What is the spiritual meaning of gum disease

As a holistic oral health coach, working with hundreds of clients from all over the world for nearly a decade, I’ve observed some common themes in the emotional, psychological, energetic, ancestral and environmental lives of people with similar kinds of gum issues.

Communication between our subconscious and our physical body is often in a symbolic and metaphorical. The main physiological role of gums is to hold our teeth in place and support them to be strong and straight.  This can be understood as a symbol of your access to or awareness of support in other areas of your life.

For example, if you feel like you don’t have support from your family to achieve your goals then you might experience bone loss and gum recession.  Or if you have a pattern of dishonesty with your spouse you might develop a deep gum pocket around tooth 21 (lower left first premolar).

How are gums affected by emotions?

I’ve coached many clients who have been able to stabilize, reverse and even completely recover from receding gums and gum disease. This has happened with proactive, intensive personalised protocols which include working with the metaphysical associations of each individual’s particular expressions of gum symptoms.

Physical symptoms for gum disease are influenced by metaphysical factors at the cellular level. The behavior of our gum cells is guided by proteins which carry information, not only from physical influences such as nutrition and environment but also from our subconscious thoughts and emotions.

How to make sense of gum symptoms?

The success that my clients have had with healing their gums relies on specific, detailed and personal interpretations of their symptoms.

The metaphysical associations for gum problems found in Louise Hay’s Heal Your Life,  Evette Rose’s Metaphysical Anatomy or Inna Segal’s The Secret Language of Your Body are not wrong… I just find them too generic to be genuinely useful.

In my book, The Secret Lives of Teeth I introduced a range of systems for interpreting oral health problems, mostly by mapping the location of symptoms inside your mouth. All of these systems can potentially be applied to gums as well as teeth, plus I shared my own unique framework on the type of gum tissue affected by the symptoms.

What is the first step to understanding gums?

If you want to really understand and usefully respond to your gum issues you need to work out which type of gum tissue is most affected. The metaphysical gum framework which I developed through my coaching work encompasses four main types of gum tissue commonly affected by symptoms. 

Click through to read an in depth discussion of each type of tissue and the meaning of its typical symptoms.

Gingiva, which is the visible pink wet surface of the gum, the location of bleeding gums, gingivits or inflammation is associated with shame, sexuality and the alignment of your public persona with your authentic identity. 

Cementum, the connective fibers lost when gum pockets develop between tooth roots and gums, is affected by unacknowledged feelings, the security of your energetic boundaries and dishonesty. 

Periodontal ligament is associated with your ability to adapt to changing circumstances with grace. Thinning or sagging gums might indicate that you aren’t able to advocate for  yourself or feel worthy of support. 

Alveolar bone, the part of the jaw which forms tooth sockets and supports soft gum tissues represents the material support available to you and your inner strength. Gum recession caused by bone loss may embody feeling you aren’t well supported. 

Mapping as the next step to understanding gums

To get an even deeper understanding of your gum issues, you can cross reference your symptoms by their location within your mouth. 

First make note of where exactly did your gum problems start? 

Where did it spread to next and where is it located now?

If symptoms have been, or still are, localized, note which teeth are closest? 

Is one quadrant of the mouth more or less affected than other quadrants?

Then apply one or more of the mouth mapping frameworks from The Secret Lives of Teeth to the gum tissue interpretations:

For gum pockets or any symptoms specific to one or two teeth, start with tooth archetypes. 

For symptoms specific to top or bottom, left or right, front or back, start with the quadrants framework.

For symptoms located around the mouth but concentrated near just incisors or just molars or just canines etc, start with the tooth types framework or the mouth meridians framework. 

For gum recession, check out the cervical surfaces interpretations in the tooth surfaces framework.

The Secret Lives of Teeth

Learn how to interpret the metaphysical messages of your teeth and gum symptoms!

The Secret Lives of Teeth is a clear and comprehensive guide teaches you a unique, complementary self-help approach to easing toothaches, enhancing enamel and gum remineralization and getting better results with necessary dental treatments. 

Available as a paperback or ebook.

Physical remedies

The physical and the metaphysical sit side by side.  It is not enough to focus only on the spiritual, emotional or psychological aspects of healing your gums.

There are physical influences causing gum disease as well, though its usually blamed on not flossing enough but that is too simple an explanation. After all, plenty of people never floss and yet have healthy gums.

Gums do react well to being clean, but they are undermined by aggressive hygiene techniques such as rough flossing, hard bristled toothbrushes and careless dental hygienist treatments. Gums are very sensitive to toxins and traumas so it’s important to clean our gums thoroughly yet gently.

A good balance of minerals in our diet may be the most important factor in gum health. The modern food system is so depleted of nutrients, especially minerals that even people on a healthy, whole foods diet may not be getting enough minerals to sustain their gums through the challenges of life.

Gums are also very responsive to tension in our jaw, so keeping a relaxed jaw plays a big role in gum health.

How energy can help heal your gums

When I first started natural oral health coaching I only ‘knew’ that mainstream dentists say receding gums cannot regrow naturally. 

But I’d also ‘known’ that teeth can’t regrow cavities naturally; and that ‘fact’ turned out to be wrong. In fact, it turns out that cavities are often the easiest oral health problems to fix. 

That’s why, when some of my clients wanted to try regrowing their gums I was willing to put my best effort into supporting them with research and collaborative experimentation. 

I would warn: ‘I don’t know if you can regrow your gums but at the very least these holistic strategies should stabilize them’.

Then, as we saw the first hints of regrowth beginning to appear, I started accepting more clients who wanted to regrow their gums. Everything I learned about healing and regrowing gums is from lived experience of coaching people to healthier gums. 

If you are doing all the physical remedies right and nothing’s really changing, or it’s getting worse, then it generally means that you aren’t responding metaphysically to what your gums are telling you.

The metaphysical message behind the physical symptoms is just as important, if not more important, than anything physical that we can do to care for our gums.

Metaphysical healing is not necessarily easy work. In many ways it is much more comfortable to go to a periodontal surgeon and pay many thousands of dollars for painful gum surgery. There’s lots of people who would rather have surgery than have to acknowledge that they don’t feel supported, that they don’t really trust people around them or are suppressing anger and resentment.

Further reading

Meaning of Gums Part 1: What bleeding gums are telling you

Meaning of Gums Part 2:What thinning  gums mean

Meaning of Gums Part 3: The truth about gum pockets

Meaning of Gums Part 4: Understanding bone loss

The Secret Lives of Teeth

Three foods you can eat for gum health 

Flossing tips for gum health

Toothbrushing tips for gum health 

A home remedy for gum inflammation 

Natural solutions for gingivitis

The Secret Lives of Teeth

Learn how to interpret the metaphysical messages of your teeth and gum symptoms!

The Secret Lives of Teeth is a clear and comprehensive guide teaches you a unique, complementary self-help approach to easing toothaches, enhancing enamel and gum remineralization and getting better results with necessary dental treatments. 

Available as a paperback or ebook.