Tired of seeing yellow teeth every time you glance in the mirror? Feeling self-conscious at conference meetings and cringing at photos? Maybe it’s high time to try a teeth whitening routine! With a brighter, cleaner-looking smile, you can feel more confident in yourself and smile more genuinely at the camera. 

GO SMILE offers this step-by-step breakdown of a thorough teeth whitening routine. Plus, some extra tips are included for maintaining your efforts and keeping your smile bright.

A Daily Teeth Whitening Routine

Whether you’re satisfied with your smile’s radiance or not, it’s time to get into a healthy daily routine. But to get a brighter smile, we can’t stress how much a morning, midday and evening routine will affect your smile faster. Don’t skimp–you got this!

Morning Routine

Have you ever woken up with that unpleasant fuzzy feeling in your mouth? As you sleep, bacteria builds up around your teeth and gums (especially if you tend to snore or sleep with your mouth open). And along with that bacteria is morning breath, which we’re all too familiar with. But don’t worry–you’re about to brush your teeth and begin your daily teeth whitening routine. 

Before you even grab a cup of joe or breakfast, brush your teeth! While many of us do the opposite, brushing with quality whitening toothpaste can prevent coffee stains and stains from certain foods like berry juices from jams and smoothies. Not to mention, brushing will get rid of morning breath caused by plaque and bacteria. 

However, after eating, what you can do is floss to remove plaque and food debris caught between the gums and the teeth. You can also use mouthwash to get a fresher mouthfeel. 

Midday Routine

After you finish your lunch, follow up with a midday routine. Taking care of your teeth midday simply adds one more brushing to your teeth whitening routine, helping you achieve a brighter smile faster. Plus, improving your oral hygiene has significant health benefits. According to the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, people who brushed three times a day lowered their risk of heart failure by 12 percent. 

After you eat, rinse your mouth with water or wait for about half an hour. Many people find that rinsing with a glass of water is much easier (plus, it keeps you hydrated). Once you finish lunch and settle back into your daily tasks, brushing your teeth can become a second thought and be easily forgotten. So rinsing and brushing immediately after lunch is more efficient. Carry a more compact, on-the-go container that you can use at work or wherever you may be. And if you can’t get to a sink right away, pop in some gum to chew, stimulating saliva flow to wash away food particles. Be sure to keep a tooth stain eraser on hand throughout the day. They are the perfect on-the-go item for touch ups and combating mask breath.

BLU Hands-Free Toothbrush & Whitening Device

Evening Routine

Last but not least, make sure to have an evening brushing for your teeth whitening routine. After you finish with dinner, continue your oral hygiene routine and break out a bacteria-killing blue light toothbrush to get your chompers completely germ-free, giving you a cleaner mouth when you awake the next morning. Choose a hands-free blue light toothbrush that can gently scrub your teeth and gums while you complete other tasks, like applying products for your skincare regimen or reading another chapter in your book. After brushing, rinse your mouth with water to remove any excess particles and make sure to floss, too! You don’t want to sleep with particles of food left inside your mouth. 

6 Ways to Maintain Your New Bright Smile

It takes a bit of effort to get sparkling white teeth, so make sure you maintain them! Here are a few easy tips and tricks you can take to keep your new bright smile lasting.  

1. Get Started with a Whitening Kit

Select a GO SMILE teeth whitening kit to get started on your teeth-whitening journey. Designed to be an at-home teeth whitening solution, all of our kits will help you create a comprehensive whitening regimen totally from scratch. Each kit includes everything you need to deeply whiten, packed with start-to-finish essentials. Whether you choose a compact on-the-go teeth whitening kit or a hands-free Blu toothbrush, find a method that best suits your lifestyle. 

GET YOUR AT-HOME WHITENING KIT

 

When starting a teeth whitening routine, your toothpaste is an essential tool. It’s crucial to find a safe and effective toothpaste; otherwise, you could be doing your chompers more harm than good. Good thing all of GO SMILE’s kits come with a teeth whitening toothpaste. Our toothpaste can also clean and remove both extrinsic and intrinsic stains and is approved by the American Dental Association.

2. Brush Three Times a Day

As outlined above, try to brush three times a day–once in the morning before breakfast or coffee, once midday after lunch and once in the evening before heading to bed. While brushing twice a day is sufficient, you can achieve a brighter smile when you brush three times a day. Since midday brushing is often overlooked and forgotten once you’re elbow deep in work, set a timer to remind yourself to step away and brush those pearly whites!

Also, make sure you brush regularly and adequately! The American Dental Association (ADA) suggests brushing at least two times a day for two minutes each. However, to achieve whiter teeth faster, GO SMILE recommends brushing three times a day for two minutes each. The ADA also recommends placing the toothbrush at a 45-degree angle against the gumline to thoroughly remove plaque resting above and below the gingival margin. Using short strokes and gently moving the toothbrush back and forth, you should reach every crevice of your mouth. 

3. Use an Sonic  Toothbrush

Sonic toothbrushes offer lots of advantages to create a healthy smile, including having 30,000 strokes per minute. For starters, they provide a two-minute timer, which can hold you accountable for brushing the full two minutes and alert you when to switch sides. Sonic toothbrushes are made with soft bristles or even silicone that are gentle on teeth and gums, preventing enamel loss and permanent damage caused by gingival recession.

