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What is Periodontal Disease?
Periodontal disease is also known as periodontitis, but most people know it as gum disease. While this is a common oral disease, it damages your soft tissue and should be addressed immediately. If you let gum disease go untreated, the soft tissue damage can eventually turn into damage to the bones that structure your teeth. This leads to further complications, leaving you at risk of losing teeth.
Who is at Highest Risk of Periodontal Disease?
There are many factors that determine how at risk a person is for gum disease. Oral hygiene is a main consideration, but age, lifestyle, genetics, stress, medication and so forth can also play a part. And postmenopausal women may see a compounding effect take place, with hormonal changes adding to factors like age to increase risk. And menopausal gingivostomatitis is another gum disease that can affect women during or after menopause.
It’s best for women experiencing menopause to start taking preventive measures against these types of risk factors by getting regular dental checkups as well as discussing their oral health with both their dentist and their doctor.
How to Lower Risk of Periodontal Disease
The best way to lower your risk of suffering from gum disease is to practice good oral hygiene daily. This includes:
- Brushing 2x or more per day
- Daily flossing
- Regular dental checkups, cleanings and preventive care
- Getting into good dental habits early in life — and passing this along to your children, too!
- Avoiding excessive drinking and smoking Having all-around healthy habits
- Discussing oral health with your healthcare practitioners as you age
How to Know if You Have Periodontal Disease
There are several ways that your dentist will know if you have gum disease. Like any doctor would, they will go over your lifestyle and medical history to determine your individual risk factors as well as conduct a thorough examination of your mouth and teeth.
Your dentist will also use a dental probe to check something known as the pocket depth between your teeth and gums. This helps determine how your oral hygiene is stacking up at any given moment — pockets between 1mm and 3mm typically indicate good health. Anything over 4mm may be signs of gum disease.
If you do have deeper pockets, your dentist may order dental X-rays to determine if you’re experiencing any bone loss.
Treating Gum Disease
If you do get diagnosed with gum disease, you have several options. To treat gum disease, the main target is your teeth pockets. Your dental health practitioner — whether it be your dentist, a periodontist or dental hygienist — will try to head off any further damage to the bones supporting your teeth by cleaning out the pockets around your teeth. This is why regular checkups are so important — catching gum disease before the pockets get too deep (and therefore harder to clean) is key.
Beyond this, there are several noninvasive as well as surgical treatments. Your dentist may manually remove tartar and bacteria from your mouth using a procedure called scaling. Or they may treat your roots with root planing, which helps prevent future overgrowths of tartar and bacteria. And you may be prescribed antibiotics — these will help minimize any infections.
For more serious cases of gum disease, surgical intervention may be necessary. Treatments include:
- Pocket reduction surgery
- Reinforcing soft tissue with soft tissue grafts
- Replacing lost bone with bone grafts
- Tissue regeneration, which can be completed with a few different methods
Save on Oral Healthcare Costs with a Dental Savings Plan
Regular checkups and good dental hygiene are key to preventing periodontal disease. And whether you need regular dental care or treatment for periodontal disease, a dental savings plan is a great place to look for savings. These plans offer 10-60% on most dental procedures and can help plan members get the care they need and deserve without breaking the bank. They also do not have any restrictions on pre-existing conditions, and they activate right away – start getting the care you need in just 1-3 business days.