What To Eat After Getting Teeth Whitened

People who have had their teeth whitened will often be warned to avoid foods that stain their teeth at least for the near future. The first few weeks after teeth are whitened, the teeth will be sensitive and prone to staining, and it is wise to stay away from food and drink that you know will stain the teeth. Foods that do this include dark meat, spinach and blueberries. It is a matter of finding the staining foods in your diet and replacing them – in the short term at least – with foods that are non-staining.

Commonly, the foods and drinks that are earmarked as “staining” are ones which are dark in color and to some extent “wet”. Foods that contain juices can get into the grooves which may have been left by the bleaching – this goes for drinks too, so if you want to avoid staining it is important to at least temporarily avoid black coffee and red wine. Replacing these foods and drinks may involve some trial and error, but there are some better choices around.

Instead of eating beef, you should eat chicken or pork as these are light meats. Instead of drinking red wine, change to white wine. Replace blueberries with strawberries, spinach with celery and tomatoes with cucumber. You can maintain a balanced diet and keep your newly-bleached teeth looking white for longer. You will still need to brush your teeth and keep a dental hygiene regime going, but the effects will be much greater if you eat the right things.

Like Your New Teeth? Take Care Of Them!

When you have teeth whitening treatment, it is very easy to get the impression that you are now a little bit “bomb proof”. Having given themselves a blank slate, many people arrive at the conclusion that it is a good idea to go about putting something on that slate. However, this is a stupid thing to do, and there are various reasons for this.

Having had one’s teeth whitened, it is not uncommon for people to arrive at the realization that they have almost a licence to go and do the same things that stained the teeth in the first place. One thing that stands in the way of this, though, is that newly-whitened teeth are more prone to staining from food and drink. If you have just had the treatment, it is advisable to avoid common staining agents like red wine, black coffee and cigarette smoke.

You can maybe have another course of teeth whitening treatment at some point. However, that point is not within weeks or months of the first treatment. Teeth whitening will cause the teeth to be more sensitive – so think about how that will feel after two or three treatments in the course of a year. It’s really not worth it.

If someone handed you a beautiful vase, you would not cover it in graffiti or throw it at a wall. That would be idiocy. So if you are handed teeth that look a world better than they used to, there is nothing to be gained by letting them fall into ruin again.

From Time To Time, Not All The Time

Having your teeth whitened by a dentist is something from which people with the money and the inclination can get a lot of benefit. However, it needs to be remembered that as a treatment teeth whitening is really something that you use to put things right and then move forward, not something you can have done again and again, every time something goes wrong. There are people who seek to go for teeth whitening on a semi-regular basis rather than guarding the whiteness that comes from the initial treatment.

This is a bad idea. The fact of the matter is that the products used to whiten teeth are powerful – they need to be in order for them to work – and if they are used on a repeated basis there is a significant risk of causing irreparable damage to the teeth. Instead of relying on the treatment to fix the discoloration of your teeth, it is a much better idea to have the treatment once and then be conscientious in the cleaning and washing of your mouth so that they do not get to the point where such treatment is necessary.

If you have a heart bypass, you do not then go out and eat as much fatty food as you can lay your hands on. If you get a liver transplant, you should not immediately start drinking with a zeal unmatched by how you drank before the surgery. Although teeth whitening is not as major a treatment as the former two, the principle remains – once you’ve got the results you want, don’t throw them away because the same treatment a second time can be damaging.