I referred to this earlier as every Dental Hygienist’s nightmare and it is because it makes cleaning very sensitive and uncomfortable for you. I really do sympathise with you on this, but there are some things we can do to help at your hygiene appointment and just generally in life.

Firstly we want to be treating sensitivity at home with a sensitive toothpaste. Colgate Sensitive Pro Relief* is my favourite we also want to make sure that any tooth paste you are using is LOW ABRASIVE and most household name toothpastes like Colgate, Aquafresh etc are fine for this. I would avoid though charcoal based toothpaste and toothpaste with a gritty feel as because we are already coming from a place of less we want to avoid doing any more damage.

You also need to be careful with your tooth brushing technique, using a soft manual toothbrush like my favourite Curaprox 5460 brush* that I talk ALL THE TIME or using an electric toothbrush with a pressure sensor and the Oral B Genius 9000* is great for this. These brushes will slow down to a certain amount of rotations per minute to help prevent you causing your gums and enamel to recede or wear away which is genius - the clue is in the name I suppose. Also they light up to help show you when you are applying to much pressure so you can try to correct your brushing technique, you can even see how often you’re doing this on an app. Double genius. I can’t stress this enough though, you still need to clean right to the gum line as avoiding this area because of recession can lead to a whole host of other problems so keep it clean but GENTLY. There are some tips on toothbrushing technique on my bleeding gums blog which I will link here.

You can experience tooth recession due to resolution of Gum Disease, being a bit too excited when you’re brushing and sometimes after a crown has been placed. Some people also have what we call a ‘thin bio-type’ or thinner gums which means recession can happen a bit more quickly for you than your average Joe.

There are options to manage this however so fear not. We can apply fluoride varnish in surgery if you’re suitable, which can help with sensitivity. We can use Relative Analgesia (Gas & Air) depending on your dental practice or Local Anaesthetic at your appointments to help manage sensitivity in the chair. You can even see a specialist to have gum grafting treatments to re position the gum line and help manage the look and sensitivity of recession this way -check out Reena Wadia’s Instagram RWPerio to see some cracking before and after images of this.

The best thing to do I think you’ll agree is minimising or avoiding tooth recession by

Applying the correct tooth brushing techniques to start with, and visiting your Dental Hygienist can really help with this.
Making sure your oral hygiene is generally gold standard to help avoid Gingivitis and subsequent Gum Disease again another great conversation to have with your Dental Hygienist or Dentist.
Catching signs of tooth recession early so it doesn’t turn into a whole mouth issue.

If you have recession already the absolute best thing to do is start using a toothpaste for sensitivity. Today. I see pretty instant results for all of my patients and for nearly all of my patients, if they stop using the desensitising toothpaste, the sensitivity will come back. Another particularly good toothpaste for recession is Sensodyne Repair & Protect* which has been designed with recession in mind. It contains NovaMin which is a man made , tooth-like substance which sits over the top of exposed dentine protecting you from sensitivity. NovaMin is activated by saliva so it takes about 2 weeks for the product to start working, like all sensitive toothpastes you need to keep using the product daily and avoid rinsing with water or mouthwash after you brush if you can, just spit to foamy bit out and let that little trace of toothpaste that’s left marinade into your teeth.

So there we go, hopefully this blog post has helped you if you have recession and given you some tips on how you can treat it and prevent it from becoming worse, tooth wear doesn’t usually just occur singly so be sure to check out my other blogs on overbrushing, attrition and acid erosion too! Thanks so much for reading <3

*gifted products