Never mind the eyes: The mouth is much more of a window to the soul. Which I suppose would make our teeth kind of like the pearly gates. Mine weren't looking very welcoming after years of being splattered with Bloody Marys, Starbucks lattes, and burgundies rich and cheap. So a few weeks ago I underwent one of the laziest self-improvement rituals in the world — faster than a diet, less grueling than a gym, and way easier than 12 steps: Zoom! teeth whitening. All it required was a quick trip to the Midtown Manhattan office of Dr. Jennifer Jablow. Or so I thought.
The good doctor Jablow — an attractive 30-something who looks more urban tooth fairy than cosmetic dentist — began our session, bless her, with a reality check. "The really white teeth you see on celebrities are veneers or airbrushing — those colors don't appear in nature," she told me, bursting my absurd daydream of looking like Matt Damon. Covering my gums and gently fitting a pair of customized plastic trays to my teeth, she applied a hydrogen peroxide gel for the first of three 15-minute bleaching cycles. So far, so good. But then she grabbed an ominously shaped lamp embossed with "Zoom! Advanced Power," pointed it at my head, and flicked it on, shooting bright light into my mouth. It felt like fake science — maybe this is what it's like to have your E-Meter read? — but the ultraviolet rays were meant to activate the hydrogen peroxide and help oxygen get at the teeth's enamel and dentin.
As I rinsed and repeated, Dr. Jablow laid down a couple of whitening commandments. For starters, you shouldn't do it more than twice a year. (Those bleach bums who do risk thinning their teeth and giving them that weird bluish tint.) She also cautioned against one-size-fits-all walk-in shops such as BriteSmile, which she likened to "getting Botox at a mall."
An hour or so later, she held up a mirror and I curled my lips back like Mister Ed to admire her handiwork. The results were astounding. My teeth had turned from wood to bone. There was a hitch, though: They were now even more vulnerable to stains than before. "The number one problem is reversion, because your teeth have pores that have just opened up," Dr. Jablow said. "Be very, very mindful." That meant that for the next five days I was not to consume any dark foods or dark liquids. No coffee, tea, soda, red wine, whiskey, soy sauce, truffle oil, tomato juice, balsamic vinaigrette, mustard, ketchup, chocolate, pie, tobacco, or Jägermeister, just to name a few.
There was also the supreme hassle of the DIY follow-up: filling the customized trays with at-home Zoom! white-ner and affixing them to my teeth for an hour every night for the next five days. It was basically the entire process — sans soul-sucking lamp — over and over again. No wonder a third of Jablow's patients fall off the whitening wagon the moment they leave the dentist's chair.
