Removing Coffee and Tea Stains from Your Teeth

teeth lips
Image Credit: Alie L. via flickr

If you drink a lot of coffee and tea, you may find that your teeth have gradually become stained over the years. If that smile of yours is not what it once was, it is not too late to do something about it. I have been drinking coffee for well over 20 years and about 5 years ago was a little disappointed at the smile that was peering back at me and wanted to do something about it.

Let me preface this by saying that this is not going to happen overnight. If it took you years to turn your teeth a different color, you can be assured that they are not going to go back to being pearly white in a few weeks. To say that dozens of products were tried would be an understatement, as it was probably more like hundreds. However, the secret concoction was finally discovered and luckily for you, I am about to share it with you.

Teeth whitening is a huge industry and unfortunately, most of the products are a rip off. We are not going to bother with the bad ones, but I will tell you about some things that I found that do an incredible job. Are your teeth going to get as white as they were when you were first born, absolutely not, but changing them by 4-6 shades is every doable and you will no longer have that black hole showing up in photos.

It is all going to start with a teeth whitening kit. We have tried the strips, the treatments and the gels and not one of them worked until I found the Dr. Collins Teeth Whitening Kit . It is fairly inexpensive and comes with moldable mouth pieces. They wear out pretty quickly, so you may want to buy a few more of them at the drug store. Word of warning, this is going to sting your gums a little when you first start using it, but if you follow the directions, you are going to see a difference in about a week. I recommend running through the kit and then give yourself a week or two off and then do it again. I still use this every 3 months or so for a boost.

The next part is easy and that is the daily maintenance. There are three products out there that should be a daily part of your routine. I am not sure if it is one of them or the combination of all three and am not really willing to mess with it because it has made such a difference. They are: Listerine Whitening Mouthwash, Arm & Hammer Toothpaste and Arm & Hammer Whitening Boost. The mouthwash is a pre-rinse and you use the boost right on top of the toothpaste every day. They do a great job of daily maintenance to make sure that you don’t slide back to the shades that you were before the whitening treatment.

In addition to everything else mentioned, I also recommend that you use baking soda on your toothbrush a few times a week, every day if you have a cup in your hand all day long. No toothpaste, nothing but baking soda. Wet the brush and pad it in the baking soda and then brush just as you would with your toothpaste. It’s not the greatest tasting thing in the world, but it will start to strip away some of those difficult caffeine stains after a day of drinking down a pot or two of coffee.

Hey, we all love the flavor of coffee, but there is no denying that it can stain your teeth if you don’t take measures to prevent it. Regardless of the staining on your teeth, use this advice and you can turn back the clock a little bit and after a few months you just may see those pearly whites smiling after each sip of hot coffee that you take!

brewed on Oct 24th, 2009

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