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Protecting Your Gums From Bacterial Infection

Your gums play a vital role in protecting your smile and maintaining your oral health. They work hard every day to seal your body away from outside threats while connecting your teeth to your jawbone. That’s why protecting them across your entire lifetime is critical to enjoying a healthy grin. The protection you provide your gums means protecting your smile. When left to degrade, you can develop gum disease, the primary cause of tooth loss among American adults. This means when you brush and floss each morning, you are doing your part to ensure you have healthy, strong teeth when you are older. And don’t skip the flossing part! By removing particles that gather in between teeth down near the gum line, you are removing the deposits that most easily reach your gingival tissues. When you attend your routine dental cleanings, you give yourself the best chance for preventing these infections and allow us to detect them as soon as they appear.

At your Ankeny, IA dental practice, we inspect all of your oral structures at each examination and cleaning. This means checking your gums for signs of infection or even cancer in addition to cleaning your teeth. Because the same bacterial deposits that cause cavities contribute to gum disease, your professional cleaning removes threats that you cannot handle on your own at home. By adopting a preventive attitude toward oral care, you can prevent infection before it takes hold instead of responding to it when symptoms appear.

When Was Your Last Dental Checkup?

When you think about your time in the dental chair, you may focus on the work we do to prevent cavities from forming in your smile. While this is one of our primary concerns, we know that removing plaque and tartar is the number one way to prevent bacteria from infecting your gums. If it has been a long time since your last checkup, we urge you to schedule one today! By sticking to a semiannual checkup schedule, you can routinely obtain professional service and detect any gum problems quickly upon their arrival.

We Provide Periodontal Care

If we detect a gum infection, we can put you on periodontal maintenance therapy to help get it under control. This allows us to clean your smile both above and below the gumline to access bacterial pockets that rest under your gingival tissues. Once removed, we clean your tooth roots to allow your gums to reattach.

Talk To Your Ankeny, IA, Dental Team About Caring For Your Gums!

If you have not had a cleaning in a while, please schedule an appointment today. Regular care can preserve your gum health over your lifetime. If you would like to learn more about this or any other service we offer, please call your Ankeny, IA, dentist’s office at 515-207-6182 to schedule a visit today.