An imperfect smile can affect your self-esteem and confidence, making socialization almost impossible. Fortunately, professional dentists can address a wide range of imperfections, including a gummy smile. A gummy smile happens when more of your gum tissue is exposed whenever you smile. It makes you appear to have smaller teeth because the gum tissue is more visible above your smile. Knowing the cause of a gummy smile is important, as this can help you identify the right treatment to balance your smile and improve your confidence. A skilled dentist can guide you in understanding your problem and the treatment options available to you.

Understanding a Gummy Smile and Possible Causes

Medically, a gummy smile is explained as excessive gingival display whenever you smile. It exposes more of your gum tissue rather than your teeth, giving you an unproportional smile. A gummy smile makes people shy, especially when you believe that your smile is less beautiful, imperfect, or imbalanced. The lack of balance between your teeth’s and gums’ appearances can make you retreat from social events because of your individual aesthetic concerns.

This is a problem that many people of all ages experience. Fortunately, some solutions can streamline your smile and restore your confidence. Children can benefit from these solutions to grow confidently, with minimal worry about their smile.

Some of the common causes of a gummy smile include the following:

A Hyperactive Upper Lip

When you have a hyperactive upper lip, its elevator muscles are unusually strong. They pull the upper lip too far upward when you smile, exposing more of the gum tissue than your teeth. Normal lips move only a few millimeters when you smile, which makes a normal smile seem balanced. However, a hyperactive lip will pull the upper lip more, over-revealing the gums. Medically, this can happen because of the following:

  • The muscles that control your upper lip are overactive. Overactive muscles pull the lip up more than it should, causing a gummy smile.
  • Your upper lip is highly mobile, which causes it to lift way too far, leaving more of your gums exposed when you smile.

Fortunately, you can fix either of these two issues to reduce the amount of gum tissue that becomes exposed when you smile. The exact treatment will depend on the severity of the underlying issue. A skilled dentist can give a proper diagnosis after examining you and recommend the best treatment approach. Botox is a common treatment for hyperactive lips, as it relaxes the lip muscles and keeps them lower when you smile. A few Botox injections can help with mild hyperactivity.

Your dentist can also recommend surgical treatment to reposition your highly mobile lip or to contour the gum tissue and reduce excess gum tissue (when the diagnosis shows that your gum muscles have overgrown).

A Short Upper Lip

Some people are born with short lips. If your upper lip is shorter than it should be, you could notice a gummy smile every time you smile. A short lip is incapable of covering enough of your gum tissue whenever you smile. The short lip muscles tend to pull it way too high, exposing all your upper teeth and a substantial part of your pink gum tissue. An in-depth examination by a skilled dentist will help you understand the exact problem you are having and the best treatment for it.

Botox injections are a common non-surgical treatment for short lips. A licensed medical professional can inject a small amount of the treatment into the upper lip muscles to relax the muscle. Then, the lip will not pull excessively when you smile. Botox treatments are easy and last for up to six months.

Another treatment that can help with short upper lips is a dermal filler. This, too, is non surgical. It entails using fillers to add some volume to the short lip. This increases the lip’s surface area, allowing it to cover more of your gums whenever you smile. This treatment can last for up to 12 months.

Surgical treatments are also available to fix a short upper lip. Your dentist can recommend lip repositioning to limit how far the upper lip can stretch when you smile. Surgical treatments are usually a natural and permanent way to fix the length.

Vertical Maxillary Excess

This is a condition in which your upper jaw grows downward, giving you a gummy smile. The excess bone that results from this condition also elongates your face.

When you smile, the upper lip moves too high, exposing a substantial amount of your gum tissue. Since the upper jawbone is naturally or genetically too high, your nose and teeth appear much further apart from it, affecting the balance of your smile. When you are in a relaxed state, your relaxed teeth can normally cover all your teeth. However, when you smile, the lip muscles stretch more upwards. Since the jaw is ever-stretched vertically, it exposes your teeth and the extra jawbone and gums beneath.

If you are diagnosed with vertical maxillary excess as the primary cause of your gummy smile, your dentist can recommend jaw surgery to fix the underlying issue. Jaw surgery works very well for moderate and severe conditions. In this treatment, a skilled surgeon removes a small part of the excessive bone from your upper jaw and slides the jaw upward. This shortens your face and reduces the amount of gum you display when you smile.

Lip repositioning can also work, especially if you want to fix the lip without touching the jawbone. A skilled dentist can reposition your upper lip through surgery to reduce the extent to which it moves when you smile. Your dentist can also recommend laser gum surgery to remove any excess gum tissue that could be covering your teeth.

Altered Passive Teeth Eruption

Your gummy smile problem could have started when your permanent teeth were developing. Altered passive eruption is a common problem that affects how your gum tissues pull back once your baby teeth fall out. Naturally, your gum tissues should pull back enough. However, if tooth eruption is altered, they may not pull back enough. This causes it to stick out higher on the teeth. The gum tissue covers the natural enamel, making your teeth look shorter than they really are.

