A lot of people want to figure out a way to drink coffee without it staining their teeth. One thought is to add something into the coffee that will lighten the color of it. If it is a lighter color, the coffee will do less damage, right? Unfortunately, in this instance, the answer is no. No matter what you do to your coffee, it is still going to stain your teeth.
How Coffee Actually Stains Your Teeth
There are two reasons that coffee, even with creamer, is going to stain your teeth. First, your coffee stains your teeth through the tannins that happen to be in the coffee itself. Simply by adding something that makes it a lighter color, you are not actually lowering the amount of tannins in the coffee, thus not doing anything to avoid staining your teeth.
Second, when you add milk or a creamer to your coffee, you are also adding sugar into the mix since both have sugar in them (unless you buy sugar-free varieties of creamers). This can increase how much plaque builds up on your teeth, and give the tannins in the coffee, a better surface to grab hold of. If you have more area for the tannins to take hold, they can actually do more damage than if it wasn’t there in the first place.
If you want to drink coffee without as much chance of it staining, consider drinking it through a straw. This helps it bypass your teeth for the most part, lowering the chances that your teeth are going to be stained each time you take a sip. To help alleviate coffee stains that you already have, contact our office today and schedule a time to go in and get them whitened.
