Gum disease starts as gingivitis \u2014 red, puffy gums that bleed when you brush. At this stage it is entirely reversible with a professional cleaning and a change in brushing technique. If it is ignored, the infection works its way below the gum and starts dissolving the bone that holds the teeth in. That stage is called periodontitis, and the bone lost cannot be grown back.<\/p>\n
The warning sign most people miss is that gum disease rarely hurts. Bleeding while brushing gets dismissed as “hard brushing”, bad breath gets blamed on food, and by the time a tooth feels loose a great deal of bone has already gone. If your gums bleed, get them looked at.<\/p>\n
Treatment starts with scaling and root planing \u2014 cleaning the hardened deposits off the tooth surfaces above and below the gum line, under local anaesthesia where needed. Deeper pockets may need flap surgery to access and clean the root surface properly. We measure the pocket depths at the start so you can see, in numbers, whether the treatment is working.<\/p>\n
Gum disease is also strongly linked with diabetes: uncontrolled blood sugar makes gum infection worse, and gum infection makes blood sugar harder to control. If you are diabetic, tell us \u2014 it changes how we plan your treatment and your recall interval.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gum disease is where the gums become swollen, sore or infected. Treated early it is completely reversible; left alone it is the leading cause of tooth loss in adults.<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"menu_order":50,"template":"","class_list":["post-447","bcd_service","type-bcd_service","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pulse360care.com\/BrightDental\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bcd_service\/447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pulse360care.com\/BrightDental\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bcd_service"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pulse360care.com\/BrightDental\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bcd_service"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pulse360care.com\/BrightDental\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}