Gingivitis and Beyond

So your gums used to bleed, and you worried about it a little, but thankfully it stopped, so you think everything must be alright. You haven’t seen your dentist for over a year, but that of course is what all the so called experts advise.
Perhaps you need to think again, because what this could easily mean is that your gum disease, because that is what gingivitis is, has literally gone underground. By this what we mean is that the condition you had, bleeding gums, was visible if you cared to look closely in the mirror. If you did this, then what you would have seen wasn’t the nice pink slightly stippled gums next to your teeth, but red slightly swollen gums which would bleed if you touched them.
When the word underground is used, then exactly what is meant by that expression?

To answer that it is necessary to understand the structure of the tooth with the gum which is attached to it, at the join. It also helps to understand and remember what happens when you get an infected cut on let us say your hand. On your hand you end up with a scab which is surrounded by a red and inflamed area of skin, and catch it wrong, the scab will come off and it is difficult to stop the bleeding because the red inflamed bit of skin is swollen slightly as well. Let us now take the parallel situation in the mouth. The gum next to the tooth has been attacked by the bacteria in plaque which we have failed to remove, it becomes inflamed, this word is the equivalent of the infected cut by the way. That inflamed bit of gum is swollen, and so it rises above the place where the gum was attached to the tooth, and forms a space which dental professionals know as a pocket, in this case a false pocket. This pocket allows more food debris, plaque, and bacteria to congregate where they cannot be removed by toothbrushing alone, because they are protected by the swollen gum.

Uncleared plaque reacts with calcium salts in our saliva and sets rather like a plaster of paris mould, and attaches to our teeth. This happens mainly where our saliva glands pour out saliva when we eat, so that is behind our front teeth, and on the two sides of our lower jaw under the tongue, and the outsides of our top back teeth.

We now have a rough, hard deposit known as tartar or scale which sits under and above the gum. You can no longer remove it with a toothbrush, you require a process known as a scale and polish done by a dental professional to remove it. At this stage you still have a false pocket, but unremoved this rough scale irritates the inside of the gum, and slowly causes the false pocket to deepen, and it then becomes a serious and potentially irreversible problem leading eventually to tooth loss.

Everyone needs to be seen by a dental professional regularly to have this checked. Never forget this is how most adults in the western world lose their teeth in later life, and it can be controlled so very easily.