In its brief but well-documented cosmetic career, the laser has tackled everything from wrinkled skin to extraneous hair. Now it takes on teeth. Wendy Schmidt opens wide for the new laser tooth whitening.
People have always wanted whiter teeth. It goes back to the Bible-one of Judah's blessings is that his children's teeth shall be whiter than milk." With his Alabama drawl, David Kelly Yarborough sounds a little like a southern preacher. But Yarborough is, in fact, a dentist onto something. He's developed a new way to whiten teeth with a laser. Give him three hours, he says, and he can make your teeth noticeably whiter. The procedure, which involves the application of a bleaching solution and the use of two different kinds of lasers-the blue-light argon and the heat-intensive C02-has been undergoing clinical trials for the past two years (the FDA recently cleared it), and Yarborough says you need only look at the smiles of the more than 2,000 people who have had the process done to see that it really works.
Yarborough first suspected that lasers could whiten teeth six years ago when he saw how effectively they remove freckles from the skin. He became convinced that they could also eliminate the dark pigments on teeth that result from smoking or drinking coffee. His early experiments on extracted teeth proved he was right. The laser could remove not only nicotine and coffee stains but even the kind of discoloration that's caused by antibiotics like tetracycline. (This antibiotic, when given to young children to fight infections, can give teeth a deep gray-brown cast that's particularly resistant to bleaching.)
Yarborough, who started the BriteSmile company, teamed up with New York dentist Irwin Smigel - the same dentist who brought us Supersmile whitening toothpaste - and the two of them developed the laser whitening technique. BriteSmile was recently purchased by Ion Laser Technology (ILT), which is now now marketing the technique, and to date there are 39 laser-equipped BriteSmile across the country, with plans to open many more.
Nevertheless, Americans - and especially American women - have already demonstrated their willingness to spend money on whiter smiles. A bright smile, like sun-kissed skin, is considered a symbol of health. Last year alone, about $60 million was spent on the various non-laser techniques for cosmetic tooth whitening. These include porcelain veneers, also called laminates; home bleaching kits (up to $500 each); and tubes of whitening toothpaste such as Rembrandt ($9.50) and Supersmile ($12).
Veneers are the more extreme and invasive option; the tooth must be filed down slightly to make room for the laminated layer. Whitening toothpastes are the least effective approach; they can remove only extrinsic nicotine and coffee stains, much as a professional cleaning does. That's why bleaching has been the leading moneymaker in the whitening craze. This technique has actually been around since the middle of the last century. In the early days, dentists bleached teeth with hydrogen peroxide and a heat lamp' lengthy and sometimes painful in-office process. But since 1987, home kits have become standard. These kits consist of mouth-guard-like trays that you fill with a solution of either hydrogen peroxide or carbamide peroxide (the same compound that periodontists use as an oral disinfectant).
Clearly I've succumbed to the pizzazz factor: My Nite White at-home bleaching system-acquired nine months ago from my dentist father-sits unused in my linen closet. And after observing Smigel successfully-and without incident-laser whiten the teeth of Julie, one of his Connecticut clients, I've agreed to let him do mine. Before the laser treatment, Julie had registered an A3 on Smigel's shade scale-moderately yellow. She left with what looked to me like an A I-the whitest possible.
Suddenly, I'm obsessed with everyone's pearly and not-sopearly whites. Of course, with a dentist for a father, I've always been somewhat smile-aware (for me, Farrah Fawcett was more about teeth than hair). But on a recent Barbara Walters special, I found myself fixated on Demi Moore's teeth. They looked slightly yellow, faded. Nothing a little lasering couldn't fix...
The putty-gray walls inside Smigel's New York office would make anyone's teeth look white by comparison. They're an exact match for the tetracycline stain on his shade chart. Still, Smigel's enthusiastic chair-side manner makes even whiter-than-white teeth seem possible. "We'll make you perfect," he says with a characteristic wide grin.
Polaroids are taken to record my initial color (A3.5), and Smigel introduces me to Dawn Spinell, the dental hygienist and laser technician who will be performing the procedure.
After anchoring my open mouth with a retractor, she expertly sculpts a wax strip over my gum line to protect it from the bleaching chemicals. Then she pushes my tongue back with a bite stabilizer, covers the area with gauze, and squirts a protective gel into my mouth and onto my lips. Now only my teeth are exposed. She then paints on the bleaching paste and aims the blue4ight argon laser on tooth after tooth for roughly 20 seconds each. I can't feel the laser at all, but my teeth ache a bit from the heat lamp overhead. I scribble on the pad they've put in my lap: "This hurts. Is the heat lamp damaging my teeth?" Spinell turns down the lamp's thermostat, but she and Smigel assure me that some sensitivity is normal. From time to time, they try notching up the heat, but each time I complain and they turn it down again.
Spinell makes four passes on each tooth with the argon, then moves on to the C02 laser, which works with heat rather than light. I begin to feel slight twinges deep in my teeth, but again she assures me that no damage is being done. She applies more bleaching paste and makes a second pass with the C02- It begins to feel as if I've been in the chair all day. But gazing up (all I can do) at Spinell's bright, laser-whitened teeth sustains me. Finally, she applies a protective coating, a solution of fluoride and calcium, and seals it with the argon. This will ensure that the bleaching does not make my tooth enamel more porous. It will also stabilize the color and make my teeth more resistant to plaque. Spinell reminds me to avoid coffee, tea, dark colas, and red wine for a few days, and Smigel shoots a few "after" photos.
I have a look in the mirror: I'm not immediately dazzled. My teeth are definitely whiter, A2.5, perhaps, but they're not A1 as I'd hoped. My top lip is slightly seared and swollen from the chemicals. But there's good news: Unlike hair highlights, which seem to fade within days after you've left the salon, laser-whitened teeth get whiter over the next two to three days. Buoyed by that information, I skip my usual afternoon diet Coke and instead sip Fresca through a straw, awaiting a megawatt smile.
Three days later, my lip has downsized, my sensitivity has diminished, and my teeth are indeed whiter than my "after" pictures. I'd say I'm now an Al.5. Not quite perfect but definitely smiling.