What Are The Ingredients In A Teeth Whitening Gel?

What Are The Ingredients In A Teeth Whitening Gel?

Active Ingredients In Whitening Treatments Introduction Dental science has only come up with one active chemical that will significantly make whiter teeth.

This active chemical is peroxide.

The peroxide can be in different forms. The most common form of peroxide that dentists use in their surgeries for power whitening, or in-surgery whitening is called Hydrogen Peroxide gel. It is a safe and effective way to whiten your teeth.

The peroxide which is used in home whitening kits is in the form of Carbamide Peroxide.

There are other ingredients but are only at best mildly effective. To make any difference to your teeth, you need to use them for many weeks every single day.

Carbamide Peroxide Or Hydrogen Peroxide. Which Is Better, and How Much Does It Differ?

Hydrogen peroxide has the advantage over carbamide peroxide in that it produces a bleaching agent (with maximum power) within the first 30 to 60 minutes in contact with your teeth.

This is the professional form of tooth whitening gel that dentists use in the surgeries because it produces the maximum bleaching power within the shortest period of time.

A typical rapid power whitening session in a dentist’s chair will last an hour and a half. This involves 3-4 applications of Hydrogen Peroxide gel. This means that the dentist puts on the first application of Hydrogen Peroxide gel on your teeth and after 20-30 minutes, he will remove the hydrogen peroxide gel in order to replenish it with a new layer of fresh gel. The 2nd application is put on again for 20-30 minutes, cleaned off and the 3rd or 4th application is repeated.

To increase the maximum bleaching or whitening power even further, the dentist can use a couple of methods in order to achieve this. Firstly, Hydrogen Peroxide gel needs to be placed in the fridge at all times otherwise it breaks down very quickly and becomes inactive.

So, typically when a patient sitting in the dental chair is ready to have in surgery teeth whitening carried out, that gel would be removed from the fridge and it would go directly onto the teeth from a syringe. Syringe would be in a black opaque plastic because heat and light are the enemies of hydrogen peroxide. As We Know, hydrogen peroxide simply breaks down into water and Oxygen.

A dentist will often take out the gel from the fridge immediately before your actual appointment and then warm it up in hot water to get it back to room temperature. If the gel could be warmed or heated up slightly in this way and then placed on the tooth, the reaction between tooth enamel and gel is enhanced therefore you could potentially get better whitening results.

The second way to activate the gel is to use a bright powerful ultraviolet light. This was known as laser tooth whitening or light activated bleaching.

However, in reality, Clinical studies showed that lights and lasers would not significantly have much of an effect in accelerating the bleaching and the final tooth shade achieved.

Let’s Look At Concentrations Of Hydrogen Peroxide Used.

Recent changes based on European regulations, meant that the maximum hydrogen peroxide concentration that a dentist could possibly now use was 6%. Prior to this ruling, her

dentist could use a hydrogen peroxide concentration gel of 25%, 30% and even 35% hydrogen peroxide.

Dentists were quite dismayed when its concentration dropped because they could no longer promise big gains in tooth whitening that they could offer to patients. This is why you also need to carry out home whitening in addition to the in surgery whitening.

Home bleaching kits containing peroxide use peroxide in the form of carbamide peroxide.

Carbamide peroxide is different to hydrogen peroxide in the following ways.

Even though it is different, it breaks down into hydrogen peroxide which is the active tooth whitening ingredient. Comparing hydrogen peroxide with carbamide peroxide based gel, revealed the following: If a carbamide peroxide gel was labelled 10%, this was the equivalent of a 3% hydrogen peroxide gel.

In other words, it is about one third as effective as pure Hydrogen peroxide gel.

With carbamide peroxide, only 50% of its maximum power is released in the first 2 hours, however, the carbamide peroxide can stay Active up to 6 hours. In contrast, the hydrogen peroxide has a maximum bleach in power within 30 to 60 minutes. This means it delivers a greater whitening power very quickly.

The downside is that hydrogen peroxide can produce more sensitivity because it is released more rapidly into the tooth enamel.

Carbamide peroxide produces less sensitivity, but you need to use it for a much longer time period. This is why the home whitening kits often stipulate that you use the whitening gel overnight so that the carbamide peroxide is releasing its effect over a few hours.

There are home tooth whitening kits with 20% carbamide peroxide concentration which is equal to 6% roughly of hydrogen peroxide, but it is only recommended to use them during the day for about 1 hour at a time. As it is more potent, it will also likely produce more sensitivity as well. Carbamide Peroxide gels range from 6% concentration to 20%. You may be able to buy kits over the counter with as little as 0.1% but they are not going to be effective.

Only a dentist is able to prescribe a concentration of more than 0.1%.

So, Once You Have The Teeth Whitening Gels Which Come In A Syringe, How Is The Gel Put On The Enamel Of Your Teeth In Order To Produce The Teeth Whitening Effect?

The teeth whitening gel is not applied directly onto your teeth but is put in a teeth whitening plastic tray. The tray holds the gel onto your teeth otherwise it will simply get washed away with your saliva. The tray is placed into your mouth over the teeth and gums. It is a bit like a boxer’s gum shield or a sports guard, except it is obviously a lot thinner than a boxer’s gum shield.

Even if a dentist gave you a teeth whitening kit, they still need to make a whitening tray for you. The big difference here is that the one that you have made at the dentist, will produce the most accurate fit to your particular mouth. The dentist does this by taking an imprint or a mould of your teeth.

This is then cast up and a model is made of your exact mouth. On this model, a vacuum formed plastic tooth whitening tray is constructed. This is then trimmed to the exact fit.

For Any Teeth Whitening To Work Effectively, The Tooth Whitening Tray Must Fit Accurately In particular, the fit must be precise at the junction between the gum and the tooth. If this junction is not accurate, two things will happen.

Firstly, a gap at this Junction between the gum and the tooth will cause the tooth whitening gel to leak out. When the gel leaks out into your mouth, you will probably end up swallowing most of it. Even though tooth whitening gels should have passed all the usual safety toxicity checks, you still do not want to be swallowing teeth whitening gel.

The second problem that occurs when the junction between the gum and the tooth in the whitening tray is not accurate, is that the whitening gel leaks out and therefore there is no longer any whitening gel inside the tray in contact with your teeth to produce the whitening effect. This will dramatically reduce any effectiveness of the teeth whitening gel.

Unfortunately, all the teeth whitening systems that you buy over the counter, consist of standard moldable plastic trays. The trays are softened in hot or boiling water but even then they can never produce an accurate fit over your teeth.