Here at OraWellness, we talk a lot about the importance of feedback loops to help us successfully address gum disease.
Feedback loops help us to know whether we are heading in the right direction on our path to optimal oral health.
There are many things we can do in the comfort of our own home that provide us with tremendous insight about whether or not the actions we’re taking to improve our oral health are actually helping.
We consider ‘getting to know your mouth’ to be the first step to dental self-empowerment. It can also be helpful to track your saliva pH, as the acid/alkaline balance in the mouth provides us with a quantitative measure to determine whether or not our current actions are beneficial.
However, part of what we call ‘dental self-empowerment’ is knowing when to enlist the help of our dental team to assist us in gathering important, measurable information to determine whether we’re heading in the right direction.
One important piece to the puzzle is a simple test that most dental offices do: the Periodontal Depth Test.
What is a periodontal depth test?
This simple test is a measurement of the depth of the gum pockets around each of our teeth. It can go a long way toward helping you have a successful periodontal treatment. You may recall being in the dentist’s chair while the dentist is poking around your mouth and calling out numbers to their dental assistant like, “2, 3, 2… 3, 4, 2… 2, 2, 3…,” etc.
This is your dentist performing a periodontal depth test.
This test measures how deep the gum pockets are at 6 points around each tooth in your mouth.
Why is the periodontal depth test important?
The periodontal depth test provides us with some very helpful feedback.
1. How long gum disease has been active in our mouth
Gum pockets start at 1 mm deep and as the infection progresses over months and years, the pockets become deeper.
2. What specific areas are most infected
Once we know what specific areas are most challenged, we can focus our home care to address those areas.
3. The depth measurement for each gum pocket
Knowing the actual depth measurement (in millimeters) is critically important to be able to determine how to best plan your home care habits. If the measurements are greater than 4 mm deep, you’re going to need specialized tools and education to be able to effectively address this issue.
Why it’s important to request a copy of your test to take home
While it’s great for your dentist to have a record of the depth of your gum pockets, this information is much more precious to have in the hands of someone empowered to take greater care of their oral health.
After all, the dentist isn’t the one who is going to be making sure to disrupt and disorganize the thug bugs that are implicated with gum disease on a daily basis through their diligent home care. You are.
Having a recent record of your gum pocket depths provides you a powerful view of exactly what areas around which teeth need the most attention.
What you can do with your periodontal depth test at home…
We encourage our OraWellness community (that’s you!) to put the periodontal depth chart (the record from your dentist) in a plastic sleeve and have it handy in your bathroom for regular review. It’s best to put your chart back-to-back with a copy of your OraWellness Mouth Map where you recorded your own findings in your mouth.
Not only does the chart show you which teeth have the most challenging areas, it also tells you exactly where around each tooth you need to focus more attention.
What the periodontal depth test doesn’t tell us…
While the periodontal depth test is helpful, it doesn’t tell us everything.
Here’s what the periodontal depth test doesn’t tell us…
1. How active the gum disease is today.
You can have gum pockets that aren’t active because you have taken appropriate action to address the infection. What the periodontal depth test does tell us is how active gum disease has been in your life, not how active it is today in your mouth.
2. What specific types of ‘thug bugs’ are thriving in your gum pockets.
This knowledge of what species of bugs are colonizing your gum line is a tremendous bit of information to determine what stage of gum disease you are dealing with.
Tests to determine specific thug bug species range from in-office live tests to sending out samples to a lab.
Our favorite is when the dentist takes a plaque sample and puts the sample under a certain type of microscope (science buffs out there, it’s called a phase contrast microscope). It’s very powerful when you see for yourself the activity that swims around your gum tissue. If a picture is worth a thousand words, you can imagine how motivated you might be after seeing live activity of thug bugs from your gum line!
This in-office test can also provide the very empowering feedback once you have been actively caring for your oral health. Imagine how good it would feel to go back to your dentist and have them show you on their microscope that you have successfully eliminated the nastiest species of thug bugs!
Is it actually possible to reverse the damage of gum disease?
Conventional dentistry generally agrees that gum disease is a slow, irreversible destruction of the gum tissue and underlying jaw bone. And arguably, we understand why they have this perspective. After all, they are thinking from the standpoint of the dental team addressing this issue.