Overall, when it comes to keeping your teeth clean, an electric toothbrush is much more effective than your wrists and elbow grease. Vibrating at a high speed, the brush head scrubs just aggressive enough to remove plaque build-up and bacteria. One convenient feature of electric toothbrushes is that the brush heads or silicone inserts can be replaced once they’ve run their course, which is around roughly three months. 

4. Avoid Acidic and Sugary Foods and Beverages

We all enjoy a treat every so often. But when it comes to maintaining a bright white smile, you might want to go easy on acids and sugars. Since it’s challenging to do so, moderation is key here. What kind of acidic and sugary treats do we mean? Below, we’ve listed some foods and drinks that you should avoid, some of which could be a root cause of your yellowing enamel and teeth. 

• Sodas 

While we enjoy this sparkling sweet beverage, soda is in fact quite nasty for your teeth. And in more ways than one! The sugar, in combination with bacteria, can create acid, which attacks your teeth’s enamel layer and exposes the dentin beneath. It’s when this dentin is exposed that teeth begin to turn yellow and even cause brown splotches. 

Drinking sugar-free diet sodas can be even more harmful, as they have high levels of phosphoric acid and citric acid, which is worse for you than sugar. If that wasn’t enough, one recent study discovered that soda can wreak havoc on your teeth in a way similar to that of harmful drugs like methamphetamine and even cocaine.

• Starch

Starch is a natural content found in many foods and is often good for your overall diet. However, when we eat starchy foods, the small food particles are broken down by our saliva and transformed into simple sugars, which can become a problem. Like soda, when the sugar and bacteria combine, it creates an acidic decaying effect on teeth.

Potato chips are one starch you should try to avoid. This treat has one of the highest starch contents–42 grams per 200-calorie serving! And since this crunchy snack can easily get stuck in between and on top of our teeth, they can deteriorate the enamel if left unattended. So even if you enjoy an occasional handful of chips, make sure to floss after eating to prevent acids from further yellowing your teeth by breaking down their enamel layer.

• Candy

Candy is the most notorious culprit for yellowing teeth and bad oral hygiene, especially those that stick around for a while. While all candy contains high amounts of sugar, it’s the chewy and gummy style varieties you need to be more mindful of. By now, you should understand how sugar turns into acid with the help of bacteria in your mouth. However, these stickier candies can get lodged and squished in deeper crevices and pits (hello, cavities!) and, if left unattended, will erode the enamel until you choose to do something about it. Same as soda and potato chips, candy is a perfectly fine treat–if you make sure to brush and floss immediately after!

5. Use a Straw

Sipping your beverages through a straw is essential in maintaining those pearly whites. A straw can bypass teeth-staining dyes and other natural colors almost entirely. Instead of drinking straight from a can, mug or even a bottle, a straw can allow you to enjoy your favorite drinks, minimizing the contact with your teeth and preventing discoloration. This way, you can still nurse drinks like coffee, sodas and fruit juices without worry. When it comes to water, go sans straw so the fluids can rinse your teeth. 

In a pinch, any straw works. But if you plan to go through plastic straws frequently, be kind to the environment and buy your own reusable straw instead. Whether you prefer metal or silicone, a reusable straw can keep lots of plastic waste from being discarded. Green-friendly practices aside, if you have a habit of chewing on straws, get yourself a non-abrasive silicone straw that won’t wear down your enamel. 

6. Put Down Those Cigarettes, E-Cigs and Vapes

If you’re a smoker, it’s time to quit! Smoking is terrible for your overall health and can cause several health issues. While many are already well-aware of respiratory-related illnesses and conditions that can arise from smoking, such as lung cancer and asthma, there are also many other health issues related to oral hygiene. 

As a whole, tobacco products are harmful to your mouth. Abrasive tiny particles in cigarettes can break down your enamel and eventually your teeth. Plus, smoking is also terrible for your gums. Did you know that smoking increases your chances of developing gum disease by 100 percent? And when you do develop gum disease, possibly losing teeth, smoking makes it harder to treat. Lowering their immune system, smokers can raise their risk of infection and even take longer to recover after an oral procedure.

All that aside, if your goal is to get a brighter set of chompers, smoking will do you no favors. Tobacco damages teeth and leaves them stained. It can even prevent your teeth whitening routine from being effective! Imagine all that effort going to waste! 

And if you think that smoking e-cigs and vapes are not so bad–think again! While they may not be as harmful as smoking straight-up cigarettes, these modern devices are still quite detrimental to your oral health. In recent studies, it’s been found that e-cigarettes and vapes emit aerosols that can create excess bacteria associated with tooth decay, cavities and gum disease. E-cigarettes and vapes can also trigger an inflammatory response in gum tissues, resulting in various periodontal diseases.

Ready to Get Those Pearly Whites?

If you’re tired of looking in the mirror and seeing a less-than-pearly white smile, look no further! GO SMILE offers various teeth whitening kits, whitening toothpastes and more to get you started on your whitening journey. Soon enough, you’ll have a bright, cleaner-looking smile that makes you feel more confident and attractive.

START YOUR TEETH WHITENING JOURNEY TODAY!

 

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