Thursday, October 30, 2008

Baking soda to whiten your teeth

I’m getting hooked on DIY beauty! Because it’s fun, it’s healthy and it’s cheap! Here’s my experience with using baking soda to whiten my teeth. It works! Okay, don’t expect the sort of sparkling white teeth you see on celebrities but baking soda will take off some of the coffee and tea stains and give you a cleaner looking set of teeth.

Baking soda to brush teeth is safe
This is one of the most popular and safest DIY methods to whiten your teeth naturally. There are some DIY suggestions of using lemon juice or strawberries but those could do more harm by eroding the calcium in your teeth or cause tooth cavities. However, you want to know that baking soda is pretty abrasive on contact. So on some forums, the advice is to dig a toothbrush into the baking soda and then to start brushing. Well, not very good. You’ll find that your gums hurt quite a bit this way. The best way I have found through trial and error is to mix the baking soda with toothpaste.

Baking soda mixed with toothpaste
First, I squeeze some toothpaste on my toothbrush as usual. Then I top it up with a small spoonful of baking soda and start brushing. You can use baking soda only of course but I find that the toothpaste helps to ease off some of the abrasiveness of the dry powder for me.

Whiter teeth in a week
I saw a slight difference after the first brushing using baking soda. Within a week of brushing with this ingredient once a day, my teeth was noticeably whiter. Even my husband noticed and he has started to use it too.

Brushing with baking soda once or twice a week
However, I plan to slow down now that I see results and will probably keep to brushing with baking soda only once or twice a week. This is because I feel that baking soda while safe, is still a mild abrasive cleaner so I don’t want to use it everyday. And by the way, this stuff taste salty!

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