Gum Disease, Explained Simply
What to watch for, what causes it, how we assess it, what each stage of treatment means, and how Airflow and a membership plan keep it stable.
What Are the Signs of Gum Disease, and How Do You Treat It in Broughty Ferry?
The earliest sign is blood on your toothbrush. Red or swollen gums, a lingering bad taste and gums that pull back come next, with loose teeth only much further down the line. Caught early, gum disease settles with a professional clean and sharper brushing at home. Where bone loss has begun, our hygienist in Broughty Ferry treats it with deep cleaning in stages at £100 each, then keeps it stable with regular Airflow hygiene visits at £100.
What to Watch For
Gum disease seldom causes pain until it is far advanced, which is why so many people are taken aback when we spot it. The things to notice are:
- Blood when you brush or use interdental brushes, or a pink smear on the pillow in the morning
- A change in how the gums look: dark red, swollen, glossy or sore, instead of pale pink, firm and lightly dimpled like the skin of an orange
- A bad taste or smell that returns not long after you have cleaned your teeth
- Teeth that seem longer, or a sharp twinge from cold drinks at the gum line, because the gum has shrunk back
- Drifting: a front tooth leaning forward, a gap that was not there before, or a tooth that gives slightly when you bite
- A small boil on the gum, or pus when you press it
Of all these, bleeding is the one to take seriously, because it appears years ahead of any loosening. Be aware that smoking hides bleeding even while the disease is active, so smokers need their gums checked regularly all the more.
What Causes It
It all starts with plaque, the soft film of bacteria that forms on every tooth each day. Left sitting at the gum margin, it triggers the gum's inflammatory defences. After a day or two it begins to harden into tartar, something no toothbrush can shift, and its rough surface gives new plaque a foothold.
Plaque lights the fuse, but how quickly things progress depends on you. Factors that accelerate it:
| Risk factor | What it does |
|---|---|
| Smoking | By far the biggest. Hides the bleeding and holds back healing |
| Diabetes | Gum disease is more severe when blood sugar is poorly controlled, and each condition worsens the other |
| Family history | Your own risk is higher where a parent lost teeth to gum disease |
| Pregnancy | Hormonal changes make the gums over-react to plaque |
| Certain medicines | A dry mouth, or enlarged gums that hold on to plaque |
| Crowded teeth, bridges, braces | Extra nooks where plaque can lodge |
| Stress | Weakens your defences and tends to go with hurried brushing |
Sore or Bleeding Gums?
Book in with our hygienist for a check and a clean.
Gingivitis and Periodontitis: The Two Stages
Gingivitis is inflammation confined to the gum, nothing more. There is no lasting damage, and once the plaque is removed and kept off, the gum goes back to full health.
Periodontitis is the stage that may follow if gingivitis is left alone. The inflammation works its way down into the ligament and the bone holding the tooth, the gum peels away to form a pocket, and the bone is gradually eaten away. Bone that has gone does not come back. Gingivitis does not always turn into periodontitis, but gingivitis is where every case of periodontitis began, which makes sorting out the early stage your best defence against anything worse. There is more on the advanced form in our periodontal disease guide.
How We Assess Your Gums
Every examination and hygiene appointment includes a gum check. Your dentist or our hygienist runs a slim, blunt-ended probe gently along the groove between gum and tooth, all the way round every tooth. A healthy groove measures a couple of millimetres; a deeper reading means the gum has detached. We note down which areas bleed and whether any tooth has loosened.
Where pockets turn out to be deep, an X-ray reveals how much bone is still there around each root. From that we assign a stage and a grade to the disease under the British Society of Periodontology system, which describes how far it has progressed and how fast it is moving. All of this takes a few minutes and is at worst mildly uncomfortable.
What Treatment Involves, Stage by Stage
- Clean and coach. With gingivitis, our hygienist clears away the plaque and tartar and shows you the areas you are missing and which size of interdental brush fits each gap. For most people the bleeding has stopped within two weeks.
- Tackle the risk factors. Where periodontitis is found, the same clean and coaching come first, along with support to stop smoking or get diabetes under control. Skip that and the deeper treatment will not last.
- Cleaning beneath the gum. Our hygienist divides the mouth into quarters and treats one per visit, usually across four stages and with local anaesthetic, using fine instruments to clean every root surface as far as the pocket extends. Each stage costs £100. 1
- Measure again. Some months on, we probe once more to find out which pockets have closed and which still need attention.
- Keep it stable. Hygiene appointments, often three-monthly, stop the bacteria getting a hold again.
Because lost bone does not return, periodontitis is something we keep in check rather than cure. The intention is to bring it to a standstill, and with good home care that is generally where it stays.
The Role of Airflow
Airflow is a branded form of air polishing. Rather than a spinning rubber cup and abrasive paste, it uses a jet of warm water, air and an ultra-fine powder to lift plaque and staining off the teeth and from just beneath the gum edge. It gets in around brace wires, bridges and implants, places a cup cannot reach, it takes less time, and most patients find it gentler than scaling on its own.
A hygiene visit with Airflow costs £100. It can be added to a standard appointment for £30, and on either of our membership plans it is included in every hygiene visit. 1
Gums and Implants
No implant is placed until any gum disease is under control. The bacteria that eat away bone around a natural tooth will do the same around an implant, a condition known as peri-implantitis, and implants have fewer natural defences than teeth do. That is why our implant dentist checks for stable gums first when planning treatment and will send you to our hygienist beforehand if anything needs sorting. Once the implant is in, regular cleaning protects what you have paid for, and our implant guarantee, a 5-year guarantee for non-smokers who attend hygiene visits every 3 months, depends on it.
Staying on Top of It
Treatment deals with what is there now. Whether it returns comes down to daily habits: interdental brushes once a day, brushing for two minutes twice a day with the bristles angled into the gum margin, not smoking, and hygiene appointments at whatever interval our hygienist recommends.
For most people with a history of gum disease that means every three months. Plan B is designed around that pattern: for £40.16 a month it includes a quarterly Airflow clean, a pair of dental examinations annually and the routine small X-rays taken alongside them. Plan A, at £24.10 a month, gives a six-monthly clean instead and suits gums that are already in good shape. Both plans take 10% off most private treatment, including gum treatment stages, which come down to £90 each.
Questions
This guide is general information, not a diagnosis. A dentist needs to examine you to say what is right for your teeth.