Is it possible that using fruits as an at home teeth whitening agent can help the more health conscious or eco-conscious person avoid using harsh chemicals? That’s what many people seem to think. Just rub some lemon peel across your teeth for a couple of weeks, they say, and the results will be astounding. Others even advocate using mashed strawberries as a dental whitener and actually brushing the teeth with them. These sound like ideal alternatives to chemicals, but all may not be as it seems on the surface.

The most effective use of fruit for dental whitening appears, at first, to be provided by lemons, whether using the juice as a mouthwash or rubbing the peel directly on the teeth. Yet what the citric acid actually does is pull calcium out of the enamel. This makes the tooth appear whiter, for a while, because calcium is one of the things that adds a darker tinge to the color. But losing calcium eventually makes the enamel thinner, weakening the teeth. As an at home teeth whitening method, lemons look promising at first, but could produce devastating effects in the end.

Are strawberries any more effective as a homemade teeth whitener? Probably not. Its seeds are scratchy and can scrape and damage your teeth, and also the acid may have a similar outcome to that in lemons. Actually, the acid in strawberries essentially softens the enamel. That’s the reason why it’s advised that someone needs to wait twenty minutes after eating them before brushing the teeth, to provide the saliva an opportunity to restock the minerals in the enamel. Making use of actual strawberries to brush your teeth, especially habitually, is probably not the ideal approach to achieving whiter teeth.

One should remember that most tooth color comes from the yellowish dentin inside, beneath the translucent enamel. So using an at home teeth whitening method that in fact erodes the enamel, and gradually reveals more of the dentin, means that rather than ending up with white teeth, they could produce teeth that are ultimately more yellow than before.

The truth is, with most of your teeth’s coloring being determined by the dentin, it may not really be possible to make teeth much whiter than they were to start with. The more important assignment is to keep the teeth healthy, and a continual application of either lemons or strawberries is unlikely to accomplish that goal.

Teeth whitening products and procedures have skyrocketed in popularity in recent years. That’s because many people realize that a whiter smile is a relatively easy way to look younger and more attractive. From teeth bleaching strips to whitening gel, find out more about the options at the Teeth Bleaching site.

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