What Causes Yellow Teeth? Treatments for Stains

Discolored teeth kill your confidence. You smile more freely when you feel confident in how your teeth look, especially if they look clean and white, and many of us experience yellowing teeth that detracts from our smiles. What causes yellow teeth? Yellowing, discolored teeth are the result of our everyday lifestyle habits, including our dietary choices, oral hygiene habits, and vices like smoking. You can prevent yellow teeth by making healthy choices and establishing good habits. Existing stains can be treated with cosmetic dentistry.

Causes of Yellow Teeth

Many actions contribute to the development of tooth stains: What you eat and drink, how you care for your teeth, and lifestyle habits all play a role in the appearance of your teeth. These are common causes of yellow teeth:

• Poor oral hygiene
• Consumption of darkly pigment drinks, like coffee, tea and red wine
• Smoking or use of tobacco products
• Eating sugary and starchy foods
• Skipped dental cleanings

How to Prevent Teeth Yellowing

If you want to keep your teeth looking their best, you have to take good care of them. Practice proper daily oral hygiene, including twice-daily teeth brushing with a clean toothbrush and fluoridated toothpaste, daily flossing, and rinsing with anti-bacterial mouthwash. Scale back on your consumption of staining beverages, such as coffee, red wine, black tea, dark-colored soda, and fruit juices. The pigments in these drinks seep into the microscopic ridges of your tooth enamel to stain your teeth and cause discoloration. Sugary foods should also be consumed in moderation. Sugar reacts with the bacteria in your saliva to produce an acid that weakens your tooth enamel, making it more susceptible to staining.

Treatment for Discolored, Yellow Teeth

You don’t have to live with teeth stains! Cosmetic dentistry treatments like teeth whitening and dental bonding remove or cover stains to restore the brightness of your smile. Teeth whitening uses bleaching gel that penetrates tooth enamel to remove deep stains that brushing cannot. Dental bonding can be used to cover deep, intrinsic stains that cannot be treated with teeth whitening.