Month: November 2017

writ­ten 11/2017

After watch­ing com­mer­cials tout­ing the “reduc­tion in bleed­ing gums” this tooth­paste promis­es, we got some sam­ples at work so I thought I’d give it a try before rec­om­mend­ing it to peo­ple or to answer ques­tions patients might have.

So, first off, the active, “mag­ic” ingre­di­ent here is stan­nous flu­o­ride. All den­tal pro­fes­sion­als know the effi­ca­cy of stan­nous flu­o­ride in rem­iner­al­iz­ing tooth struc­ture. How­ev­er, we’re also all well aware of the unfor­tu­nate down­side: extrin­sic stain­ing. I assume that GSK is claim­ing gum bleed­ing reduc­tion because flu­o­ride has some antibac­te­r­i­al prop­er­ties. Their answer to the stain­ing prob­lem comes from the ingre­di­ent: pen­ta­sodi­um phos­phate. It’s sup­posed to noy only reverse the stain­ing effect of stan­nous flu­o­ride but make your teeth even whiter than before using Paradon­tax.

Ok, so I try this. The first thing that struck me was the over­whelm­ing minty taste that set my mouth to feel­ing like it was burn­ing and stayed with me for over 3–4 hours after­wards. Let me say here that I have a VERY poor tol­er­ance to spices and spicy/hot foods. Oth­er than that, it was a tooth­paste. 3 days lat­er, I found my tis­sues slough­ing off, com­mon when I use pow­er­ful tast­ing tooth­pastes. Well, one monyh has passed and I have tak­en pic­tures of my teeth every Mon­day after the morn­ing tooth­brush­ing rou­tine. Same light, same bath­room, same phone cam­era. The only thing I switched up was what kind of tooth­brush I used (I have 3 that I alter­nate amongst).

Aaaand here are the pic­tures!

I’m think­ing maybe there is a slight increase in bright­ness or white­ness of my teeth between the 1st and 2nd Mon­days but after that, noth­ing over­ly dis­tinct. My tis­sues did­n’t bleed often to begin with so I can’t attest to any of that, though if you look at the pic­tures you might be able to argue that the papil­lae seem less puffy towards the sec­ond half. Some of that could just be light­ing, angle or even flossing/brushing tech.

Ver­dict: would I rec­om­mend this to my patients? Sure. I would­n’t not rec­om­mend it. Then again I gen­er­al­ly rec­om­mend any­thing a patient likes and enjoys using.

As for me, I shall be return­ing to my nor­mal toothpaste…actually… I’m start­ing my next tri­al run: the Venus White whiten­ing sys­tem by Hereus for the next 7 days or so.