck.