Thursday, April 9, 2009

Gingivitis May Lead to Harsh Treatments. Save Your Teeth!

By David Snape

You can imagine that I didn't like hearing what the doctor had to say. She said that I needed a 'Scaling and Root Planing' otherwise known as SRP. I was told by the hygienist that I didn't need to worry about feeling any pain because she could make my gums feel numb. I thought, "What happens after the medicine wears off"? She also said it would be best to start right away because if I came back later insurance might not cover as much.

I didn't like the sound of that! Start today? I thought they were pushing things a bit too far. I wondered why I had to have this done now when just a few months back, I didn't need this 'SRP' treatment.

After that, I went home. I pondered the situation and a couple of questions entered my mind. Did my dentist teach me anything about the prevention of gum disease over those many years that I went to her? I wondered that if she had taught me more on prevention, would I still have ended up with this problem?

It was a bit disturbing to finally understand that I had gum disease. Gum disease didn't seem a bit friendly. I was really a bit panicked about this SRP treatment. I think that like me, this probably happens to a lot of people. They just aren't any more informed than I was. Maybe after someone tells them, they start to look into it more. They might conclude, as I did, that the dentist should have told them more about this disease and how to prevent it.

My personal research helped me to realize that this didn't happen between office visits. It was a problem that had been brewing for years. Only when things were really out of control did the dentist and hygienist tell me about it - and what they could offer as a treatment.

Despite my hesitation and moment of not knowing what to do, I'm glad that I decided to forgo treatment. I was basically in a situation where I had to learn what was up for myself. What I found really opened my eyes.

A great deal of the world's population suffers form some form of gum disease right now. The large percentage seems pretty unnatural to me. I wondered why dentistry hasn't found a cure for this after a few hundred years?

Incredibly enough, and you can verify this with any periodontist, perhaps as much as 80% of the population has some form of gum disease at this very moment. You would have to guess that either those statistics are completely wrong, or people have no idea what is going on in their mouths!

The fact remains, many folks are just not going to take a closer look into their own gum disease problem until they realize that they have a problem. That is maddening, because a little bit of prevention would have saved a lot of grief, pain and money. I have personally, through my own research and experimentation (on myself), found several tools and products to be useful. I can only wish that I had known how much they could have helped me years before. The only information I had from my dentist was about brushing, flossing and mouthwash.

Had those things been effective, I would have been fine. Yet, despite my normal and frequent routine of brushing and flossing, I still had a problem develop. Those activities just weren't enough to prevent gum disease!

I found the answers I was looking for. The result was that my dentist and hygienist were a bit surprised when they saw me next. They even said that I no longer needed that treatment that was the 'only thing that could help' just a few months previous. Look below to find the link that will tell you some of the things I did to make my situation better.

In the end, I hope that more people can be educated about gum disease, bleeding gums, gingivitis and periodontal disease. I believe it is important to keep our gums healthy and keep our original set of teeth or at least as many as we still can. Don't you? - 14130

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