A youthful smile is easy
One of the easiest ways to take years off your face is not necessarily through any kind of permanent or temporary facial aesthetics treatment. If you want to recapture some lost years, the least invasive way to do this is to get your teeth whitened.
Generally speaking, as we age our teeth lose their whiteness. This happens for a number of reasons.
Why the whiteness goes away
It’s partly to do with what we eat and drink. Tannins in tea, black coffee, red wines, and colas stain the teeth. You can see how staining the pigments in dark coloured berries, such as blackberries and blueberries, are when you eat them by looking at your fingers. Tobacco, it almost goes without saying, is terrible for teeth, turning them shades of yellow, grey, and dark brown over time. Sadly, some antibiotics also stain the teeth.
None of these issues are particularly age-related, but discoloured teeth can make you look older than you are. We rightly associate yellowing teeth with advancing years because years of brushing gradually wears away the outer layer of enamel and the yellower dentin below starts to show through.
Fortunately, teeth whitening works just as well on older teeth as it does on younger ones. The trick is to go for a whitening that isn’t so over the top that you swing from being yellow to being creepily white, like say, Johnny Depp’s Willy Wonka.
At Parbold Dental in Ormskirk, teeth whitening comes in 2 forms.
Power whitening
This is the fast way to get your teeth whitened. You come to us and we put protective barriers over your lips and gums before applying whitening gel to your teeth. A lamp activates the gel, which takes about an hour to bleach your teeth by several shades.
Home whitening
We fit you for whitening mouth trays, which you take home, along with some less concentrated gel. You put the gel in the trays and wear them overnight, or during the day for several hours, for about 2 weeks.
Neither method is permanent, but if you watch what you eat and brush carefully, you can maintain the whiteness for several months.