Whiter Teeth in Ashby De La Zouch

Tooth whitening options from an Ashby dental practice

At Alexandra Dental Care, we are seeing an increasing number of patients from outside of our immediate county borders. A number of them have complained about getting inadequate results from the use of tooth whitening toothpastes which are regularly advertised on TV. Understandably, many people try these as they offer a simple and cheap solution for whiter teeth; the reality though is that any effects are likely to be minimal as the amount of whitening ingredient used is restricted, for safety reasons, by law.

What we can offer our dental patients from Ashby De La Zouch and other nearby towns at our dental practice, is a range of treatments that are designed to dramatically improve the appearance of their teeth. Whilst some procedures  such as dental implants, are used predominantly to improve structure and performance, several do fall largely into the purely cosmetic area (although veneers do have a practical role to play as we will see).

There are currently three main procedures which we use to improve the whiteness of a patient’s teeth and they are:

Tooth Whitening

One of the most popular and well known cosmetic procedures, this offers patients a fast treatment that is straightforward and causes no discomfort. Simply by first of all protecting the gums and teeth from any potential burning that the gel may cause (this can be a problem with ‘at home’ whitening kits), we then apply a gel which is activated by the use of a special light. This is then left for around an hour during which time, the cells inside the teeth will become lighter in colour, thereby dramatically improving the whiteness of the teeth.

Dental Veneers

Dental veneers can be used, not only for improving the whiteness of a patient’s teeth, but also for closing gaps between them and covering chips and cracks too. In most cases though, they are used as an alternative to the tooth whitening procedure, mentioned above, when the patient’s teeth are simply too discoloured to benefit sufficiently from the whitening procedure.

In many cases this will occur, for example, with heavy smokers who have badly stained teeth. Excessive tea and coffee drinkers may also have this problem. To use dental veneers, it is first of all necessary to remove a fine layer from the front of the teeth after which impressions are taken.

These impressions are then used to produce dental veneers of the correct thickness and colour to match the patient’s teeth and are then fitted to the front of the teeth in a manner very similar to that of affixing false fingernails. These are then trimmed and polished to leave the patient with great looking new teeth.

White Coloured Fillings

Although a tooth whitening procedure and dental veneers are excellent in making a person’s teeth look great when they smile, they have no effect on those occasions when a person laughs and reveals dull grey fillings in their teeth. These amalgam fillings have been used for many years and are very strong and effective. It has to be said though, that they don’t necessarily look very good.

The good news is that we are now able to provide effective and strong tooth white coloured fillings for our Ashby patients which will, when added to any of the treatments needed above, leave them with an almost perfect looking set of teeth of which they can be justifiably proud.

For more information about any of these procedures, please call us on 01283 216347.

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