When you take time to maintain healthy gums, you protect the vital connective tissue that secures your smile! This material prevents oral bacteria from entering the bone that holds your teeth, and when infected this protection is threatened. If irritation from disease or other causes breaks down your gingival tissue, bacteria can form pockets between your teeth. This reinforces your body’s inflammatory response that begins to destroy your gums. However, if you brush and floss every day and attend regular dental checkups, you can prevent the irritation that plaque and tartar bring. In between dental visits, pay attention to common signs of gum disease and schedule another checkup if needed. Chronic bad breath, bleeding each time you brush, and sensitive red tissue are all signs of an active infection. If caught in its first stage, gingivitis, gum disease is potentially reversible. This is why it is so important to see our team as soon as symptoms prevent. Once the infection reaches the bone, it becomes permanent. At this stage, we can provide ongoing periodontal maintenance to keep your disease in remission.
At your Ankeny, IA, dental office, we stress the importance of healthy gums when it comes to caring for your smile. Fortunately, the same behaviors that prevent tooth decay go a long way toward preserving healthy gums. This is because the plaque and tartar deposits that wear away at your smile’s enamel are the same material that infects your gingival tissue. By staying on top of your regular cleaning schedule, we can remove deposits you cannot handle on your own and identify infections as soon as they occur.
Maintaining Healthy Gums With Cleanings And Exams
When you make biannual checkups with your dentist a priority, you regularly prevent plaque and tartar buildup from continuing to damage your smile. These treatments go hand in hand with daily brushing and flossing to provide a preventive standard of care for your oral health. This means preventing damage to the teeth and gums before waiting for more involved procedures to become necessary to restore their health. An exam every six months means that you will never go any longer without an active threat being addressed. For gum health, this means detecting infections when they are still reversible instead of allowing the disease to progress to a permanent state.
Periodontal Maintenance
For patients with active gum infections, we can perform a scaling and root planing procedure that removes bacterial deposits both above and below your gum line. By peeling back your gums, we clean the entirety of the tooth’s root which allows your tissues to reattach and resolve your active symptoms. Ongoing maintenance treatments help you prevent your disease from reemerging.
Talk To Your Ankeny, IA, Dental Team About Treatment For Gum Disease
If you want to learn more about the periodontal maintenance services we offer, please call your Ankeny, IA, dentist’s office at 515-207-6182 to schedule a visit today.
