What causes receding gums?
Gum tissue that has retreated does not grow back on its own. The recession can almost always be stopped, though — and the usual culprit is not what people assume.
Gum recession is the gum margin moving away from the crown of the tooth, exposing root surface that is normally covered. It shows up as teeth that look longer, a notch or step you can feel with a fingernail at the gumline, and cold sensitivity in specific spots.
Two things are true at once, and both matter. Recession is not reversible — gum tissue does not regenerate over a root by itself. But it is almost always stoppable, because it nearly always has an identifiable cause that can be removed.
Why the root is a problem once exposed
The crown of your tooth is covered in enamel, the hardest substance your body makes. The root is not. It's covered by cementum, a much thinner, softer layer, and beneath that is dentine — which contains microscopic tubules running directly to the nerve.
That structure explains the symptoms. Exposed root is sharply sensitive to cold because those tubules transmit stimuli inward. It wears away faster than enamel. And it decays more easily, so root cavities become a real risk in a mouth that hasn't previously had many.
The causes, and how to tell them apart
| Cause | What it looks like | What stops it |
|---|---|---|
| Aggressive brushing | Often worse on the side opposite your dominant hand; canines and premolars first; frayed toothbrush | Soft bristles, light pressure, changed technique |
| Periodontitis | Recession with bleeding, puffiness, pockets, sometimes looseness | Dental treatment — this needs professional care |
| Grinding or clenching | Flattened, worn biting surfaces; jaw ache; often nocturnal | A night guard; addressing the stress driver |
| Thin gum tissue (genetic) | Naturally delicate gums; often runs in families; may show without other cause | Gentle care and monitoring; grafting if severe |
| Crowding or tooth position | Localised to a tooth sitting outside the arch, with thin bone over it | Orthodontic assessment |
| Lip or tongue piercing | Very localised recession exactly where the jewellery rests | Removing or repositioning it |
| Smoking | Generalised, alongside other gum problems | Stopping |
The brushing trap
This one deserves its own section, because the instinct is exactly backwards.
People notice their gums look inflamed or their teeth feel unclean, so they brush harder and buy a firmer brush. Hard bristles and heavy pressure physically abrade the gum margin. The gum retreats. Sensitivity appears, which feels like inadequate cleaning, which prompts more scrubbing.
Plaque is soft. It requires no force at all to remove — only contact and thoroughness. A firm brush used hard is worse than a soft brush used carefully, in both directions at once: more tissue damage, and no better cleaning. If your toothbrush bristles splay out within a few weeks, you are pressing too hard.
Two checks worth doing now
Your toothbrush. Bristles should be soft and still standing straight after a month. Splayed bristles are a pressure gauge.
Your gums. Recession with bleeding and puffiness points toward gum disease and needs a dentist. Recession with firm, pale, healthy-looking gums points toward mechanical causes — brushing, grinding, or tissue type. See the early signs of gum disease to tell which you have.
What stops the retreat
- Switch to a soft brush and lighten up. Hold it like a pen rather than a fist — that grip alone limits how much force you can apply. Many electric brushes have a pressure sensor, which is genuinely useful feedback — and people appear to press harder with a manual brush, as the electric versus manual evidence sets out.
- Change the motion. Small circles or short gentle strokes angled toward the gumline. Not a horizontal sawing motion, which is the pattern most associated with abrasion.
- Keep cleaning between your teeth. Stopping because it's sensitive allows gum disease to add to the problem. Be gentle rather than absent.
- Treat grinding. If you wake with jaw tightness or your partner hears it, ask about a night guard. Grinding loads teeth in ways the supporting tissue isn't built for.
- Use a fluoride toothpaste for sensitivity. These reduce discomfort and help protect exposed root from decay. They take a couple of weeks to work properly.
- Go easy on acids. Exposed root erodes faster than enamel, so frequent citrus, vinegar drinks and fizzy drinks cost more than they used to.
- Get it measured. A dentist records recession in millimetres, which turns "does this look worse?" into an answerable question at your next visit.
What a dentist can actually do
Beyond stopping the cause, there are real options — and it's worth knowing which are cosmetic and which are structural.
- Desensitising treatments. Varnishes and sealants applied to the exposed root. Symptom relief, repeated periodically.
- Composite bonding. Tooth-coloured material covering the exposed area. Protects the root and reduces sensitivity; does not restore gum.
- Gum grafting. Tissue taken from elsewhere (often the palate) or donor material, placed over the root. The only approach that genuinely restores coverage. It's real surgery, results vary by site, and it works best where recession is localised.
- Orthodontics. Where a badly positioned tooth is the underlying cause, moving it back into the arch can address the root of the problem.
On products that claim to regrow gums
Be sceptical of anything sold as regrowing receded gum tissue — no toothpaste, oil, rinse or supplement does that. What good products can genuinely do is reduce inflammation, ease sensitivity, and help protect exposed root from decay. Those are worthwhile and much more modest than "reverse recession".
The same reasoning applies to oral probiotics: there is research on gum inflammation, which is a real and different thing from tissue regrowth. If recession has already happened, the goal is stopping it, not undoing it — and no supplement on the market has been shown to move the gum margin back.
Can gums grow back?
The short answer is the one nobody wants: not on their own. Gum tissue that has migrated down a root does not migrate back up, and no toothpaste, oil, gel or supplement has ever been shown to make it. What can be done is a graft, and what a graft achieves is measurable.
What surgery actually achieves
A 2025 systematic review pooled fourteen studies of one common tunnelling technique in 226 patients and 526 teeth, all with Miller class I or II recession — the easier grades, where the bone and the tissue between the teeth are still intact. The results are worth having in front of you before anyone quotes a success rate at you:
- Complete root coverage in 58% of cases (95% CI 49% to 68%). Not most; a little over half.
- Recession depth reduced by an average of 1.36 mm. Real, and small in absolute terms.
- Keratinised gum tissue increased by 1.32 mm, which matters for durability as much as appearance.
So the honest framing is: a graft can cover an exposed root, it works completely rather more than half the time in the most favourable cases, and there is no equivalent figure for the harder grades because they are harder. This is a cosmetic and protective procedure performed by a periodontist, not a cure that reverses the process.
What does not work
- Any product claiming to regrow or regenerate gums. Gels, oils, herbal rinses, “gum restoration” toothpastes. If a product could regrow attached gingiva it would be a licensed medicine and it would be famous.
- Massage, brushing more, or brushing differently. Better technique stops recession getting worse. It does not put tissue back.
- Oil pulling. Whatever else it does — see what the trials measured — it does not move gum tissue.
The distinction that matters more than regrowth
Recession looks like the problem, and it usually is not the urgent one. What matters clinically is whether you are still losing attachment — whether the process is active. A stable recession that has not moved in five years needs watching and possibly covering. Active periodontal disease needs treating this year, because the bone underneath does not come back either, and no graft fixes that.
If you take one thing from this section: ask your dentist whether it is progressing, not whether it can be reversed. The first question has a useful answer.
See a dentist if
You can see recession getting worse over months; your gums bleed or feel puffy; a tooth is sensitive enough to affect eating; you can feel a notch at the gumline; or any tooth feels loose. The earlier the cause is identified, the less there is to stop.
References
- Clinical efficacy of vestibular incision subperiosteal tunnel access (VISTA) for gingival recession: a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Oral Health 2025;25. DOI · PubMed · Funding: see ledger