Keeping your own teeth into later life is good news that brings a maintenance problem with it.

Smoking damages gums and masks the bleeding that would warn you; the evidence on vaping is much younger.

Hormonal change alters the way gums respond to plaque, which is why bleeding often begins in pregnancy.

One half of this relationship is well established; the other is promising but a great deal less certain.

Saliva protects teeth in several ways at once, and hundreds of common medicines quietly reduce it.

Studies keep linking gum disease to heart disease, but an association is not the same thing as a cause.