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Do Crest Whitestrips® really whiten your teeth?
Crest Whitestrips® were first
introduced in 2000 to answer the growing demand of the public for tooth
whitening products. They are designed to whiten your teeth without your
having to go to the dentist, and thus they are less expensive than
professionally supervised tooth whitening.
What are Crest Whitestrips® and how are they used?
Crest Whitestrips® are made from a thin plastic that has been coated on one
side with hydrogen peroxide
bleaching agent. With professional tooth whitening, a dentist will make a
tray that holds the whitener. Either way, your tooth is in contact with the
whitening agent for at least a half hour.
Crest Whitestrips® are positioned across the user's teeth and then
gently pressed into place so to insure maximum contact between the whitener
and the surface of each tooth that will receive treatment. Whitening strips
kits contain two different sizes of strips. Half of the kit's strips are
larger and are designed to fit across the user's upper teeth and the other
half are sized
to fit across their lower teeth.
How often and for how long are Crest Whitestrips® worn?
The manufacturer recommends that Crest Whitestrips® be worn for 30 minutes at
a time, twice daily. The number of strips contained in each whitening kit
varies depending on the concentration of the whitener that has been applied
to them. Strips that have been coated with a 6% hydrogen peroxide whitener are
intended to be used for 14 days, strips coated with 10% whitener, for 7
days. Of course you can use each type for as long as you want in order to
obtain your desired degree of whiteness.
How are Crest Whitestrips® different from professional tray teeth whitening systems? With
professional tray whiteners a
whitening gel is placed into a plastic bleaching tray that is worn for some hours per day or else
overnight. The tray whiteners cover more teeth, and the whitener is more
powerful and is in contact with the teeth for longer. but Crest Whitestrips® are less expensive. That's your trade-off.
Other information about over-the-counter teeth whiteners:
Important things to know before you begin teeth whitening
treatments. An
important ingredient in professional tooth whitening is the diagnosis and
the anticipation of possible problems. A dentist, especially an expert
cosmetic dentist, can help you know whether teeth whitening will work for
you and can identify problems that will cause it to not work or that will
give less-than-desirable results. So, before you begin teeth whitening, as
your dentist. If you decide to use Crest Whitestrips®, you can still begin
by having a regular checkup and asking your dentist if he or she thinks that
they will work for you.
Another factor to consider is that neither
Crest Whitestrips® nor any whitening system will whiten existing dental
work such as fillings, crowns, or bonding. So it's
important to determine where these items exist in a person's mouth and if
they will need to be replaced after the whitening process has been
completed. There can be a considerable time and expense involved,
therefore, after the whitening. |
