Monthly Archives: July 2015

Invisalign

Whitening my teeth during invisalign

I have invisalign and I’m happy with the treatments. One thing I’m worrying about is whether or not I can whiten my teeth while getting my invisalign treatment or if I have to wait until I’m done. I was hoping to do zoom whitening.

Genevieve M. – Louisiana

Genevieve,

Zoom whitening can take around two hours.  That is about the amount of time that you’re allowed to have the aligners out, but it doesn’t leave you any time for eating.

You ahve a couple of options for teeth whitening with Invisalign. First,  you could do zoom, but it does make your teeth more sensitive. If you combine that with straightening your teeth, that may be more discomfort than you’re ready to deal with.

The second option is to use your invisalign aligners as teeth whitneing trays.  Your dentist will probably be willing to give you the whitening gel at a nominal fee and you can place that in your aligners while you sleep.

You’ll probably end up saving money on the deal.

This blog is brought to you by Salem, MA Cosmetic Dentist Dr. Randall Burba.

Emergency Dentist

Store Bought Tooth Filling

I had a tooth filling fall out. I’m on vacation out of state.  My husband said he saw dental filling at a pharmacy once.  He thinks I can just refill it myself or he can.  If we can find it, is that a safe thing to do?

Melanie C. – New Mexico

Melanie,

You have two choices. The first is to call an emergency dentist in the state you’re in.  They’ll see non-established patients very quickly. Some even the same day.

If you don’t want to do that, you can temporarily use the store bought filling.  I do mean temporarily.  That type of filling is meant to be a temporary stop gap measure.

Even if it could be permanent,  you wouldn’t want to do that.  There is a reason your filling fell out.  You  could have a new infection. Whatever the reason, that needs to be dealt with.  You wouldn’t want to cover up the real problem.

This blog is brought to you by Salem, MA Cosmetic Dentist Dr. Randall Burba.