Knowledge has power. You probably remember reading that on a sign in the hallway around your elementary or high school. It is something we say to ourselves to help us remember to learn new information.
Knowledge also has the power to keep your smile healthy and strong! If you understand what you are up against, you are much more likely to be able to prevent harmful infection from coming to your smile.
When 80% of the population of Carrollton, TX is living with some form of gum disease, it is important that we are all aware and on our guard against this harmful infection! Today, we’d like to take some time to make sure that you understand how gum disease works, what you can do to prevent it, and what we can do to treat it here in the office!
Know How Gum Disease Works
Before anything else, we want to make sure you know how gum disease works. You can’t prevent what you don’t understand, after all! Gum disease can happen to anyone at almost any time because all of the elements are already in your mouth!
As you know, your mouth is full of bacteria that feed on the sugars and food remnants on your teeth. That bacteria goes below the gumline and create plaque. The bacteria will continue down the tooth until it reaches the jawbone, where it will begin to attack the bone causing weakness and the loss of teeth.
The only way to prevent this cycle is to routinely remove bacteria from your mouth through brushing, flossing, antibacterial rinses, and routine dental cleaning appointments.
When Gum Disease Enters Your Smile
The really terrifying thing is that you won’t know when gum disease begins in your smile. This isn’t something you will even notice until it has progressed beyond the means of simple treatment options.
When you begin to notice symptoms, it means that the gum disease is now advanced and will need to be treated as such. Those symptoms are gums that are tender or swollen. Gums that bleed when you brush or floss your teeth.
You might even notice your gums turning red instead of the usual, healthy pink that you’re used to seeing. In truly advanced cases, you might even feel your teeth getting loose when you chew food.
Treatment Options for Gum Disease
Of course, gum disease is treatable. Depending on when we catch your gum disease, we can might be able to take care of the infection in a single appointment, or we might have to recommend a more elaborate treatment method. Let’s take a look at those treatment options.
Cleaning
For an early detected case of gum disease, a thorough professional cleaning is all you need to remove the infection from your mouth. We might recommend that you add a special rinse to your routine to prevent further infections, but the cleaning will pretty well take care of things!
We’ve already mentioned that you won’t notice an early infection, so how would anyone ever be able to have their infection treated this way? It’s simple: six month cleaning appointments! These cleaning appointments are essential to catching gingivitis before it can progress into anything more than mild disturbance in your smile’s health.
LANAP Therapy
For more advanced cases (the kind you might notice on your own), we need to turn to something more powerful than a simple cleaning because the infection is just too deep to remove with simple instruments.
In other dental offices, this would mean a deep root cleaning procedure done with metal instruments. You don’t have to worry about that here! We use a procedure called LANAP, which is a special dental laser therapy.
Using the specially created laser, we can remove the harmful bacteria from your smile completely and carefully. The entire procedure is comfortable against your gums and teeth. You won’t be in pain or have to spend several days recovering from surgery.
Afterward, we will give you special treatments to ensure that your gum disease infection is gone for good.
Why Are We So Concerned?
You might be wondering what the big deal is. Why are we so concerned about gum disease if it’s so easy to get rid of it? The answer is simple: gum disease affects more than your gums and teeth.
There is all sorts of research out there connecting gum disease infections with other health concerns. Gum disease is linked with heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and problems with preterm or low birth weight babies.
Would you risk your future health on an infection that is entirely preventable? We hope not. Contact us today to schedule your next cleaning and exam. Let us help you get back your healthy, happy smile once more!
