I have two friends who have gone through the tooth whitening procedure. Though their procedures were different, both of them had pain during the treatment. My first friend did Zoom and she said it hurt the whole time. She does have sensitive teeth, so I thought hers was more of a fluke. My second friend used home whitening and this is the one that has me the most worried. She said it was fine at first, but then she started having some pain near a spot that she had some dental bonding done. It was bad enough that she stopped the whitening process. I have some dental bonding myself. So, my question is how common is this? Is some amount of pain just something that has to be accepted and dealt with in order to get your teeth white?
Rebecca
Dear Rebecca,
Teeth Bleaching Trays
I’m glad you wrote. Most patients, though obviously not all, have no problems with teeth whitening whatsoever. Zoom whitening is pretty strong and those with sensitive teeth do sometimes experience pain. If you have sensitive teeth, there are a desensitizing agents that can help. You would also want to take some Tylenol or something similar ahead of time. At-home teeth whitening trays should have even less of a risk of sensitivity. One of the beauties of it is that you only wear the trays for the longest period of time that you are comfortable.
You will get the fastest amount of teeth whitening if you wear them all night. But, if that is too challenging for you, then you can wear them during the day for however long you are comfortable. I would try not to go less than 15 minutes, or you won’t really find it effective.
As for your friend with the dental bonding, it sounds like she had a piece of the repair that was not adequately covered. If she wants to continue her bleaching, she can see her dentist and have him cover that spot. This is just one of the reasons that you should always be under the care of a dentist when doing a teeth whitening procedure.
Because you have a dental bonding repair, it would not hurt to have your dentist look it over just to make sure everything is in good shape. This shouldn’t be a problem because you only want to do teeth whitening after having a cleaning and check up done anyway. If you don’t have a cleaning done, the results are likely to be splotchy.
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