Pirate Teeth: An Adventure in Tooth-Whitening

So recently we put black charcoal on our teeth so they'd be whiter. 

This Pinterest project was a bit of a departure for us. It was messy, kinda vain, and also seemed like a bit of a gamble. 

The pin I read said that putting a capsule of activated charcoal on your teeth and scrubbing for five minutes produced whiter teeth. Apparently activated charcoal is a main ingredient in a lot of whitening products, and this is just the straight stuff. Activated charcoal is God for way more than just that and is something to take when you swallow poison (you know, all the times THAT happens...) and I believe it has health benefits when taken internally. 

So I ordered a bottle that contained 100 capsules from Amazon, which I found to be about $4 cheaper online. 

When it arrived, I first took a picture with it. Now I'm not going to lie, the lighting in the bathroom made my teeth look much more yellow than they actually are, so you're going to have to pretend that they really look mostly normal but not totally white. I'm not a coffee drinker and tend to drink things through a straw, so I wasn't expecting dramatic stains to be lifted. I do, however, have teeth with funny little white spots on them that drive me crazy. They've been that way since I was little and I had a dentist tell me once that it meant I had lots of "hidden fevers" but I don't know what that means or if it's true. So I was hoping to make the white spots less obvious. I'd read that your teeth felt much cleaner too, so I was looking forward to that. I have a bottom retainer and flossing around it is difficult, so I was hoping that the charcoal would make that area cleaner, if it indeed had the ability to break down plaque and things that I can't reach with floss. 

Following directions, I wet my toothbrush, opened a capsule, and sprinkled charcoal on it. There's a lot of powder inside a capsule, so I didn't use all of it. 

Then I brushed for five minutes. Every so often, I'd need to spit (the sink has never looked worse) so I'd load more charcoal onto my toothbrush. It didn't have a taste, but it felt crunchy. It also gave me very impressive teeth -- I felt like I could have been an extra in any pirate movie. 

When I finished, I rinsed the charcoal off myself and the sink, where it disappeared immediately and didn't stain anything (I was afraid that I would have black lips for awhile and I didn't). Then I brushed with toothpaste because there was a little residue in the crevices.

Carson tried it next.

One post said to use it several days in a row for the best results, so I did. Once a day, I'd brush with charcoal. I noticed a difference after the first time, although it wasn't dramatic. I could feel that the area where my bottom retainer was was a lot cleaner, so the charcoal definitely ate that up. I also noticed that it made my teeth look slightly more gappy because it ate away at some gross plaque that's been living there. And they were whiter. Not blinding white, but certainly noticeably to me. Carson only tried this once (it was a week where we were busy and he didn't want to add one more thing before bed) but I noticed a difference with him too... He's got the coffee stains and things that would likely show a dramatic improvement with a little more charcoal scrubbing. 

The verdict: try it! It's way cheaper than whitening strips and won't hurt you to try. It gives you crazy pirate teeth too, so that's fun for five minutes. I've also read about people who used this often and believe that it helps prevent cavities, which I believe because of how it ate away at plaque. So... Try it and share your crazy pirate pictures!