Did you know that if gum disease is left untreated it can cause loss of your teeth. Hello, I'm Dr. David Wagner, Northwood Dental, Clearwater, Florida. Today I'm going to talk to you about reversing gum disease. The first step in reversing gum disease is to understand what gum disease is and the degree of severity at which your gum disease is. So gum disease has to do with the separation of the gums away from the tooth, which then allows for a breakdown of the bone underneath and therefore, eventually the loss of the tooth. Here you can see on this side the healthy attachment of the gum to the tooth. On the other side here the gum has actually become very inflamed, very red and separated away from the root, so the treatment, or reversing of gum disease, has to do with cleaning out this area of all the plaque and accumulated calculus and debris, so that the gum now has a healthy spot to reattach to the root. So, here it shows the buildup and here's the instrument that actually cleans debris out, and then that allows a nice clean surface for the gums to attach to. Sometimes we can actually put a micro-sphere specially-formulated antibiotic down in there to help promote this type of healing. So that's how you can reverse gum disease. I'm Dr. David Wagner, Northwood Dental, Clearwater, Florida.