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You’re never too old to learn, or so they say, and I learnt a valuable lesson a few days ago when I kept an appointment with the dentist.

You see I’ve missed a few appointments and it had been about a year and four months since I last been for a regular checkup. I do clean my teeth regularly each evening as most people do, but this visit to the dentist was for catch up descaling, which I should have kept up with last year.

Some time ago I bought an electric toothbrush, but it made my gums bleed, so I threw it out and instead bought a normal toothbrush of the type that dentists recommend, (only of soft bristles rather than hard).

For about a year also my gums had been bleeding slightly during cleaning, and on occasions my breath had not been the best, (probably due to the slight bleeding of my gums).

Now like most people I can come up with the usual information about cleaning your teeth, and like most people I knew all about how holes in your teeth were formed. No, I didn’t need any fillings on this visit, but the experience of having my teeth descaled was actually physically painful.

Well that’s not going to happen again, and you might as well learn from my experience to save yourself from the same thing happening to you.

As I said I thought I knew most of what takes place in your mouth, but I was wrong. It’s not trapped plaque that causes irritation to your gums, but trapped scale, (plaque which has attached to your teeth below the gum level and then hardened with a reaction from salt from your saliva).

This forms an extremely uneven surface preventing your gums from reattaching to the surface of your teeth, and instead they become irritated from the action of bacteria in food particles which work their way down between the gum and the teeth. The situation is compounded because normal cleaning cannot remove the hardened scale. This causes irritation to your gums and causes bleeding.

If plaque is missed during normal cleaning just under the gums surface, it doesn’t take long to turn to scale; a couple of days will do it. Once this happens you are into the cycle of progressive gum irritation and a risk of long term damage to the underlying bone in which your teeth are held.

If descaling is not done on a regular basis, then eventually the acid formed by bacteria breaking down the food particles, dissolves the underlying bone leading to loss of the bone and a parallel recession of the gums. You can see the effect of this in older generations, who have become ‘long in the tooth’ who have not had the advantage of modern dental care.

The hygienist who carried out the descaling for me explained all this in great detail and started to show me examples of toothbrushes you shouldn’t use because of varying bristle lengths and shapes.

Instead the hygienist recommended an electric toothbrush!

When I said I find that an electric toothbrush made my gums bleed, she explained why that was the case. What I had done was I had bought an electric toothbrush on an impulse and started using it.

Because I had not been to the dentist for descaling before purchasing the electric toothbrush, all I was doing was cleaning the surface of my teeth and powerfully aggravating the damaged gums from the underlying hardened scale making my gums bleed all the more.

If I had taken descaling treatment first, I would have found the electric oscillation of the toothbrush rotating head, would have got under the leading edge of my gums sweeping out plaque before it could form scale keeping my gums healthy.

The result of purchasing a new electric toothbrush and putting this advice into action has stopped my gums bleeding within two days, and the use of the disclosing mouthwash has shown no noticeable scale reforming.

Remember, it starts with a trip to the dentist to have your teeth descaled.

So there you have it. Learn from my lesson. Follow this advice and you will find a great improvement in your dental health and in the dental health of your family.