Gum Disease
I know how frustrating it can be to be suddenly confronted by the notion that you have gum disease. Yet, you should know that you really are not alone. Lots and lots of people have this problem. The difference between you and them is that they do not know it yet.
Statistics tell us that up to 75% of people are now suffering from some form of gum disease. Well, actually, they have ‘some form of gum disease’. You might agree that if true, many people just do not know they have it. It is not something that many people talk about or discuss.
This is one of the reasons they call it a silent disease. So, to revisit the key point, you are not alone. Many people are in the same boat.
Often people wonder how they got it. Well, it is a bacterial infection. You cannot completely get rid of the bacteria, but on the other hand, not all of the bacteria in your mouth are the type that cause gum disease. Only a small portion are.
These bacteria grow pretty rapidly under a thin biofilm called plaque. You may have heard that term before. We are often warned to brush and floss our teeth – the whole point of that is to disrupt plaque.
Plaque forms this pretty much invisible layer in our mouths. Under the protection of that layer you will find that bacteria are shielded from oxygen. In a low oxygen environment such as this, the bacteria digest things in a different way than ‘normal’. The byproducts of this are what irritate and harm our gum tissue.
The good news is that if you can manage to disrupt this layer of plaque on a daily basis, you may be able to control the bacterial population to the point that you do not exhibit any signs of dental disease. This would be a happy point to arrive at, wouldn’t it?
One of the key points about this problem, and the vast majority of dental professionals will happily tell you this if you ask them – is that what you do at home is far more important than what they do in the office when it comes to preventing dental disease.
Here again, you should know that this is not really your fault. You see, if the average regimen of brushing and flossing were enough, then most people would not be stuck with an active case of gum disease, would they.
On the other hand, few of us have never been told what we can do beyond brushing and flossing to make our mouths healthy again. As you can see, this isn’t that great for any of us!
