by James Abbott

Created on: February 19, 2009

Tooth bleaching is a necessary means of achieving the smile you want. Teeth can become discoloured for a number of reasons: diet can have an effect as tea, coffee and red wine can all stain the teeth as well as any foods with strong colourings to them. Smokers are also more likely to exhibit discoloured teeth. Teeth will also become darker with age and this darkening can be hastened with the onset of tooth decay and as result of any physical trauma to the teeth. In addition to these factors there are also cases of tooth discolouration as a side effect to certain medications - certain antibiotics provided to children who still have their baby teeth find that their adult, permanent teeth may grow throw with a greenish tinge to them.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /

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There are a number of solutions to the problem of discoloured teeth, but invariably tooth whitening or bleaching is the most common choice. Before any course of tooth whitening can be undertaken you should seriously assess your own dental hygiene and diet. If you are the sort of person who smokes 30 a day, drinks cup after cup of java and finishes of an evening with a few glasses of Merlot then you should perhaps rethink tooth whitening. It isn't a quick fix. You should cut down on these aspects of your lifestyle and employ a tooth whitening toothpaste in addition to any tooth bleaching or whitening programme.

If cost is a serious stumbling block for you then perhaps you should consider using and over-the-counter kit from a pharmacy. These kits contain plastic trays that you fill with a very dilute hydrogen peroxide (bleach) solution. The trays are a rough approximation of the shape of your teeth and with the bleach in the tray are worn over the teeth for roughly 30 minutes at a time. The weak bleach in these kits is really only effective at removing only those stains that are slightly more than superficial.

Professional tooth bleaching provides amore effective means of altering your tooth shade. Professional practices offer two different methods of tooth bleaching. They are 'Internal' and 'External' tooth bleaching.

External tooth bleaching is applied to the outside of the teeth in a similar manner to the over-the-counter tooth bleaching kits mentioned earlier. Three further categories of 'External' bleaching are available to you. Home bleaching - in which you take a set of custom made, fit to your teeth alone, vinyl trays into which you load a set amount

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