Many people are interested in teeth whitening. Having a bright and shiny sparkling smile is something that a lot of people prize very highly. The people who are interested in less tooth coloration are going to want to look at their options in order to decide whether whitening is better than bleaching, or even if there is a difference between the two. Bleaching and whitening are indeed different, and people who are considering both of them should evaluate the positives and negatives associated with both options.
Teeth Bleaching
The products that are used to bleach teeth will have active ingredients that will bleach the teeth. Bleaching products will make the teeth artificially white using artificial ingredients. Bleaching products will usually contain ingredients like hydrogen peroxide or carbamide peroxide, ingredients which are also found in hair bleach. Carbamide peroxide breaks down into urea and hydrogen peroxide in the presence of the chemical environment of someone’s mouth. Hydrogen peroxide is going to be what bleaches the teeth in both cases.
Lots of toothpaste and mouthwash products will contain bleaching ingredients today. In fact, the toothpaste products that promise to offer people tooth whitening in the first place will usually contain active ingredients that are used to bleach the teeth. Calling them whitening products instead of bleaching products is a marketing decision. Lots of people don’t like the sound of tooth bleaching due to fears about toxicity, or just because the images don’t sit well with them.
Teeth Whitening
Whitening products are basically cleaning products. They get teeth back to their natural color, but they don’t add artificial coloration to teeth in order to make them appear whiter. The idea is that teeth that are not white are not white because they have accumulated damage over the years, which is indeed the case a lot of the time. However, the teeth whitening products can help people reverse that damage.
Often times, the people who have gone in for whitening treatments are going to have slightly darker smiles than the people who have gone in for bleaching treatments. Teeth are not naturally perfectly white. Teeth are slightly tinted, and whitening products are usually going to make teeth look as if they are slightly tinted in accordance with their natural appearance. However, many people are interested in a natural look.
When people are trying to distinguish between the two processes, possibly because the marketers have deliberately caused confusion in this regard, they should think about what is actually going on during the process. They should also look at the final results associated with the tooth discoloration treatments.
However, both treatments will rarely produce permanent results for anyone. Treating tooth discoloration is an ongoing process, whether people use tooth whitening or tooth bleaching in order to achieve it.