Gum Disease: The Basics
What to watch for, what drives it, how we measure your gums, what each part of treatment involves, and how Airflow visits and a dental plan hold it steady.
What Are the Signs of Gum Disease, and How Does a Lanark Practice Treat It?
The earliest clue is usually blood on your brush or floss. Gums may then turn red and swollen, a stale taste can linger, the gum line may creep back and, years later, teeth can work loose. Caught early, it settles with a thorough professional clean and a better routine at home. If the bone has started to suffer, Fiona Dyer, our hygienist in Lanark, treats it with deep cleaning done in stages, each one £100, then keeps it in check with regular Airflow appointments at £100.
Early Warning Signs
Gum disease usually causes no pain for years, so it often comes as news at a hygiene visit. These are the changes worth noticing:
- Blood on your toothbrush, in the basin or on floss, or a faint mark on your pillow in the morning
- A change in colour or texture: healthy gum is pale pink, firm and lightly dimpled, while inflamed gum turns dark red, swollen, glossy or sore
- Bad breath or a sour taste that returns not long after you've cleaned
- Teeth that seem longer, or a sharp feeling from cold near the gum edge, as the gum recedes
- Shifting teeth: an upper front tooth fanning outwards, a space that wasn't there before, or a tooth that gives a little when you chew
- A small swelling or abscess on the gum, sometimes with pus
Of these, bleeding matters most, because it tends to appear years before any tooth feels loose. Smoking can hide it: a smoker's gums often stay quiet even while the disease is active, so regular gum measurements are especially important if you smoke.
What Causes It
Gum disease is driven by plaque, the soft, sticky film of bacteria that forms on teeth daily. Plaque left sitting at the gum edge provokes inflammation as the body reacts against it. Give it a day or two and it starts hardening into tartar, which no toothbrush can remove and which offers new plaque a rough foothold.
Everyone gets plaque, but how quickly the disease moves depends a great deal on you. These speed it up:
| Risk factor | Effect |
|---|---|
| Smoking | The biggest risk of all. It hides bleeding and holds back healing |
| Diabetes | Poorly controlled blood sugar worsens gum disease, and gum disease in turn makes sugar harder to control |
| Family history | If a parent lost teeth to gum problems, your own risk is higher |
| Pregnancy | Changing hormones make the gums overreact to plaque |
| Certain medicines | Some dry the mouth; others make the gum thicken and trap plaque |
| Crowded teeth, bridges, braces | Extra corners where plaque can sit undisturbed |
| Stress | Weakens your defences and tends to make cleaning hurried |
Noticed Blood When You Brush?
Fiona Dyer, our hygienist, can take a proper look.
Gingivitis and Periodontitis
Gingivitis means the gum itself is inflamed and nothing more. No lasting harm has been done. Clear the plaque, keep it clear, and the gum heals back to full health.
Periodontitis can develop when gingivitis goes on unchecked. The inflammation moves deeper, reaching the ligament and bone that anchor the tooth. The gum lifts away to leave a pocket beside the root, and bone is gradually broken down. Bone that is lost does not grow back. Plenty of people with gingivitis never go on to periodontitis, yet every case of periodontitis started out as gingivitis, so dealing with the early stage is what protects you from the later one. Our periodontal disease guide covers the advanced form in detail.
How We Measure Your Gums
Your gums are assessed at each dental examination and every hygiene visit. One of our dentists, or Fiona, slides a thin, round-ended probe gently along each tooth to measure the small groove between gum and tooth. Healthy gum gives a reading of up to about three millimetres; anything deeper tells us the gum has come away. We also record which areas bleed and whether any tooth is mobile.
If we find deep pockets, X-rays show how much bone surrounds each root. The disease is then given a stage and a grade under the British Society of Periodontology system: the stage describes how far it has progressed, the grade how fast. Measuring takes only a few minutes and feels, at most, a little uncomfortable.
Treatment, Stage by Stage
- A thorough clean and some coaching. For gingivitis, Fiona clears away plaque and tartar, points out the areas your brush is missing and finds the interdental brush sizes that suit your gaps. In most people the bleeding settles inside two weeks.
- Tackle what's driving it. Where periodontitis is found, treatment still opens with that clean and coaching, along with support to stop smoking or bring diabetes under better control. Deeper work won't last without this groundwork.
- Cleaning below the gum. With the area numbed, Fiona treats the mouth a quarter at a time, normally over four visits, using slim instruments to clean each root right down to the floor of its pocket. Every stage costs £100. 1
- Measure again. After a few months we repeat the pocket readings to see what has healed and what needs further attention.
- Keep it stable. Regular hygiene appointments, often three-monthly, stop the harmful bacteria taking hold again.
Because lost bone stays lost, periodontitis is controlled rather than cured. The goal is to halt it, and with steady care at home it normally stays halted.
Where Airflow Comes In
Airflow is a brand of air-polishing system. Instead of a rubber cup and gritty paste, it directs a jet of warm water, air and ultra-fine powder at the teeth, lifting plaque and stains from the surface and from just under the gum edge. It reaches around implants, bridges and orthodontic wires that a polishing cup can't get to, it is faster, and most patients find it feels gentler than scaling on its own.
An Airflow hygiene appointment costs £100. You can add Airflow to a standard visit for £30, and it is part of every hygiene visit on either of our dental plans. 1
Gums and Dental Implants
Before any implant is placed, gum disease needs to be under control. Implants can lose bone to the same bacteria, a condition called peri-implantitis, and they have fewer natural defences than a tooth. That is why Dr Kalsi makes sure your gums are stable before planning implant treatment, and will ask Fiona to treat them first if they aren't. Once the implant is in, regular professional cleaning protects it, and keeping that up is part of our implant guarantee, which is a 5-year guarantee for non-smokers who attend hygiene visits every 3 months.
Keeping It in Check Long Term
Treatment removes the build-up that is there now. Your daily habits decide whether it returns: an interdental brush through every gap once a day, two minutes of brushing morning and night with the bristles aimed into the gum edge, not smoking, and keeping your hygiene appointments at the interval Fiona recommends.
After gum disease, that interval is usually every three months, and Plan B is designed around it. For £40.16 a month you get an Airflow clean each quarter, two dental examinations a year and the small X-rays that go with them. Plan A, at £24.10 a month, includes a clean every six months instead, which suits people whose gums are already healthy. On either plan, most private treatment is 10% cheaper, so each gum treatment stage drops to £90.
Questions
This guide is general information, not a diagnosis. A dentist needs to examine you to say what is right for your teeth.