Teeth can become stained or discolored for many different reasons, including your lifestyle, poor dental hygiene, and disease. This blog covers the common causes of tooth discoloration, as well as prevention and treatment options.
Causes
1. Smoking or Chewing Tobacco
Tobacco not only increases your chances of gum disease, it can also cause your teeth to turn yellow.
2. Diet
Bright and dark-colored foods such as wine, coffee, tea, as well as certain fruits and vegetables (e.g. beets, tomatoes, blueberries, raspberries) can stain teeth.
3. Poor dental hygiene
Failing to brush and floss on the daily basis or not brushing thoroughly enough is a major contributor to tooth discoloration.
4. Disease
Certain diseases can impact your tooth color, such as liver disease, calcium deficiency, eating disorders, and celiac disease.
5. Medicine
Certain medicine, like antibiotics tetracycline and doxycycline, antihistamines, high blood pressure medication, and antipsychotic drugs, cause tooth discoloration.
6. Aging
As you age, your tooth enamel becomes thinner, revealing the dentin underneath that also yellows with age.
Other causes of tooth discoloration could also include genetics, trauma, fluorosis (too much fluoride), and previous dental work.
Prevention
Changing your lifestyle habits, like quitting smoking and drinking coffee, is the best way to prevent tooth discoloration. You can also prevent tooth discoloration and staining by:
- Drinking water frequently, especially after meals. This helps displace food particles that cause discoloration.
- Using a straw to drink bright or dark-colored beverages to minimize contact with your teeth.
- Following a healthy diet with green, leafy vegetables, nuts, cheeses, yogurts, and foods rich in fiber, can strengthen enamel and prevent tooth discoloration.
- Following a good dental hygiene routine (i.e. brushing twice a day for two minutes at a time and flossing once a day).
- Getting a dental cleaning every 6 months.
Treatment
There are several treatment options available to treat tooth discoloration. These include:
- Following a good dental hygiene routine by brushing and flossing every day.
- Brushing teeth with baking soda a couple of times a week.
- Using over-the-counter products (whitening toothpastes, strips, trays and gels).
- Try home whitening treatment
Some tooth discoloration is irreversible, in that case your dentist can cover up the discoloration with veneers, crowns, and white composite fillings.