However, when a person accepts responsibility for their own oral care, ‘dental miracles’ can and do happen all the time. (After all, each of us got ourselves into this situation. If we think that someone else is going to be able to bail us out we’re fooling ourselves.)
Here’s a link to what originally was a very long testimonial from a woman who applied the techniques and education we teach in our HealThy Mouth System. We ended up turning it into a case study. There’s nothing special about what this woman did to successfully reduce her gum pockets. And you’ll be shocked how quickly she was able to accomplish her ‘dental miracle’.
The bottom line is when we understand the situation and take a path proven to help, it’s amazing how quickly the body responds. It’s as if you can hear the body say, “Ahh, finally we can get to work to heal this situation!”
We have thousands of people in over 50 countries who have stunned their dentists by using the tools and techniques we teach here at OraWellness. We look forward to hearing your success story too.
In a future article, we plan to teach how to read a periodontal depth chart so you can maximize your benefit from the information this simple test provides.
We hope this information helps you along your path to greater oral health. As always, please share this with anyone you know who might benefit from the information.
Helpful, Related Resources
The First Step to Dental Self Empowerment [article and free download]
Tracking your Saliva pH [article and free download]
HealThy Mouth System [product solution]
OraWellness Mouth Map [free download]
Case Study on Advanced Periodontal Disease [article]
My dentist is suggesting deep cleaning and scaling because I have not been to a dentist in 4 years and I have quite a bit of plaque and tartar buldup which is causing my gums to receed. They really wanted to do laser surgery but I choose this plan first and than working with your products as well and I’m hoping my teeth get stronger and gums healthier. Looking for your opinion on the deep scaling. Thank you
Aloha Charlene,
Thank you for your comment. 🙂
Deep dental cleanings are typically recommended when someone has a known diagnosis of periodontal disease or deep gum pockets. We have mixed feelings about them. Here’s why:
While it isn’t optimal to have hardened plaque (called tartar or calculus) on tooth roots, root planing (deep cleaning) only temporarily treats a symptom without addressing the true problem: the chronic bacterial infection that is creating the tartar in the first place. This procedure simply knocks down the ‘tartar fortresses’ that the bugs have built to protect themselves while they colonize the gum line and undermine health. This may sound a bit gruesome, but it is exactly what is happening.
It’s our understanding that the vicious cycle of gum disease goes like this: some bacteria in our mouths slip below the gum line and start building colonies. While building their numbers, they also attach tartar to our teeth to protect themselves from us. The tartar irritates our gums, so our gums start to pull away from the tartar-coated teeth. This creates a gum pocket. The bacteria move down to the now-deeper base of the gum pocket, where they lay down more tartar, which irritates the gums and causes them to pull away more, etc.
Root planing can be helpful IF a person is ready to take control of their oral health and maintain an environment under the gum line that won’t allow the thug bugs to repopulate and rebuild the tartar fortresses. However, unless a person is ready to take the responsibility of learning how to address gum disease at home, the deep cleanings won’t change much in the long run (the problems will continue, the tartar will return, and the dental team may tell you you need to come back for more and more frequent deep cleanings).
The good news is, if a person learns how to address this issue and keep infections under control at home, the calculus will flake off inconsequentially over time. You see, without the necessary bacteria populations in the mouth, the tartar fortresses simply dissolve back into the minerals in your saliva.
Our HealThy Mouth System contains all the tools necessary to get under the gum line and down into the gum pocket to disrupt and kill the bad bugs that are creating problems in the mouth.
Brushing, although beneficial, is only able to reach 2mm down into the gum pockets. Flossing and oral irrigators reach down to 4mm. The key is to kill the bacteria at the base of the gum pockets. The Pocket Applicator in the HealThy Mouth System makes it easy to reach the base of gum pockets as deep as 12mm.
Here’s a link to Susan’s story, here’s an article on the positive changes one of our customers was able to achieve in just 42 days, and here’s a link to our Customer Testimonials pertaining to the HealThy Mouth System. These may help you to gain an understanding of how our system has worked for others.
