Teeth Whitening
I have TMJ Disorder and have been trying to whiten my teeth. Wearing the whitening trays seems to aggravate my jaw. My dentist has me wear them for two hours. I read about this Tanda Pearl Whitening system. It says that it can whiten your teeth in just 5 minutes. I think that would be much better given my jaw problems. Have you heard of this? Does it actually work?
Sandy
Dear Sandy,
I am so glad you wrote because I am going to save you a lot of grief. After looking into the Tanda Pearl Whitening System, here are my thoughts. Make sure you read to the end because, while it will whiten your teeth, there are some special considerations that will be especially important for you.
First, it will whiten your teeth, but it will take a long time. They use a legitimate peroxide gel whitening ingredient, but it is very weak. Professional strength teeth whitening is significantly more effective. The supposed ionic technology doesn’t seem to do much. The low sensitivity it touts is more likely from only using the gel for 5 minutes and many reviewers have said it was not very effective. The low strength of the whitening gel told me that.
The bigger issue for you is their tray. If you have professional teeth whitening trays from your dentist, you will notice that they are two separate trays which you wear separately on each arch. The Tanda Pearl trays are one tray that you have to bite down on in order to keep it in place. Even for just five minutes, that is going to cause you more jaw pain then it relieves.
The tray is also not custom fit. This means some of your saliva will get into the trays, weakening the already weak gel further. It also means some of the gel will leak out, which (again) weakens the gel.
My suggestion is that tell your dentist about the jaw pain. It may be that your trays weren’t fitted properly. In the meantime, you can cut back on how long you wear your trays. The two hours he suggested is not magical number. You can wear them for the length you can tolerate. The only benefit to wearing them longer is they will whiten your teeth faster.
This blog is brought to you by a friendly dentist in Naples, Dr. Andrea Cameron. We treat dental emergencies.