Gum Bleaching: The Past, Present, and Future

Gum bleaching is an important part of maintaining your dental hygiene, but if you’ve lived with teeth that look yellow or brown, you know it can be difficult to find a dentist who will explain the ins and outs of gum bleaching or help you with it. Here’s what you need to know about gum bleaching to keep your gums healthy, including the past, present, and future of gum bleaching techniques used by dentists today.

The History of Gum Bleaching:

The first attempts at gum bleaching in the United States date back to the 1940s. Dentists would use lasers to burn away an entire layer of the gum tissue in the hopes of getting rid of melanocytes (which produce pigment-causing melanin). These efforts proved futile.
In 1965, dentists started experimenting with a new technique called gum grafting. This involved taking small pieces of skin from other parts of your body and attaching them to your gums as a way to cover up pigmentation. Again though, these efforts were unsuccessful due to side effects like infection and scarring.

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Current Methods of Gum Bleaching:

The most common form of gum bleaching is with lasers. A laser is used to target the melanocytes that are in your gum tissue. This eliminates the pigment from those cells, which will give you a whiter smile.
The laser treatment is done for about one hour on each side of your mouth. It can cause swelling in the gums and irritation to the tissues underneath your teeth. In some cases, it can even cause tooth sensitivity.
Laser treatments are not without their drawbacks, though they are still preferable to other methods such as using toxic bleach or surgery. Research has shown that dentists have had success rates of up to 84% when using laser treatments to remove pigmentation from gums.

The Future of Gum Bleaching:

It is unclear if dentists will ever find a way to reliably remove gum pigmentation. However, there are some promising treatments on the horizon. One option that is being studied is removing gum with laser technology that selectively targets melanocytes. Another treatment involves using lasers to destroy the tissue around the teeth without harming any other part of the mouth. Unfortunately, there are currently no FDA-approved treatments for gum bleaching available in America.