Tooth Whiteners Could Harm Enamel

By Author: Dr. Victor Marchione
Total Articles: 90
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Tooth whiteners are all the rage these days. Stroll through the toothpaste aisle of your local pharmacy, and you’ll see dozens of products that you can buy for home use.

Supposedly, these tooth whiteners can help your pearly whites gleam, taking away stains and that slightly yellow enamel color that many of us have.

Tooth whiteners have been deemed safe for everyday use by the medical community, but a recent study says that they may not be good for your enamel.

According to a team of researchers at the Ohio State University College of Dentistry in Columbus, OH, teeth-bleaching products could reduce the surface hardness of your enamel and affect its ability to recover from normal wear and tear.

The research team exposed 50 human tooth samples to two types of whitening strips and three types of “night-guard” home bleaching kits.

They used a nanometer scale to measure the hardness and elasticity of tooth enamel both before and after laboratory exposures to over-the-counter teeth-bleaching solutions.

Study: Whiteners ...
... Soften Enamel
Some of the tooth samples underwent bleaching routines according to either the three-week or 10-day manufacturer-recommended treatment instructions.

The remaining tooth samples served as unbleached controls.

The researchers found that the bleached enamel showed significant decreases in hardness on the nanometer scale.

They also found that there was a significant decrease in enamel elasticity in most bleached-tooth samples compared with unbleached controls.
The research team hopes that the results of this trial will lead to more studies into the long-term effects of bleaching agents and the “re-mineralization” of tooth enamel.2

If you have been using whiteners, however, know that your teeth are pretty resilient.

Human enamel will actually heal itself and re-mineralize over time.

What this means is that enamel has the ability to replace the levels of surface calcium that have been lost due to bleaching.

This is true also when using fluoride treatments and toothpastes.
Are there any natural tooth whiteners that you can try? In Sweden, a common folk remedy for whitening teeth is to cut a strawberry in half and rub it against tooth enamel.

Or, you can crush some strawberries and let the paste remain on your teeth for a few minutes.

The “malic acid” in the berries will clean your teeth and gently remove stains.

Another natural whitening remedy that you can try is sage.

Take two tablespoons of dried sage leaves and crush them with two tablespoons of sea salt.

Place the mixture on a baking sheet and bake it for 30 minutes.

Allow the mixture to cool, then scoop some onto to your toothbrush and clean as normal.

Native Americans have used sage throughout history to clean and care for their teeth.

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