YOU don't need to be old to have receding gums. Gum recession can start very early – in fact there are even some teenagers who have it.
When gum recedes from a tooth, the yellower softer root becomes exposed and the tooth looks longer. This tends not only to leave the teeth in a less attractive condition, but they can feel more sensitive to cold and are more prone to decay.
So why does it happen? One cause of receding gums is gum disease. Gum disease erodes the bone that supports the teeth and when the bone slips back the gum does too. Teeth can start to wobble, drift apart and spaces can open up between teeth.
On the other hand the gum can recede when there is no active gum disease. In these cases there is not normally one thing that causes the roots to become exposed. Normally its a combination of factors that leads to the tooth looking long.
It could be the position of the tooth in the jaw. Teeth which grow in a more forward position in the jaw bone tend to have less gum covering them. Continual banging of a tongue or lip piercing can dramatically strip gum back too.
Grinders often find that they can feel a notch in the tooth just below the gum line which goes hand in hand with gum recession. Moreover just as you can have different skin types, there are different types of gum.
There is a spectrum of gum thickness from the thin type that tends to recede quickly to the very thick type that recedes more slowly.
The starting point part is to establish why the gums are receding. If it is due to gum disease then the severity of the infection dictates the treatments needed to fix it.
These range from deep cleaning or some surgical treatments right through to having teeth taken out.
Fortunately going long in the tooth is no longer inevitable. In many cases there are ways to replace gum and reverse the wear. There are minor surgical treatments that can cover the roots with gum – this is called gum grafting. Grafting makes the teeth feel less sensitive and more secure.
What's more, the teeth look shorter, younger and it helps them last longer.
