If you’re like most of us, you want your smile to be whiter than it is today. Everybody wants a brilliant smile full of blinding white teeth, and we do a lot of things to get it. You may already be brushing with special toothpaste, flossing and asking your doctor about cleaning and bleaching treatments they can do in their office. While these all work, wouldn’t you like it if there was something more that you could do? What if you have had root canal treatment, how do you prevent the stains in the first place then? Here are some lifestyle changes you can make so that your teeth remain white and unstained.
Add Milk to Your Black Tea or Coffee
A lot of your favourite foods and drinks are the culprits that stain the teeth in your mouth, as has been talked about. But if you still insist on having caffeine on a daily basis multiple times a day, you can still drink your coffee and tea. You just have to make sure that you add some milk to the drink.
Tea has a lot of stain-causing tannins in it, and coffee is highly-pigmented, with chromogens that can darken your teeth and make them brownish and old-looking. Adding milk into these drinks will reduce the ability they have to stain your teeth, so if you’re going to indulge make sure there is also a splash of cow juice in them.
Use Sparkling Water to Rinse Your Mouth
Your teeth become stained for a couple of reasons. First, what you eat and drink contain a lot of colored pigments that stain anything, and secondly, these things can cause the enamel on your teeth to become worn away, or eroded. When these substances are allowed to remain on teeth, they have even more time to stain and erode your teeth. To make sure this doesn’t happen, follow every stain-causing beverage or food with a glass of sparkling water. Your teeth may not stop staining completely, but the water will get the offending substances off your teeth so that they only do minimal damage. This is especially the case with sparkling water, because it has carbonation and those little bubbles can work hard to keep your teeth clean. Be sure you rinse the water around so that it reaches every tooth and gets the chromogens.
Try More Cheese
You may be surprised to read that cheese can be an anti-staining agent, but it is true. Foods that contain a lot of calcium and protein reinforce your teeth, making them stronger and resistant to stains. If you go to an event and you’re afraid that your teeth will stain as a result of red or rose wine, be sure to eat a bit of cheese to keep your teeth clean.
You might want to experiment with hard cheeses, such as cheddar, instead of softer cheeses. Hard cheeses behave similarly to polishes or waxes on your teeth and make tea, wine and coffee roll off your teeth enamel and seal micro-pores in your teeth that stain-causing substances can sink into.
You also want to eat more chicken, beans, eggs, milk and yogurt to make sure you’re getting enough calcium and protein in your diet.
After looking through the information above, you probably know more about what behaviors you need to change so that you can get the white teeth you want. You can still brush your teeth with whitening toothpaste, use mouthwashes and floss your teeth, but mixing your current regiment with the information in this article will help improve the look of your teeth tenfold. Healthy teeth are about more then simply brushing, flossing and visiting your dentist twice a year. You need to go above and beyond so that your teeth remain healthy and look as bright and white as they can.