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Over-the-Counter
Readily available, easy to use, and fairly
inexpensive when compared to in-office treatments, over-the-counter
teeth whitening products are all the rage.
However, there are a number of products on the market today, each
offering a little something different.
Strip Products
Some of the more popular over-the-counter
whitening products are the strips. They are sold under many brand
names, including Crest's Whitestrips.
Teeth whitening strips are very thin, pieces of plastic that have been
coated on one side with a thin film of hydrogen peroxide, a bleaching
agent. The strips are flexible. Unlike other whitening systems where
the whitener agent is placed in a tray of some type, the strip itself
is the application system for the whitener.
Teeth whitening strips are usually worn for about 30 minutes per day,
two times a day. Whitening strips that have been coated with a solution
of 6% hydrogen peroxide whitener are intended to be worn over a course
of 14 days, and strips coated with a 10% whitener solution are intended
for a treatment period of 7 days.
Teeth whitening strips are designed so to provide an alternative to
tray-based over-the-counter whitening systems. With tray products a
whitening gel is placed into a rigid plastic bleaching tray that is
placed over the teeth and worn for several hours, or even overnight.
Home Bleaching Kits (Trays)
These kits
utilize a plastic tray that has been fabricated to fit over your teeth.
The bleaching gel (carbamide peroxide) is placed in the tray and the
tray is then worn for a certain amount of time, repeated daily for some
weeks.
Many people find that tray-based teeth whitening systems are
inconvenient or incompatible with their needs. Trays can often be bulky
and make speech difficult, aggravate a jaw problem, or promote gagging
or salivation. Bleaching trays are somewhat visible to others when in
place unlike strip products.
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