Teeth treatments for former smokers
REBUILDING TOOTH ENAMEL AND BRIGHTENING TEETH IN CESSATION
White strong healthy teeth can make you look years younger. And as a smoker, I personally hate looking at my teeth when they look yellow or brown. So here’s what I do at home to whiten and restore my teeth.
HOW I CLEAN MY TEETH
First I floss, then I brush. And actually I switched from my electric toothbrush to a regular cheap medium bristle brush, because I feel like the regular brushes clean better.
After brushing, use a tooth pick to scrape off plaque in between your teeth (front and back) and right along the gum line. You’ll be amazed at how much you don’t get off your teeth from brushing alone. After you use the toothpick, take a dry Q-tip and wipe each tooth with it again right along the gum line, front and back.
REMOVING STAINS FROM TEETH
Most of the stains on my teeth are in between teeth or on the backs of my teeth, but when my enamel is not strong, the stains show through. I actually purchased a dental cleaning kit I use to scrape off stains. But a toothpick is much less harsh and does help a little bit, you may have to go over the stain several times but eventually to you can see a difference, even with a toothpick.
WHITENING STRIPS
You’re not supposed to because it can cause sensitivity but I prefer to put on whitening strips when my teeth are clean, because why would I want to whiten the plaque? They are also super easy to wear while wearing a face mask or right before bed.
OIL PULLING
So oil pulling is important for smokers especially when in the first few days of quitting because it helps to reduce bacteria in the oral biome. Smokers have 40% more buccal bacteria than non-smokers and the bacteria in the mouth may affect bacteria in the gut. Read more about the gut microbiome here. But essentially, I want to reduce the bad bacteria as quickly as possible when I quit, so that the influx of oxygen doesn’t allow it to flourish and grow. I use coconut oil and swish for up to 20 minutes or as long as I can. You can up the bacteria killing game by adding a drop of tea tree oil or peppermint oil to your coconut oil (you only need a little bit, less than half a spoon with just one drop of the oil, the peppermint and tea tree oils can get pretty intense).
Important to note is that coconut oil can clog drains, so don’t spit it out into your sink, spit it into an empty water bottle or into a paper towel and put it in the trash.
MOUTH RINSES
NAC mouth rinse. This is find is awesome, especially for people that are quitting smoking and are in the detox phase. Take a capsule of NAC open it up and dump it into a small glass of fresh filtered water. Take a mouth full, swish and gargle for as long as you can and spit it out. There are studies that found when people sucked on cysteine tablets after smoking a cigarette, it reduces the carcinogenic acetaldehyde. ( 1, 2 ) NAC is essentially the same thing as cysteine. Or you can get cysteine tablets here.
You can also make bacteria killing mouth rinses by adding a drop of tea tree oil or peppermint oil to fresh filtered water, take a mouth full swish and gargle for up to a minute and spit out.
RESTORING TOOTH ENAMEL
This is my favorite treatment for restoring tooth enamel and works in as little as one to two weeks, when done daily and it’s super easy. Simply apply Calcium Carbonate (not to be confused with Calcium Ascorbate which is used for receding gums) to clean teeth once a day (or more). It dissolves pretty quickly so I often reapply it. You can swallow it no problem. In fact, I also add calcium carbonate powder to filtered water, and drink it too, because smokers are often deficient in calcium and it’s an easy way to get a lot without taking a gigantic horse pill.
RECEDING GUMS
For receding gums applying Calcium Ascorbate (a form of vitamin C) can help your gums to regenerate. Simply apply the powder to your gums and let it sit for up to five minutes and spit it out as you need to. I also use Calcium Ascorbate as an exfoliant by adding a little of it to my regular face wash once a week.
SENSITIVITY
Since teeth whitening and whitening strips can cause sensitivity I use the following 1) Applying the Calcium Carbonate powder helps a lot with sensitivity, and actually it’s great to apply after your whitening strip dissolves. 2) I use Pronamel Toothpaste, 3) If you need high powered relief try this tooth remineralizing product, works immediately and is amazing. When my dentist told me about it, I was like, why didn’t you tell me about this stuff earlier?