You Could Drive a Truck Through That

I can't tell you how many times I get patients in the office with a picture of their favorite celebrity asking me to give them the same smile. What most people don’t understand is that celebrities are just like everyone else and it requires lots of work and dental treatment to give them that Hollywood smile. Being born with a perfect smile is extremely rare. What’s even more rare is having a perfect smile in the shade of toilet bowl white that most people want! Zac Efron is no exception.

While his hair may be perfect all the time his teeth definitely needed some professional help. Lets take a look at young Zac before he became a certified heartthrob. Little Zac suffered from a condition that many Americans deal with called Malocclusion. This is essentially a fancy term for crooked teeth. The remedy to this problem is orthodontic treatment. Using braces we are able to reposition each tooth in his mouth to the exact location that will yield the prettiest smile.  The next step is to wait 2-3 years while each tooth begins to move. This is how long most orthodontic treatment takes, depending on the complexity of the case.

After completion of the braces we’ve still not quite arrived at dreamy Zac. Although braces will give you a near perfect smile there may be a tooth or two that’s still off due to the natural shape of the tooth. This is where the magic of bonding comes into play. Using a material called composite we can add and reshape a tooth to make it look perfect. Zac may have had some bonding done between the two front teeth to close the space completely.

While Zac’s teeth were already a nice shade he definitely had some whitening treatment to help push it to a Hollywood level. Whitening treatments like Zoom or Boost are made from a material called hydrogen peroxide. This is a bleaching material that will help remove extrinsic staining on the teeth and make them whiter than their natural shade.  As with most types of physical improvement; no pain no gain. Whitening does produce great results but also causes lots of sensitivity that can be mild to severe. Although, the sensitivity is temporary it can be annoying and uncomfortable. I’m glad it all worked out well and the combination of treatments has produced a beautiful smile for Zac. I give his dental team an A+, Go Zac Go!!