Have you noticed gaps forming between the crown of one or more of your teeth and the gumline? Is this area more sensitive to hot or cold food or drink? You might be dealing with receding gums, a condition that affects many adults. Here’s everything you need to know about receding gums and what you can do to deal with it before the holiday season!

 

What is Receding Gums?

Receding gums happens when the gums retract from the crown of a tooth, exposing some of the tooth root. Typically, the recession happens over time, but the recession can be accelerated if you’re dealing with oral hygiene issues.

The proper dental term for receding gums is gingival recession.

The root of the tooth isn’t protected by hard enamel like the crown of the tooth is. Food particles and plaque can accumulate in the valleys between the gumline and the crown, and with the exposed root being softer and less protected, this is a common spot for cavities or sensitivity if left untreated.

 

What Causes Receding Gums?

Some of the main causes of receding gums are:

• Periodontal Diseases – Gum diseases such as gingivitis and periodontitis can cause gums to recede. These diseases appear as sore, inflamed and bleeding gums, but in more severe cases they can cause the gum tissue to be destroyed, exposing the tooth root.
• Aggressive Brushing – Brushing too hard or with a too-hard toothbrush can cause gum recession. Scrubbing back and forth along the teeth and gumline can cause your gums to recede, as can using a toothbrush that is anything harder than the ‘soft’ label you’ll find on the packaging. Many people think that having a toothbrush with stiffer bristles will help keep your teeth cleaner, but stiffer bristles are more likely to damage your gums.
• Genetics & Hormones – For some people, the cause of their receding gums lies not in anything that they’re doing but in the makeup of their bodies. Receding gums can be passed down through genetics or caused by hormonal changes. Typically, people don’t experience receding gums until their 40’s, but adolescents can experience it as part of puberty, and expecting mothers can experience it as their bodies go through the hormonal changes related to pregnancy.

 

How Do You Treat Receding Gums?

Unfortunately, once gums have receded, they won’t grow back naturally on their own. Dental intervention is needed.

 

Make Sure You Use a Soft Toothbrush

Not matter how severe your gum recession is, if you’re using anything harder than a ‘soft’ toothbrush, you should immediately get a new ‘soft’ one. Even if you’re only just noticing minor recession of your gums you should immediately switch to a ‘soft’ toothbrush.

 

Visit Your Dentist

If your gum recession is minor, your dentist may not choose to treat it straight away.

Rather, they’ll monitor it, measuring the amount of recession each time you go for a regular checkup to determine if the recession is growing.

 

Filling Gum Recessions

In some cases, your dentist will use fillings to fill the gap between the crown of the tooth and the gumline.

This is a similar procedure for filling a cavity: they clean the exposed root to make sure there is no contamination, prepare the surface so the filling will bond to it, apply the filling, and polish it to smooth out any rough spots.

The whole treatment takes as little as 15 minutes and you can have multiple teeth treated if you have receding gums on more than one tooth.

 

Dealing with Extreme Gum Recession

In more extreme cases, your family dentist might refer you to a periodontist. A periodontist might use surgical treatments such as gum and bone grafting to help bring the gumline back to meet the crown of a tooth.

 

If you’re dealing with receding gums, book an appointment with your family dentist immediately. The recession might not require urgent attention, but your dentist will monitor it as part of your regular checkups to make sure it doesn’t become a more serious problem.

 

Get Your Receding Gums Taken Care of Before the Holidays!

If you want to take a preventative approach to dealing with your receding gums, call one of our dental offices and book an appointment. We can likely take care of the issue, in plenty of time for the holidays, and under the coverage of unused benefits that you’re going to lose if you don’t use them by the end of the year!

Call Orion Dental, your trusted family dentist!