hey it's dr amanda with straight smile solutions www.straightsmilesolutions.com
and today i want to talk to you a little bit more about
whitening with clear aligners and we've been getting that question a lot lately
on our facebook page both from doctors and patients alike so i just wanted to
kind of go through my personal opinion on the topic when
you should do it what type of clear liners you could do
it with what's the best system um so remember if you've watched my
other videos not all clear aligner trim is alike right
so we've got like this one which is like clear correct which
has the high straight trim it's not just clear correct there's a bunch of brands
that have the high straight trim i would definitely not recommend
whitening with this one because the it's not scalloped along the
gum line so this is all gum here this is gum this is gum you cannot have
the whitening gel go on the gums it will burn your gums
now of course that depends on what concentration and what strength
your gel is the stuff that is prescribed over the
from the doctor is a higher prescription than the stuff you can just get
you know while going to walmart but there's a lot of places online that you
can get some really strong whitening gel and it makes me nervous so i'm just
going to blanket say i would not whiten with this kind of a liner
definitely not i'd also not whiten with invisalign
because first of all their material is really um a little
flimsy secondly it has a lot of different doodads i'm
going to call them bling um which are proprietary which makes
invisalign good you know and that it helps to move teeth
well like um precision cuts like here cutouts there's also things
called power ridges which are on the inside which make it
jet out a little bit so all these things and also the way the
trim is often is they purposely keep the trim
um away from the gums which is nice because it's healthy right
but it tends to be very low profile so often doesn't cover the full tooth
as you can see here and sometimes the proprietary
features also will keep it not adapted so that you're
gonna get like spots on your teeth if you do it like it's not going to fully
whiten and it's going to be uneven so i would definitely not recommend
whitening with invisalign especially if you have power ridges
or precision cuts and of course you can't wait if you have attachment stuff
you know and i wouldn't whiten in trays that had attachments on them because
that area is going to end up whitening more because there's going to be more
concentration of whitening gel than an area say right
here right so you'd have to there's a way
with invisalign the nice thing about invisalign is that doctors can
set up the treatment plan um to get the attachments later you know so
you could have an attachment list you could have it power ridgeless you could
have a precision cut less and theoretically there's a way
that we can actually ask for the trim to be a little bit higher so yes it could
be done but your doctor would have to actually build that into your treatment
plan so also you wouldn't want to whiten right
before you were about to get your attachments because it'll affect the
bonding strength nor would you want to whiten before you got braces because
it'll affect the body strength of the braces
so i wouldn't recommend that either um i would recommend using
if you do have clear aligners something that has a semi scallop trim this is a
really nice one this is by proline just one brand that's out there another
brand is called st express um there's a bunch of doctors
that are doing semi scallop just ask your doctor if they're doing semi
scallop trim on their aligners now this one is totally fine to wait with because
it goes right along the gum line so this would be just about perfect and
there's no attachments there's no power ridges there's no precision cuts
so this would be perfect you could whiten with this
but the key is you still want to talk to your doctor because certain types of
fillings are not going to whiten if you have a composite you might not even know
you have one if it's done really well that's not going to lighten only natural
tooth is going to whiten okay so fillings veneers crowns is not
going to whiten and it's very possible that you might
have some fillings on your teeth that you don't even know that are white and
just done beautifully from a long long time ago
and you might have forgotten and then your teeth were going to look
spotted because that's not going to whiten they would actually have to
whiten and they would have to take the filling
out and put it back in and your insurance is not going to cover that
because it's cosmetic and anytime they take a filling out and
put it back in it's going to get bigger so
you know it's going to be expensive and not recommended
so in that situation you'd really want to talk to your dentist first if you
have any types of crowns fillings anything on the front teeth you
need to definitely talk to your dentist first you should talk to your dentist
first no matter what right all right so what if you don't have a
liners or clear retainers yeah this by the way this whole liner
thing also goes with clear retainers if you have clear tan retainers at home
you would only want to do it with the semi scalloped and that
pretty much eliminates most of the major brands that are out there because this
is relatively new i only know a few brands that are doing semi-scalloped
and if not that many doctors are doing it it's a relatively new process
i love this but um so what if you don't have aligners
or retainers okay so we'll make those go away um what i really like is something
like this these are these pens this one's by
phillips it's an on-the-go this one i think you have to get a prescription for
this zoom one um some of these other ones um you can
get just over the counter you're looking for i would recommend if
you want something like super super super dramatic you should go to your
dentist and have professional whitening trays
made so the whitening trays will look like
this however they're going to be slightly more flexible and they will
actually create a well on the front teeth or on the teeth so to
hold more to hold the stuff in so that's really
good and a trough so that it does not leak out onto your
gums if when you seed it you have to make sure
that you wipe the extra gel off it will burn your gums if it's a high enough
percentage and it will permanently damage your gums
also if you do it too long too often it will burn your teeth
so in permanently damage your teeth cause decay and stuff so
it is really important that you do talk to your dentist if you have cavities and
you're doing whitening over it forget it you're gonna make the cavity worse
so you should never be whitening unless you've talked to your dentist and make
sure you're cavity free that your gum tissue is healthy and everything like
that and i would still recommend getting professional whitening trays
made by your dentist i know it's a little more expensive but
it'll come with a higher strength whitening gel
and you can also ask for desensitization gel which i recommend because the time
first time i did whitening was maybe like 20 25 years ago
and they just come out with it it was by opalescence and i remember like
the intense pain i wore it all night long oh my goodness my teeth were in
pain for days like severe too um it looked really great don't get
me wrong went like eight shades whiter looked fantastic but um if you need
something dramatic you need to go to your dentist and get prescription
strength um whitening gel the stuff over the counter you're only gonna go maybe
one or two shades wider it's just like a little boost
uh so you can use these ones that have the little pen
i like these because you don't have to have a tray to do it
and you just paint it on it's very thick and it's
sticky it'll stay on and then they have like these little whitening boosters
that you can use i don't really know i mean some people
say this stuff works i don't really think it makes much of a difference but
it does hold the material in so um you can wear
it for about 10-15 minutes um but ideally you're going to leave it
on about an hour or so for a couple days but
anyways there's some whitening tips for you if you do have a liners
or retainers or if you don't you can use something like this
okay but again i'm going to tell you please talk to your dentist before
you whiten because you don't want to damage your really nice teeth right
hopefully that was helpful thanks so much