When you think of a healthy smile, you prob­a­bly think of shiny, straight white teeth. It is impor­tant to remem­ber, how­ev­er, that healthy gums are just as crit­i­cal. Gums are the foun­da­tion of a healthy smile!

Why Do Gums Matter?

Your gums func­tion as anchors for your teeth, hold­ing them in place. When gums are neglect­ed and unhealthy, they begin to bleed and become red and puffy. This reac­tion is the result of bac­te­r­i­al build-up under­neath them. These bac­te­ria destroy the con­nec­tive tis­sue between the gums and teeth, caus­ing pock­ets to form around the roots of the teeth. As these pock­ets become larg­er, teeth become loose and even­tu­al­ly need to be removed.

Did you know that more peo­ple lose their teeth due to gum dis­ease than decay? Gum dis­ease, also called peri­odon­tal dis­ease, is in fact the lead­ing cause of tooth loss in the Unit­ed States, and it is ram­pant among adults. The Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion reports that near­ly half of all adults over age thir­ty in the Unit­ed States have gum disease.

Gums Are a Window to the Rest of Your Body

Oral bac­te­ria can trav­el through infect­ed gum tis­sue, cir­cu­lat­ing in the blood stream and trig­ger­ing an inflam­ma­to­ry response in your vital organs. The Amer­i­can Den­tal Asso­ci­a­tion and the Amer­i­can Heart Asso­ci­a­tion have linked gum dis­ease and heart dis­ease. Sci­en­tists sus­pect that the con­nec­tion is due to oral bac­te­ria, found in infect­ed gum tissue.

Oral bac­te­ria enters the blood stream through the pock­ets between the teeth and gums. It then con­tributes to the for­ma­tion of arte­r­i­al plaque. Oral bac­te­ria has been found in the fat­ty deposits of peo­ple with ath­er­o­scle­ro­sis. These deposits can nar­row arter­ies or break loose and cause block­ages, lead­ing to heart attack or stroke.

Peo­ple with gum dis­ease have two to three times the risk of hav­ing a heart attack, stroke, or oth­er seri­ous car­dio­vas­cu­lar event.

Preventing Periodontal Disease

At Parkview Fam­i­ly Den­tal, our goal is to pre­vent peri­odon­tal dis­ease from devel­op­ing. We encour­age you to come in for reg­u­lar den­tal clean­ings, and at your appoint­ments we spend time edu­cat­ing you on how to main­tain a healthy smile with prop­er brush­ing, floss­ing, and dietary choices.

We have a range of treat­ments avail­able to help stop peri­odon­tal dis­ease from pro­gress­ing. Treat­ments include med­ica­tion and deep clean­ing treat­ments, or scal­ing and root plan­ing. This pro­ce­dure involves thor­ough­ly scal­ing all plaque, bac­te­r­i­al tox­ins, and tar­tar deposits from your teeth and root sur­faces. After the scal­ing is com­plete, root plan­ing smoothes all rough areas on your roots’ surfaces.

Smooth root sur­faces keep bac­te­ria, plaque and tar­tar from re-adher­ing under­neath the gum line, allow­ing your gums to heal and reat­tach them­selves more firmly.

In more advanced cas­es of peri­odon­tal dis­ease we may rec­om­mend gum surgery in con­junc­tion with pro­ce­dures such as bone graft­ing in order to elim­i­nate the dis­ease and help regen­er­ate the lev­el of bone and sta­bi­lize health.

Con­tact us today to sched­ule a con­sul­ta­tion with our peri­odon­tist, Dr. Dale Rosen­bach DMD.