Category: teeth

Why: For the sake of my patients, I like to try new things. Otherwise you wouldn’t catch me using something like this.

What: My Magic Mud brand whitening toothpaste featuring activated charcoal, coconut oil and bentonite clay. “Brush Like a Boss.”

Duration: 1 month (4 weeks exactly)

What it looks like:

Pictures:

Day 1

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Pros:

1. “Natural” whitening with visible pieces of the charcoal made from coconut shells.
2. Tastes and smells good. When I first used it, my mom walked by and said that the air freshener I used was nice. I did not use any air freshener.
3. Since it made everything black in my mouth, if I missed anything, it would highlight those areas after rinsing

Cons:

1. Possibly abrasive…whenever I used it, there were spots where my tissues would feel raw and rough. I mean, you can see the pieces of charcoal.
2. The directions say to use a generous amount because since it’s mostly made of clay, it “could possibly” dissolve in your saliva.
3. Made a mess everywhere. Black teeth, black sink, black toothbrush, black face, black tongue. Possibly even stained my granite where it fell on there
4. No fluoride. I tried to use the ACT rinse as a supplement and fluoride varnish from work
5. Easily knocked off my toothbrush. Too often I squirted it onto my toothbrush only for it to end up in the sink or on the granite top.
6. The tube needed superhuman strength to squeeze with one hand in the beginning and again at the end of its life. Only for #5 to happen.

Conclusion:

In short: I hated it. I hated using it every single day of the 4 weeks I used it. Honestly, this was probably the worst hygiene month I’ve had in a very long time. I hated the texture in my mouth, I hated how runny it got and would splash out of my mouth into a massive black mess everywhere, I hated that it would end up in the sink and not stay on my toothbrush, I hated that it made everything black, and I hated the absolute most that it did NOT make my mouth feel clean whatsoever. The instant I started brushing with it, I wanted it out of my mouth. In fact, the average brushing time for me this month was probably 10-20 seconds when the norm is 2 minutes. On top of it, because I hated it so much, I preferred to use manual over electric because then I didn’t have to keep it in my mouth for so long.

It doesn’t foam and I knew that so I wasn’t expecting it, but dang it having the toothpaste dissolve almost instantly into a dirt slurry in my mouth is terrible.

In regards to the cleaning power, I feel like it would be more abrasive than my regular toothpaste. I spent so little time brushing with it, it’s hard to attest to the power of it’s clean. However, I can say that I would brush my gums by accident and it would consistently leave such a raw area wherever it hit the tissue. Kind of scary. I even thought I was rolling the tissue margins much more than normal. The whitening portion of it? I don’t know. You be the judge. As for me, I almost felt like it was doing the opposite of whitening my teeth.

I went back to my regular toothpaste half an hour ago and what a treat to be using my beloved, non-black, foaming, fluoride toothpaste again! They actually feel clean and I brushed for a good amount of time.

Summary:

I hated it, personally, and would not recommend it at all. In fact, I didn’t even finish the tube and will throw it away. Thank you.

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.