At last! I’ve turned my gnarled old gnashers into £10k
pearly queens
EVERYONE has a favourite smile. The one that they practised in the bedroom mirror as a teenager, and that they still use while posing for photographs.
Mine has been the same for decades: lips pursed, mouth clamped shut. Teeth definitely not on show.
I hate my teeth, I can’t remember ever liking them. I hated them on my wedding day. I hate them every time a camera catches me unawares with my mouth open, grinning like Fagin. It’s like looking inside a bin bag.
What I dream of is whiter teeth. I don’t mind that they aren’t perfectly straight, but I am fed up with being too embarrassed to smile.
My teeth aren’t discoloured from heavy smoking, red wine and poor diet. They were stained before I was even born. It happened because my mother innocently took the antibiotic tetracycline when pregnant.
Used to treat bacterial infections such as acne and tonsillitis, it was prescribed from the Fifties until the Eighties to pregnant women and young children alike (I was born in 1962).
What scientists didn’t know then — but warn about now — is that the drug can have a serious effect on developing teeth.
The chemicals in tetracycline become embedded in the dentine — the layer below the enamel — of teeth as they develop in unborn babies’ gums, and those of children under eight. This causes serious discoloration which only shows once the milk teeth have fallen out, and the dull grey — sometimes nearly black — adult teeth come through.
My enamel was weak too, although not tetracycline-related. Every one of my baby molars was filled by age five. As a child, I was a familiar face at the dentist’s surgery. Visits went like this: Yes, I was brushing properly. No, I wasn’t eating bags of toffees every day.
I don’t remember my poor mother showing any shame, but it must have been awful for her.
It led to a lot of root canal fillings before the age of 15 and a phobia of needles. By my 20s I had stopped smiling.
Friends say they have never noticed the state of my teeth, but I’m sure they are lying..
I’m much more self-conscious about my smile now than I ever was in my 20s and 30s when I had other assets to deflect from my stained teeth.
It doesn’t matter how much Botox, fillers or lifts you have, if your teeth are like Stonehenge, they’ll be what people notice first. I know that I do.
And my teeth were the first thing I saw when watching footage of me leaving the I’m A Celebrity... jungle in 2015. I was absolutely disgusted and resolved finally to do something about the teeth I’d loathed all my life.
The irony is, I am healthy in most other ways. I never drink alcohol (I gave up for New Year about five years ago, and never went back), and while I used to smoke about five a day for about 20 years, for the past four I’ve vaped. Diet-wise, I’m pretty sensible and don’t have a sweet tooth, preferring to snack on things like Twiglets and cheese.
Of course, I’ve tried over-thecounter remedies and had laser whitening — in which a paste is applied and activated with a laser — but that just lightened the tips, making the rest of my teeth seem even darker.
My dentist said there was no treatment for tetracycline discoloration. The only obvious option was the brutal one of veneers — where the enamel of the teeth is literally chiselled away, and a false white tooth bonded permanently to what remains.
That’s the Hollywood look — the dazzling white teeth you notice before their owners have even entered the room.
But veneers are a one-way trip. While teeth are not filed down to stumps, as when a crown is fitted, once the enamel is gone it’s gone for ever — and I wasn’t prepared to do this. I’d rather have grey teeth than fake ones.
That fear of having fake-looking teeth has held me back from having anything done. Then, like any modern woman looking for advice, I hit the internet.
I googled teeth whitening and came across endless miracle solutions: from bleaching to dentures. When I posted on Instagram, displaying the problem it all its gnarly glory, the response was enormous. I really hit a nerve (pardon the pun) and was flooded with advice, and have spent the past six months looking for the smile of my dreams.
My husband was all for it, if it made me happy. I thought, ‘I’ve a good few years left. Why not?’
My first stop was Dr Linda Greenwall, the London-based teeth-whitening expert who is a guru of tetracycline staining.
With whitening, a bleaching tray is made from a mould of your teeth. Peroxide is put into this for your teeth to soak in. Treatment can take between three and 12 months and costs £300 and £900. However, Linda wasn’t sure of the outcome. She also warned about sensitivity (a dentist’s word for pain) from the bleaching agent.
There was another option, however, which I found when I saw Dr Uchenna Okoye, cosmetic dentist at London Smiling.
As soon as I met Uchenna, there was a connection and she instantly knew what I was after.
She really is the Tooth Fairy. Her kindness, professionalism and forensic care instilled total confidence to the point where I relinquished all control and allowed her to act as she saw fit.
She told me she was seeing
more and more tetracycline staining cases as people realise it’s OK to want good teeth.
Uchenna says: ‘I believe improving your teeth is more anti-ageing than a face lift. This is the time in life at which many people — particularly women — seek cosmetic work.
‘Many have hated their teeth for years and feel self-conscious. When you reach 40 you’re confident, aware, have more money, and take control of what bothers you.’
My teeth were good, Uchenna said, but ‘difficult’ — stained, cracked, worn and losing enamel with bits chipping off like ‘the White Cliffs of Dover, falling into the sea’.
she decided to halt this process using bonding or composite — a hard, durable substance painted in layers over the teeth to build up, thicken and lengthen them, while disguising the discoloration and maintaining a natural look .
It’s a painstaking process, done tooth by tooth, over two sessions: four hours for the top set and two for the bottom. A full mouth treatment, like mine, costs about £10,000. It may sound a lot, but it should last at least ten years.
Afterwards, you clean exactly the same way with normal toothpaste and mouthwash and teeth will pick up stains from things like tea and cumin, like natural enamel. The only downside is they will, eventually, chip like normal teeth, but thankfully are easy to repair. First, Uchenna made a mould of my teeth,
to practise on. This also meant she had a model that I could try to see if I liked it. (I did, but she wouldn’t let me take it home).
Incidentally, saying that she ‘just’ used a composite is like Charlotte Tilbury saying she ‘just used makeup’. It sounds simple, but in the same way you can change the shape of the face with contouring, Uchenna says you can change the entire face with the right-shaped teeth.
The colour had to be ‘just right’ too. she did three dry-run teeth in different colours and materials, like a Farrow & Ball paint chart.
The end result was stunning. Looking in the mirror, I was delighted to see a perfectly nice, natural, white set of teeth smiling back. But barely anyone noticed.
Friends have said how ‘good’ I look, how ‘refreshed’ and ‘well’ without anyone noticing specifically that I’ve had dental work done. And that is a job extremely well done.
After a six-month journey to fix my greatest insecurity, I now have a set of imperfectly, perfect teeth.
When I look in the mirror I don’t get a shock, just the subtle satisfaction that my teeth no longer let me down. To say I’m thrilled would be an understatement.
For anyone thinking of a cosmetic dentistry, do your homework. Don’t go too white or too perfect. The smile of your dreams is out there.
Professional whitening costs from £565 and bonding from £350 per tooth. susannah’s work would have been £10,200 at londonsmiling.com