What Causes Your Gums To Recede?

By Author: Richard Mullens
Total Articles: 54
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If you value oral health, you know gums can have issues. Such problems range from mild irritation or bleeding to full-on infections. That said, did you know gum tissue can also pull back sometimes? This condition will harm your mouth if left unattended. However, you can prevent (or at least manage) it with the proper knowledge and resources. Your local dental team will even explain the details. To that end, here’s a summary of gum recession, its causes, and how dentistry can help.

What is Gum Recession?
As you’d expect, gum recession is when gum tissue pulls away from your teeth. The ailment often exposes your pearly whites’ dental roots.

By causing you to look “long in the tooth,” this recession actually harms oral health. The exposure of tooth roots raises your risk of dental issues. In particular, bacteria could reach the exposed areas and cause tooth decay, tooth infections, and worse. You should thus treat the problem as soon as possible.

What are Its Causes?
Truthfully, a person’s gums can recede for various reasons. The most typical causes of the recession include:

• Overbrushing: ...
... As it happens, brushing your gums forcefully doesn’t help them. The habit is much more likely to damage the tissues. From there, your gums could start to recede.
• Poor Oral Hygiene: When you keep your mouth clean, your gums are less at risk of receding. Plaque that builds up on the gumline can trigger gum disease, often leading to the dreaded recession.
• Tooth Grinding: While it’s well-known for eroding teeth, bruxism can do more than just that. Grinding your pearly whites could also make your gums recede.
• Tobacco Use: According to the latest research, tobacco products can trigger gum recession.

How Does Dentistry Help?
With a dentist’s help, you can prevent or manage gum recession. Their methods vary in each of the two scenarios.

To prevent receding gums, your dentist could do a standard cleaning. This option removes plaque from your mouth before it irritates gum tissue. That way, you can avoid the trouble of long-looking teeth.

Alternatively, dentists have several ways to manage gum recession. One is root scaling and planing, a type of “deep-cleaning” that eliminates plaque under the gumline. (Done well, it’ll keep your gums from receding further.) Another method is a gum graft – a surgery that takes gum tissue from a healthy area and places it where the gums have thinned. Typically, the grafting process covers exposed tooth roots and improves oral health.

As you can see, receding gums are no laughing matter. See your local dentist immediately if you’re dealing with them. With their help, the pink around your teeth will be in better shape.