Is the coconut oil the last trend to get a perfect smile?

During the last days this new trend has strongly bounced into the oral health universe coming from USA, its name is Oil Pulling and it consists in rinsing the mouth each morning for 20 minutes with coconut oil to, supposedly, reduce the amount of plaque in teeth or caries and to improve the whitening of the smile.

The last beauty milestone in Hollywood lands struggling between myth and reality. The truth is that Some of them are used to avoid tooth loss, bad breath or smooth baby gums when their teeth are coming up.coconut oil has attributed more than 300 uses in health and wellness.

International celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Gisele Bündchen o Miranda Kerr already use this routine searching perfect smiles and good breath. However, the reaction of the professionals in this area didn’t wait to show up. The American Association of Dentists has been forced to clarify that there aren’t enough clinic studies to endorse the benefits of this practice to improve oral health.

Generally, home remedies are rarely effective. There are also others like bicarbonate, vinegar, lemon, etc… always used even without thinking about their adverse effects in our teeth. It isn’t exactly true that coconut oil whitens the teeth. A lot of people choose these domestic methods to whiten their teeth because of the diffusion of celebrities’ trends but, is it advisable to do it this way?

Home teeth whiteners, low cost offers from some clinics and whitening tooth pastes, use substances like hydrogen peroxide or carbamida peroxide. They are used by doctors in their treatments but the products we use at home have a very low quantity of these elements, so that, there is no real effect at all. Moreover, some of the products or materials used in domestic whitening scratch the tooth and due to this scratching, the teeth seem to be whiter.  The most important thing is to have our smile evaluated by a professional. Not every patient has the same teeth colour, or not even need the same kind of treatment to whiten their teeth, it has to be designed and made for each one.

Do not forget that celebrities have dental veneers, so they don’t need domestic whitening, being coconut oil just another complement in their beauty daily routine. To get a beautiful smile, it is advisable to have a diet poor in potential dyes food, avoid drinking coffee, no smoking, drink white or green tea instead of black tea, have an adequate oral hygiene, visit the dentist every 6 months to get a deep cleaning or at least one per year.

Furthermore, to get a healthy mouth and with a natural white we can choose dental veneers, an aesthetic painless solution to stop the aging and rejuvenate the smile. They are really natural and can be as white as the patient desires. Veneers are long-lasting and without colour changes, brightness or shape.  Perfect for patients who want to align small bad positions, fix the teeth shape. Fix the gum showing up when smiling, enlarge the teeth or shut the gaps in between the teeth.