Influencers, fashion magazines and even friends: plenty of people recommend natural products for whitening your teeth. One of them, though, has been gaining ground in recent months: activated charcoal. Even though the Spanish consumers’ organization (OCU) and the General Council of Dentists have advised against using this product, because it can damage tooth enamel, the talk about the good results it supposedly gives keeps growing. But is it true that activated charcoal whitens teeth? At Clínica Peydro we put one of our patients through a scientific experiment to determine whether activated charcoal can change how white our teeth are, as various influencers claim.
Does activated charcoal whiten teeth?
The experiment carried out at our practice was led by Dr. Marta Peydro, an expert in esthetic dentistry. She opened up one of our treatment rooms to see a 33-year-old patient who was willing to whiten her teeth with activated charcoal. Before she brushed with activated charcoal, the doctor measured the whiteness of her teeth with a spectrophotometer, the scientific instrument dentists use to measure tooth enamel. That way there would be evidence of whether the patient’s teeth got whiter or whether, on the contrary, the activated charcoal left them unchanged. After brushing her teeth with activated charcoal for 14 days, the patient came back to Clínica Peydro for another reading from the unerring spectrophotometer, which showed that no whitening of the teeth had taken place after using activated charcoal. In short, the patient’s teeth are still the same shade of white as before she brushed with activated charcoal, so this natural product does not whiten teeth, whatever various influencers and fashion magazines may claim.
I want to whiten my teeth. How can I do it?
Not baking soda, not activated charcoal, and not devices sold online. Whitening your teeth with these products can damage your enamel. If you want your teeth to look whiter and brighter you need to see a specialist. At Clínica Peydro we have Marta Peydro, an expert in teeth whitening. She says herself that she ran this experiment to show that a treatment such as teeth whitening has to be carried out by a dentist. The only way to whiten teeth is with professional teeth whitening. To give your teeth a whiter color, she works through 5 different steps:
- A dental cleaning
- Custom trays
- Desensitizing gel
- A laser session
- A maintenance kit
These steps will get you back to a bright, healthy smile, using only conservative techniques that do not affect the structure of the tooth in any way and that last around 3 to 5 years, depending on the patient’s lifestyle. The key to a successful teeth whitening treatment is having it done by a genuine professional. Our practice has Marta Peydro, who is constantly researching teeth whitening with the aim of offering personalized care to each patient and setting protocols that get the treated dentin as white as it can possibly be.
Would you like to see the before and after of a teeth whitening treatment? Click here.