Finally, we believe that out of all the surgical dental treatments for gum disease, using an LANAP laser therapy is definitely up there for its effectiveness and minimal invasiveness. OraWellness founders Will and Susan’s friend, Dr. Al Danenberg, has been a periodontist for the past 40+ years and he really likes LANAP. While we haven’t personally received any LANAP work, there’s a boatload of research behind it and Dr. Al speaks very promisingly about it. Here’s an interview with Dr. Al if you’d like to hear his take on life and the treatment of gum disease.
I hope that helps! Aloha! 🙂
Hi Will & Susan. great news – I have been using Healthy Mouth Blend on my Bass brush and onmy periodontal brushes and floss and as a mouthwash, twice a day for 6 weeks now. I went to my gum specialist on monday for a follow up appointment after adeep clean, and he said although i have some 10mm deep pockets and ALL of my teeth have pockets of between 2-8mm on average, there is only ONE SITE (apparantly each tooth has 4 ‘sites, so i have a possible 112 ‘sites’ ) where there was any evidence of plaque and he could feel that my gums were firmer than my first visit 6 weeks ago. He told me that i am his Number One patientand wanted details of your product and website 🙂 I’m looking forward to going back in January when he will do another pocket depth test and I will see hoe much my gums have improved thanks to my new oral hygiene routine using Healthy Mouth Blend :))
Aloha Cherry!
Wonderful news! Congratulations! Wow, how cool to be a #1 patient! 🙂
We are so honored to be part of your journey to greater oral health. We look forward to hearing more great news in January!
Thank you and Aloha!
Anybody out there with reeaaallllly deep pockets,like 12 and 13 with a success story?
Aloha Armida,
Thank you for stopping by to ask! Yes, there are many of ‘us’ out here who had very deep pockets. In fact, Susan’s fateful dental visit over 20 years ago now was when she was diagnosed with advance gum disease with a ’10+mm pocket’ (They called it 10+ because the pocket was deeper than their periodontal probe would measure!)
In the spirit of helping you along your path, you don’t have any time to waste. Given a 12mm pocket, you don’t have a lot of ground to still give up to the bad bugs implicated with gum disease.
I hope this helps you along your path to greater oral health Armida.
I am new here, still waiting for my order to arrive. But I can testify that my 10 point pocket on a last upper tooth molar changed to a 4 just using Waterpick with the deep pocket end. So I am now so looking forward to using OraWellness program to make it a 2. I was an exception according to the hygienist, as my nutrition is exceptional, and I am not a sugar addict, don’t drink don’t smoke.
She too says as Will does here, Waterpick usually cannot do this. But my other ‘virtues’ in lifestyle supposedly helped. So looking forward to having nice tight HIGH up on the tooth gums now.
I absolutely love the HealThy Mouth Blend and have friends now hooked on it! I tried an experiment over the last year with just the blend, the bass toothbrush and your favorite floss- no regular toothpaste at all. My teeth felt amazing- and I’d never really had any problems with my teeth before- no cavities or fillings. Before I started my year long experiment, I had my gum depths measured and kept a record- a few 3’s and a few bleeding spots but nothing to really worry about. This time, a year later, they commented on how clean my teeth were but I had 3 pockets of 4mm depth and more bleeding. Seems a bit weird that my teeth were cleaner but below the gum line was worse!? I purched your HealThy Mouth System with pocket applicator in hopes that will help. Any thoughts or suggestions as to why that would happen? Thanks!!
Thank you for everything, great blog!
At My last visit my hygienist congratulated me and she said I’m “very, very healthy now” 🙂 . This was 6 months after the previous visit when I had a few gum pockets with 3-4 mm. Therefore a progress is visible and it is great!:)
Just wanted to let you know that I had pretty bad gums. I have been using Heal Thy Mouth Blend for a few years, and the last dental visit I had a periodontal depth check and there were no more 4’s and 5’s!!! Most were 2’s and I even had a 1! Thanks so much for what you do!
You go Rebecca! Congratulations on creating your own ‘dental miracle’!
Thank you for stopping by to share your story with us. I think your words here are much more of a sales pitch than we could ever write!
We are so honored to be part of your journey to greater oral health Rebecca!
Love and Aloha!
I had many pockets of 3, 4 and 5, and within a year of using orawellness, they were down to 1,2 and 3!
Aloha Jean!
Wow, congratulations! Thank you so much for sharing this with us. We are grateful to be able to help you along your path to greater oral health!
Love and Aloha!