What Causes White Spots on My Teeth?

There are a few reasons why you might have white spots on your teeth, including:

• Diet: Eating too many acidic or sugary foods can also eat away at your tooth enamel, causing white spots.

• Plaque Build-Up: If you don’t brush and floss regularly, plaque accumulates on your teeth. Overexposure to the bacteria in plaque can lead to the demineralization of your tooth, which results in white spots. This happens frequently during orthodontic treatment, since it’s difficult to thoroughly remove plaque while wearing braces.

• Fluorosis: Fluoride typically prevents tooth decay and strengthens your teeth, but being exposed to too much fluoride while your teeth are still developing can actually lead to a condition known as fluorosis, which leaves white spots on your teeth.

• Trauma: Any trauma, illness, or disease that affects enamel development in children—either in the womb or while teeth are developing (under the age of 8)—can cause discolored teeth. Trauma to adult teeth can also cause white spots on teeth. In addition, there are a few diseases and disease treatments that can cause discolored teeth. 

• Following orthodontic treatment: When undergoing orthodontic treatment, white spots can develop if plaque is allowed to remain “around the brackets and along the gum line” for an extended period of time without proper brushing and flossing. Good oral hygiene is critical during treatment. Since the bonding material that glues the bracket to each tooth creates and air tight seal, you seldom see white marks underneath the braces but around the braces and along the gum line after braces are removed.

How Does White Spot Removal Work?

In the past, the only ways to professionally remove white spots were to either drill them out and fill the hole with a composite material, or cover up the entire affected tooth with a porcelain crown or veneer.

But Dr. Raquel uses a revolutionary new procedure to remove your white spots in one single, simple, and drill-less treatment: the Icon® resin infiltration system.

White spot removal with Icon is a noninvasive procedure that requires no anesthesia or drilling. Your dentist applies a special gel-like material to the tooth that penetrates the white spot, fills and seals the early decay, and stabilizes the enamel, effectively eliminating your spots.

It takes less than an hour to treat your white spots with the Icon system, and the treatment leaves your white spot looking identical to the rest of the healthy enamel surrounding it. It will even whiten similarly to your natural tooth enamel if you ever decide to have a teeth whitening treatment.

What are the Advantages of Icon White Spot Removal?

When it comes to treating your white spots, the Icon resin infiltration system has a number of advantages over drilling-and-filling, such as:

• Noninvasive procedure

• No need to remove healthy tooth structure

• Increased life expectancy of your tooth

• No drilling or anesthesia means a more comfortable procedure

• More cost-effective than fillings or veneers