Do you show signs of mouth bleeding after brushing your teeth? Do you feel the taste of blood in your mouth when you wake up in the morning? If that’s the case you need to take it as a warning sign; something’s not quite right and you should seek a dental consultation as soon as possible. In our experience, a quick assessment can make for a fast treatment and a short recovery, the more you delay it, the worse it can become.

Having said that, bleeding isn’t necessarily an emergency, if this is your first time, take a deep breath, it’s not the end of the world, there are several reason for mouth bleeding, and not everyone one of them is catastrophic.

Mouth bleeding and dental health

On the low risk end of the spectrum, mouth bleeding can be a symptom of dental conditions such as gingivitis/periodontitis or tooth decay.

A clear indicator of gingivitis is swollen or red gums, as well as tenderness and sensitivity; bleeding as a symptom of gingivitis is usually the byproduct of some form of pressure or trauma on the gums such as brushing or flossing. If it’s gingivitis then a strict oral hygiene routine should be more than enough to reverse the condition, after sanitizing the area rigorously for a few weeks, the gums should heal and the bleeding will stop.

If its periodontitis, then no amount of oral hygiene is going to fix it, you need to see a dentist to clean the area and to check if the condition has caused permanent damage.

On the other hand, if the cause is tooth decay you might experience a slight discomfort or sensitivity in a particular area of your mouth, or it could be quite painful depending on the cause of decay, which most often than not is an infection.

The bleeding should stop once your dentist has taken care of the infection, for example, by doing a root canal.

Other reasons

If you have a good oral hygiene and the dentist doesn’t find anything suspicious, you might need further medical assessment, mouth bleeding can be caused by a plethora of conditions such as:

• Cirrhosis
• Low platelet count
• Temporal arteritis
• Some form of deficiency
• Leukemia

Once again, we cannot stress how important it is to diagnose the source of the bleeding right away, in the best case scenario, it won’t be but a minor hassle; but in the worst case, you might be able to diagnose a condition at early stages, which in most cases drastically increases the odds of a successful treatment.