Teeth Whitening
Shortly after Andrew proposed last fall, I decided that I wanted to whiten my teeth for the wedding. I thought I do a trial run, and bought myself a package of Crest Whitestrips.
The package warned that teeth might get a bit sensitive during the whitening, but that it was perfectly normal, and the teeth would return to normal after the treatments. By “sensitive”, I assumed they meant that I might feel some discomfort while eating hot or cold things, etc. The way the strips work is that you put them on your top and bottom teeth for 30 minutes twice a day. So, I did morning and night the first day, then morning on the second day. The entire second day my teeth ached. Not “sensitive” but active aching, all the time. I’ve never before been so aware of my teeth. I quit after that third application.
A few weeks ago, I thought I’d try again. I thought that I’d just been a wimp the last time arround, and surely I could tough my way through the entire treatment with a little discomfort. I applyed both treatments the first day back-to-back in the morning. By noon, I could feel my teeth throbbing. Needless to say, I realised that I had not been a wus the last time…my teeth just didn’t like the active ingredients in the Whitestrips.
I wasn’t ready to give up on whitening my teeth yet, though. I went to the drug store and looked through the active ingredients on all the whitening products, and found that the Crest Night Effects had a slightly different active ingredient.
The good news is that they did not irritate my teeth like the Whitestrips. And my upper teeth do look whiter. The bad news is that I couldn’t get the stuff to stick well to my lower teeth, so they didn’t benefit much from the treatment. To use Night Effects, you use a brush to paint a thin layer of the whitening agent onto your teeth. Before painting, you need to dry your teeth (there’s whole bunch of other rules, check AshfieldFamilyDental.com.au for more). As it turned out, I couldn’t get my bottom teeth dry enough for long enough to get the agent on my teeth. Sigh. At least I wasn’t overly aware of my teeth during the last two weeks…