Teeth whitening is a great way to make your smile look youthful and healthy, especially when you keep your results in tip-top condition. At Harwood Dental Care in Bolton, we want beautiful teeth and beautiful smiles for all! This is why we think it’s important that you’re aware of everything and anything that can impact your results. Teeth whitening results are effective and long-lasting… as long as you look after them properly.

Avoiding staining in your diet

Acidic citrus fruits like oranges, lemons, and limes develop staining on your teeth that will taint your teeth whitening results. These fruits may be healthy for the body, but their high acid concentration can have detrimental effects on our teeth’s whiteness and could even erode some of our protective enamel. They erode this protective barrier to reveal the naturally yellow dentin beneath the tooth’s surface, resulting in smiles that are tinged brownish and dull.

Tea and coffee, the nation’s favourite drinks to wake up to, can be detrimental to your teeth whitening results. This is because they contain tannins, a brownish substance found in fruit skins. This means that the stronger you have your caffeinated drinks, the more concentrated these highly pigmented tannins are. Tea and coffee contain these pigments that latch onto our enamel, browning and dulling our smile’s shine. Cut back on your drinks or dilute them a little more to save your teeth whitening results!

Red and white wine also contain these damaging tannins, giving the wine its colour and heady flavour. This richness isn’t kind to our teeth whiteness, and it also dries the mouth. This further encourages the pigment to latch onto the surfaces of our teeth, which is why we recommend drinking some water or at least rinsing your mouth out after a nice glass of wine. White wine has the highest acidic concentration of the two, however, which means it attacks our enamel just like acidic fruits do.

Curry, listed as one of the nation’s favourite foods, is extremely bad for teeth whitening results. The spices that give the curry its flavour and beautiful colouring are staining your teeth more than you’d realise. These rich dyes can prove tough stains to remove from your teeth, especially if they’re artificial and sugary.

The best way to maintain your results is through attentive cleaning. We recommend cutting back on these harmful foods and drinks, but the best way to maintain your results is through daily and attentive cleaning habits. After treatment, your teeth whitening results could last months upon months if you practice regular cleaning and maintenance. If you can’t give up these guilty pleasures, try to eat or drink them quickly. This gives the harmful tannins and dyes less exposure time to your teeth. The more you nibble or sip, the longer your teeth are exposed to constant drip-drip-drips of harmful dye. Drinking water after eating or drinking these stain-carriers essentially washes your mouth out, rinsing away some of the harmful debris. This dilutes acid, gets rid of harmful food debris, and lessens the amount of pigment in your mouth.

Your smile could be boosted incredibly by teeth whitening, but we’d always recommend cleaning habits to make sure your results last as long as they can. Book your teeth whitening appointment at Harwood Dental Practice today by calling 01204 304568 or enquire online!