There are many roads to receding gums, with gum disease affecting two in five adults in the United States, leading the charge.
Whether gum disease is responsible for your shrinking gums or genetics, aging, or some other issue has robbed your teeth of this soft tissue protection, you’re turning to gum grafting to beef up your gums again.
The highly experienced team at Willow Glen Dental Specialists will certainly do our part to make sure your gum grafting procedure goes smoothly on our end, but let’s talk about yours. In the following, we review six great strategies to leave you smiling through your recovery and beyond.
When we perform a gum graft, we typically take neighboring tissues from inside your mouth and graft them over your receding gums. As a result, you’ll need to be extra careful with your dental hygiene for a week or two.
For example, steer clear of the graft and the area from which we took the tissue. You can brush and floss around these areas in the meantime, but we don’t want any direct contact while you heal.
For the first few days after your gum grafting procedure, please confine your diet to soft foods that won’t cause any friction in your mouth. For example, soups, pastas, yogurt, and mashed potatoes are all great options.
You want to avoid suction inside your mouth while your gum graft is healing, so please don’t drink through straws for a couple of weeks.
As part of our aftercare instructions, we recommend rinsing regularly with an antimicrobial mouthwash. Swish the mouthwash gently around your mouth and use it at least twice a day.
Smoking is bad for your health on almost every level, and it has a direct impact on your oral health. First, smoking creates suction and, as we’ve already seen, that isn’t ideal while you heal from a gum graft.
Even more importantly, smoking can interfere with healing. We also want to point out that smoking can increase your risk for periodontal disease by up to 20-fold. So, it’s a good idea to quit smoking to help you heal from the current gum graft and to avoid more receding gums down the road.
During the first week after your gum grafting procedure, we want you to take it easy and not engage in any strenuous exercise, especially exercise in which you put your head down. So, by all means, get out and go for a walk, but limit hardcore exercise until your graft has fully healed.
Speaking of healing timelines, most of our patients are back to business as usual within two weeks of their gum grafting, but timelines can vary.
If you have more questions about paving the way to a healthy recovery from gum grafting, we’re here to help. To learn more, please contact our office in San Jose, California, at 408-478-9081. You can also request your appointment using our online form.
