Materia Medica Malaysiana

Health: Hold on to those pearly whites: "A BIG, bright smile can cheer up a dull day and make anyone feel good. But, says periodontist (gum specialist) Datin Dr Rosnah Abdul Jalil, in order to have a nice smile, you need good teeth and to keep your good teeth, you need healthy gums.

So for the past 24 years Dr Rosnah has been educating people about the importance of looking after their teeth and creating awareness that caring for the gums is just as important.

“Our gums are very, very important. If the gums are weak, the teeth can loosen and eventually fall out,” she says with concern.

Her worry is well-placed. If Dr Rosnah’s observations over more than two decades in the Government dental service can be used as a yardstick, the condition of Malaysian teeth is a cause for worry.

“When I was teaching at the Faculty of Dentistry at Universiti Malaya (UM), I saw that in so many cases people would come in for treatment only when their teeth were starting to loosen. They had no idea that they had a gum disease which was at a critical stage. And once you’ve had gum disease, you will always be susceptible to re-infection because there is a chance that a small percentage of the bacteria that caused it will remain in your mouth,” she explains.

A loose tooth is an indication that a person has gum disease. If it is extracted, it is usually because there is a cavity, not because the tooth is loose. Unlike the shattering pain of a tooth ache, gum disease starts slowly and silently.

“It is a silent disease, happening inside the gum. All of us have bacteria in our mouth and it is normal. Known as the grand positive healthy bacteria, it gets dangerous when the number of bacteria increases, or the bacteria moves into the crown of the tooth if a person d"