Your teeth develop in two main stages: the active eruption and the passive eruption. An active eruption occurs when a tooth pushes through the bone and into the gum. A passive eruption is when the gum tissue shrinks down to allow a tooth to erupt. When you have altered passive eruption, the gum fails to shrink naturally. This cruises the crown, which is already visible, to remain trapped below the gum line. The visible part of the tooth is thrown off, leaving you with an excessive amount of gum. This is the gum that becomes more exposed when you smile.

Dentists recommend several treatments for altered passive eruption. For example, your dentist may recommend a gingivectomy, which involves removing excess gum tissue. This is done using a scalpel or laser. This treatment is recommended if there is enough gum tissue and your jawbone is properly positioned. Another recommendation would be lengthening the crown. This entails peeling back the gum and trimming a small amount of the jawbone. This procedure exposes more of your teeth.

To some extent, orthodontic braces can help, especially if this condition is paired with a misaligned bite. Braces will move your teeth to their proper positions and even out your gums, giving you a more perfect smile.

Gingival Overgrowth

Gingival overgrowth, or excess gum tissue, is a condition that causes excessive display of gum tissue when you smile. It causes the gum tissue to extend too far down the tooth crown, covering much of the natural white enamel. The most common causes of gingival overgrowth are poor oral hygiene, genetics, and severe side effects from certain medications, like immunosuppressants and blood pressure drugs.

Fortunately, dentists can treat gingival overgrowth to balance your smile and restore your confidence. There are both surgical and non-surgical treatments for this. If a medical professional identifies a certain drug as the cause of your gingival overgrowth, they can recommend a safer alternative to stop the condition. Scaling and root planing also help by removing plaque and tartar that can trigger inflammation.

In case of severe gingival overgrowth, your dentist can recommend a gingivectomy, a surgical procedure that removes and reshapes excess gum tissue. Your dentist may also recommend crown lengthening. This is an aesthetic procedure that removes excess gum tissue and reshapes the underlying jawbone to reveal your tooth enamel. This ensures that the gum tissue does not grow back.

Other treatments that could help include lip procedures like Botox, especially if your condition is caused by a hyperactive lip muscle.

Worn Out or Small Teeth

If your natural teeth are generally small, the gum tissue may tend to dominate whenever you smile. If your natural teeth wear down over time due to factors like enamel erosion, they may appear smaller when you smile. Small, worn-down teeth disrupt the natural balance between your gums and teeth when you smile. In this case, your dentist will recommend treatments that will restore the lost balance.

Your dentist can recommend dental crowns or veneers to improve the appearance of your natural teeth. These treatments increase the length or width of worn-down teeth, making your teeth more proportionate to your gums when you smile. Dental bonding can also help, as it offers a quick solution to a short or worn-out tooth.

Dentists also use crown lengthening, especially when the gum covers more of your natural teeth. This procedure entails removing a small amount of the excess gum and bone tissue to expose more of your teeth when you smile. Orthodontic treatments like clear aligners and braces can also help push your over-erupted teeth upward to balance your smile. Orthodontic treatment also adjusts your gumline and repositions your jawbone.

Teeth Misalignment

Your misaligned teeth can give you a gummy smile, especially if they cause bite issues that make your teeth tilt outwards or over-erupt. Some of these issues drag your gum tissue downward, causing your lip to pull back excessively when you smile. Your smile reveals excess gum tissue and misaligned teeth, which could further affect your smile and confidence.

If your teeth are over-erupted or have developed too far down, they may push the attached gum tissue lower, making the teeth appear shorter, and your gum tissue appear excessive. If your upper teeth are protruding and slanting forward, they may push the upper lip outwards and upwards, exposing more of your gum tissue. When you have bite irregularities, you may force your lip and jaw muscles to move abnormally whenever you bite down, which could raise the upper lip higher than normal when you smile.

If your misaligned teeth are causing your gummy smile, your dentist will recommend treatments to address the underlying issue. For example, they may recommend orthodontic treatments like braces or clear aligners to correct the misalignment. Once your teeth return to their rightful positions, your smile will appear more balanced. Gum contouring can also help if the misalignment is paired with excess gum tissue.

Find a competent Dentist Near Me

Do you or someone you know have a gummy smile in Northridge?

Understanding the cause of your gummy smile is the first step in identifying treatments that could balance your smile and eventually boost your confidence. An experienced dentist can help with this. They can conduct an in-depth examination of your teeth, lips, and gums to determine the actual cause of your gummy smile. They will also recommend the appropriate treatment based on your needs, preferences, and budget.

At Northridge Advanced Dentistry, we have skilled, experienced dentists who handle a wide range of oral and dental issues. We offer detailed examination and quality treatment for any dental or oral issue that could affect your smile and confidence. Call us at 818-701-3010 to discuss your needs and our services in more detail.