If you don't want to invest a lot of money in whitening your teeth, you can try some home remedies that use ingredients from your kitchen. They remove stains with abrasive action or whiten teeth using acids. If you use them on a long-term basis, be sure to have your teeth examined regularly.
Fruit Remedies
Various fruits may help to whiten teeth because of their acidity. On a forum devoted to home remedies, many users advocate wiping strawberries across the teeth and claim to have seen immediate results. One person recommends mashing a strawberry and mixing it with a teaspoon of baking soda, then brushing the teeth with the mixture. Most of the forum posters caution that you should brush your teeth afterwards, since the acid and sugar in the strawberries can damage your tooth enamel.
Lemon juice is another fruit-based remedy, although not as popular as strawberries. It's also highly acidic and can cause damage to tooth enamel. Rubbing the inside of an orange peel over your teeth is an unusual bit of advice that appeared only once on the forum.
Baking Soda, Salt, Vinegar and Burned Toast
Baking soda and salt will remove stains, but they won't necessarily whiten your teeth. Since they're abrasive, they can wear away your tooth enamel if you use them for extended periods. One recipe mixes a teaspoon of baking soda with a dash of salt and a few drops of white vinegar. This remedy includes the abrasive action of both baking soda and salt to remove stains and the acidity of vinegar to whiten the teeth.
Apple cider vinegar is an ingredient in many for whiter teeth, either applied directly to your toothbrush or mixed a teaspoon at a time in a glass of water to make a mouth rinse.
Some home remedies that sound a bit bizarre, such as burning a piece of toast and scraping off the burned areas to use on your toothbrush, are based on the fact that wood ash is a whitening agent because it contains lye. There's no reason to believe that burned bread will whiten your teeth, and brushing your teeth with lye, a powerful caustic agent, would be downright dangerous.
Peroxide
Some toothpastes contain hydrogen peroxide, and some home remedies consist of rinsing your mouth with straight hydrogen peroxide or using it on a toothbrush.
The whitening agents used by dentists contain carbamide peroxide. Hydrogen peroxide is a byproduct that results when carbamide peroxide breaks down. Carbamide is used in professional tooth-whitening systems and hydrogen peroxide is used in over-the-counter products. Professional teeth-whitening products contain stronger concentrations of this agent, using anywhere from 10 percent to 35 percent carbamide peroxide. In general, a 10 percent carbamide peroxide solution is equal to a 3 percent hydrogen peroxide solution, while a 22 percent carbamide peroxide solution is comparable to a 7.5 percent hydrogen peroxide solution.
When dentists use strong tooth-whitening agents, they place rubber dams over the gums to protect them, since strong concentrations of peroxide can cause tooth sensitivity and sometimes damage gum tissue. If you choose to use hydrogen peroxide at home, use a diluted solution of water and peroxide in equal parts.
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