As you begin to age, your tooth enamel will start to wear away, revealing the dentin within the tooth. This dentin has a yellowish colour. Your teeth will also begin to create more dentin as you age, which also causes teeth to have a darker appearance.
Dentistry for seniors suggests tooth whitening can be done at any age of adulthood. Tooth whitening products remove built-up stains and brighten the enamel. They are affordable and easy-to-use solutions to the problem of aging yellow teeth.
What Can Be Done to Whiten Yellow Teeth? If you're looking for a radical change in the coloring of your teeth, you need professional-grade whitening to get the job done. Your cosmetic dentist can provide treatment that penetrates deep into the enamel and removes years of stains with a powerful bleaching agent.
Use Hydrogen Peroxide and Baking Soda
Using this mixture removes bacteria and buildup of plaque to get rid of surface stains. Create a hydrogen peroxide and baking soda paste and use it to brush your teeth. After that, use water to rinse the mouth. You can also create a mouthwash using equal amounts of each ingredient.
Most commonly, tooth darkening occurs as a natural effect of aging. As we get older, the outer hard tissue covering our teeth, called enamel, wears away and exposes the darker dentin beneath it. This can cause our teeth to appear more gray or yellow rather than white.
Their Permanent Teeth Are Starting to Come in
If your child is about 6-7 years old and their permanent teeth have started to erupt, you may notice that their permanent teeth look quite a bit more yellow than their baby teeth.
As you begin to get older, your tooth enamel will begin to wear away, revealing the dentin within the tooth. This dentin has a yellowish color. Your teeth will also begin to create more dentin as you age, which also causes teeth to have a darker appearance.
If you want to keep your teeth sparkling white as you get older, you have a few options. A whitening toothpaste includes low-concentration bleach, hydrogen peroxide, or urea oxide. This is an easy method because it doesn't add any steps to your daily routine, but it does take time to be effective.
Consuming Certain Foods and Drinks. “Certain foods that are high in tannins, such as red wine, are potential causes of yellow teeth,” notes Crest. Other teeth-staining foods include coffee, citrus fruits and juices, soft drinks, teas, berries, tomato-based sauces, curry, balsamic vinegar, and soy sauce.
Even with daily brushing, certain foods and drinks can cause stained teeth. For example, frequently drinking coffee, tea and wine can all lead to yellow teeth. In addition, even regular brushing cannot always combat yellow teeth caused by smoking cigarettes.
Baking soda is good for teeth whitening because it is a very mild abrasive, which helps remove stains from the surface of your teeth. In addition, baking soda is alkaline and salty, which helps lighten acid-based food stains – such as those from coffee, tea, and red wine – on teeth.
Regularly drinking any type of vinegar and eating acidic foods has been shown to erode tooth enamel ( 14 , 15 ). This means that vinegar gradually destroys your enamel, which is the outer layer of your teeth that protects them from physical and chemical damage.
Some of the best toothpastes for older adults include the Sensodyne Pronamel Daily Protection Enamel Toothpaste for Sensitive Teeth and Sensodyne Rapid Relief Sensitive Toothpaste. Other products worth mentioning are 3M Oral Care Clinpro Tooth Crème Anti Cavity Toothpaste and Colgate Sensitive Toothpaste.
Seniors should make appointments for cleanings at least twice a year or as directed by their dentist. Maintaining a regular appointment schedule is one of the most important things you can do for your oral health.
Whitening strips, mouthwashes and toothpastes only contact the surface of tooth enamel. Therefore, they often can only get surface-level stains out. Embedded stains and colored dentin certainly won't be removed with a treatment that's readily available at the drugstore.
If you want to know the truth, yes, Crest Whitestrips do work. They can make your teeth look whiter because of a gel that is spread along the strip and placed onto the surface of your teeth. This substance contains hydrogen peroxide or carbamide peroxide and works to penetrate the tooth enamel to remove stains.
It's never too late to improve your smile. Even if you are in your 70s or 80s, you can still have your teeth whitened. Teeth whitening is a safe and effective way to improve the appearance of your smile, and it can be done at any age.
If you see celebrities with perfectly white, straight, and uniform-looking teeth, they likely have veneers. Unlike teeth whitening, veneers are more permanent. There are various types of materials used, but porcelain and composite are the most common types.
A calcium deficiency in your diet can also cause intrinsic tooth discoloration because you need plenty of calcium for healthy, white teeth. If you've undergone certain medical treatments such as chemotherapy, you may also develop intrinsic tooth stains.
Yellow teeth can be completely whitened with teeth whitening technologies at the dentist or at home. Depending on the status of your yellow teeth as well as your needs, the doctor will advise and prescribe the appropriate method.
Many of the methods listed above can be effective for whitening your teeth, including oil pulling, using baking soda or hydrogen peroxide, eating a healthy diet, and limiting consumption of foods or beverages that stain teeth.
A Yellow Or Grey Colored Cavity
Your tooth enamel is the hardest tissue in your body. But it isn't impenetrable. After the first stage of demineralization, the bacteria in your mouth continues to break down your tooth enamel even further. At this point, you might notice a yellow or grey color to your cavities.
As you get older, the porous layer of enamel on your teeth thins, letting the yellowish material below, called dentin, show through. In addition, the microscopic holes in the naturally porous enamel get larger with age, making older teeth even more susceptible to staining.