Bleeding Gums Are NOT Gum Disease (It’s lacking this vitamin)

If your gums are bleeding, your doctor has probably told you it’s gum disease, which seems to make sense, right?

And to fight gum disease, you may have been told to brush your teeth more, use dental floss, etc.

But a new study in Nutrition Reviews reveals that this may be absolute nonsense. Bleeding gums may not be caused by gum disease at all, and brushing may do more harm than help.

What’s bothering you may simply be a lack of one common vitamin that you can buy in all supermarkets.

The researchers knew from previous studies that a Vitamin C deficiency could weaken the tiniest blood vessels in our bodies, called capillaries.

So instead of telling people with bleeding gums to brush and floss more, the scientists wondered whether the better advice would be to find out why the bleeding occurred, and whether it could be caused by a Vitamin C deficiency.

To investigate, they first analyzed 15 studies from six countries that included 1,140 healthy adults. All of these study participants were healthy but struggling with bleeding gums.

Each of these studies measured their participants’ Vitamin C levels through blood tests and/or monitoring food intake. Many of them also tested whether the provision of extra Vitamin C could stop the bleeding.

Based on these reviewed trials, the researchers drew two main conclusions.

1. People with a Vitamin C deficiency were more likely to have bleeding gums than those who consumed enough Vitamin C.

2. Among people who were deficient in Vitamin C, Vitamin C supplements prevented bleeding of the gums. In those who already consumed enough Vitamin C, supplementation made no difference.

The scientists assumed that the bleeding in these trials was a consequence of fragility in capillaries, a common consequence of Vitamin C deficiency.

To test their conclusion further, they analyzed data on 8,210 Americans who suffered from retinal bleeding. This information was originally collected by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Retinal bleeding is one of the most common signs of capillary fragility, as there are so many capillaries in our eyes.

It turned out that people with retinal bleeding were more likely than their peers to have low Vitamin C levels. This finding links retinal and gum bleeding as symptoms of Vitamin C deficiency.

Based on these findings, the researchers concluded that the World Health Organization’s recommended daily Vitamin C intake was high enough to prevent scurvy, for which the recommendation was originally made. But it is not high enough to prevent capillary weakness, so this recommendation should be adjusted upwards.

But if you’re consuming enough Vitamin C, then your bleeding gums are definitely a sign of gum disease and this needs to be fixed right away.

Thankfully, it’s relatively easy to fix gum disease and rebuild your gums. All you have to do is follow the simple steps explained here…