You may know that regular dental teeth cleanings are an important part of keeping your teeth healthy, but you may be unfamiliar with deep cleanings. Deep cleanings are important for gum health since they'll remove plaque from underneath of your gumline—this isn't done during a normal cleaning, and you can't do this at home. Deep cleanings can help prevent gum disease and can even treat it in its early stages, which makes them vital for protecting your overall oral health. Read on to learn three reasons why a deep dental teeth cleaning is important to keep your gums healthy.
1. Removes Plaque From Under Your Gumline
During a deep cleaning, a dental scaler will be used to remove any plaque that's built up between your teeth and your gums. Bacteria located in your gum pockets can migrate to the root of your tooth, where they can cause an infection. They're also able to easily infect your jawbone as well, which can lead to tooth loss.
You aren't able to remove bacteria between your teeth and your gums by brushing and flossing at home. A dental scaler is the only tool that can do the job. Because of this, periodic deep cleanings are important to help maintain your dental health—it's the only way to remove disease-causing plaque that has built up below your gumline.
2. Root Planing Helps Prevent Future Decay
After removing your plaque with a scaler, your dentist will use a root planer to smooth out the surface of your teeth below the gumline. A polished surface is much more difficult for bacteria to adhere to, so this procedure helps to prevent plaque from building back up beneath your gums again.
Root planing can also help decrease the depth of your gum pockets. During the early stages of gum disease, it's common for the gums to begin to pull away from nearby teeth, creating deep pockets. This is due to inflammation, and it can cause gum disease to worsen—deep gum pockets provide ample space for bacteria to hide. Planing your teeth and removing inflammation-causing bacteria helps your gums adhere to your teeth again, reducing the depth of your gum pockets and making it less likely for bacteria to invade beneath your gumline.
3. Allows Your Dentist to Check Your Gum Health
While performing your deep cleaning, your dentist will check your gums for any evidence of disease along with how serious it is. This helps you catch gum disease early in its development, which is very important—when gum disease progresses without treatment, it's more likely to cause tooth loss. If your dentist finds any signs of gum disease, they'll likely recommend treatments such as antibiotic gels that can help reverse it.
Whether you currently have symptoms of gum disease or not, deep cleanings should be part of your overall oral health regimen. They take much longer than normal dental teeth cleanings, but they're able to remove all of the plaque that normal cleanings will miss. It's typically recommended to have a deep cleaning done twice a year, but you may have to have them done more often if you have signs of gum disease—they help to prevent gum disease from progressing. If you're not currently undergoing regular deep cleanings, contact a dentist in your area to schedule one. You'll be able to remove all of the built-up plaque underneath of your gumline that you can't remove with brushing and flossing alone.
To learn more about teeth cleaning, contact a local dentist.
Every time you take a bite of food, you should be grateful for your healthy teeth! A tooth can lose its health and structure quickly once decay sets in. Luckily, if you visit your dentist for regular appointments, the decay should not get too serious before your dentist notices it and can do something about it. That "something" is applying a filling. On the other hand, if the decay progresses too long before it is caught, you may need a crown or even an extraction.
We want to keep our teeth, and we know you want to keep yours. That's why we created this website to teach you more about dentists and dental care. Enjoy!