Yes, tartar is bad for your teeth, and it gets worse the longer it stays. Tartar (also called calculus) is hardened dental plaque that you can’t brush or floss away once it forms. Its rough, porous surface becomes a permanent home for bacteria, triggering gum inflammation that can progress to bone loss, tooth loosening, and even systemic health problems if left untreated.
How Tartar Forms
Every time you eat, bacteria in your mouth feed on sugars and starches and produce a sticky film called plaque. If plaque isn’t removed within about 24 to 72 hours, minerals in your saliva begin to crystallize it into tartar. Once that hardening process is complete, no amount of brushing will remove it. Only a dental professional with specialized instruments can scrape it off.
Tartar tends to build up fastest near saliva glands, which is why you’ll often notice it behind your lower front teeth or along the outer surfaces of your upper molars. It can form above the gumline (where you can see it as a yellowish or brownish deposit) or below the gumline, where it’s invisible but far more damaging.
What Tartar Does to Your Gums
The rough surface of tartar gives bacteria an ideal place to attach and multiply. Those bacteria trigger your immune system, which responds with inflammation. In the early stage, this looks like red, puffy gums that bleed when you brush. That’s gingivitis, and it’s reversible with professional cleaning and better hygiene habits.
Left alone, the damage progresses. Research using non-surgical visualization inside deep gum pockets found that nearly 70% of the soft tissue inflammation was associated with tartar covered by bacterial film, while less than 20% was linked to bacteria alone. In other words, tartar isn’t just a passive bystander. It actively amplifies the destruction. Even sterilized tartar placed in animal tissue produced inflammation and abnormal tissue growth, suggesting the deposit itself, not only the bacteria on it, causes harm.
Bone Loss and Tooth Loosening
When tartar builds up below the gumline, the chronic inflammation starts breaking down the bone that holds your teeth in place. This is periodontitis, and it’s more common than most people realize. According to the CDC, 42% of adults aged 30 and older have some form of periodontitis, and about 8% have a severe form.
Periodontitis is classified in stages based on how much bone has been lost. In the earliest stage, up to 15% of the supporting bone is gone. By stage two, that number climbs to 15 to 33%. Stages three and four involve more than a third of the bone lost, which often means teeth become loose, shift position, or need to be extracted. Your gums may also pull away from your teeth, making them look longer and exposing sensitive root surfaces.
Effects Beyond Your Mouth
The inflammation caused by tartar-driven gum disease doesn’t stay contained to your mouth. Bacteria from infected gums can enter your bloodstream during everyday activities like brushing or chewing. Once circulating, they contribute to inflammation throughout your body. Certain periodontal bacteria have been found inside the arterial plaques that cause heart attacks and strokes.
The connection to diabetes is particularly well documented. People with diabetes are more likely to develop periodontitis because elevated blood sugar promotes bacterial growth and impairs healing. But the relationship goes both ways: chronic gum inflammation worsens insulin resistance and makes blood sugar harder to control. Clinical trials have shown that treating periodontitis can reduce HbA1c (a key measure of long-term blood sugar) by approximately 0.4% in people with diabetes. That’s a meaningful improvement, comparable to adding a second medication.
Periodontitis has also been linked to rheumatoid arthritis and neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, likely through the same inflammatory pathways. The shared thread is that chronic, low-grade inflammation in the gums raises the same inflammatory markers found elevated in these systemic diseases.
Cosmetic Problems
Even before it causes serious damage, tartar creates visible problems. Its porous texture absorbs stains from coffee, tea, wine, and tobacco far more readily than enamel does. This means tartar deposits often appear dark yellow, brown, or even greenish, making teeth look dingy regardless of how well you brush the surrounding surfaces. The bacterial activity associated with tartar buildup also contributes to persistent bad breath that mouthwash only temporarily masks.
Why You Shouldn’t Remove It Yourself
Dental scrapers are widely available online, and it’s tempting to try tackling visible tartar at home. This is riskier than it sounds. Without proper training, you can scratch your enamel (leading to increased sensitivity), cut or traumatize gum tissue (which can cause recession and expose sensitive roots), or accidentally push tartar fragments deeper below the gumline, where they may cause abscesses or accelerate bone loss. The short-term savings aren’t worth the potential for infections or permanent tissue damage.
How Professionals Remove Tartar
A standard dental cleaning removes plaque and tartar above the gumline. If tartar has already spread below the gumline and caused pocketing around your teeth, you’ll need a deeper procedure called scaling and root planing. Scaling removes the hardened deposits from both above and below the gumline. Root planing then smooths the tooth root surfaces so bacteria have a harder time reattaching. When residual tartar is left behind after treatment, it’s one of the primary reasons gum disease continues to progress despite professional care.
For most people, professional cleanings every six months are enough to keep tartar in check. If you’re prone to heavy buildup or already have gum disease, your dentist may recommend cleanings every three to four months.
Preventing Tartar Buildup
Since tartar starts as soft plaque, the most effective strategy is removing plaque before it hardens. Brush twice daily for two minutes and floss once a day, paying extra attention to the areas behind your lower front teeth and along your back molars.
Tartar-control toothpastes contain ingredients that slow the crystallization process. The most common active agents are zinc salts, pyrophosphates, and a compound called sodium hexametaphosphate. Zinc citrate inhibits the crystal formation that turns plaque into tartar, and clinical trials have found it significantly reduces buildup compared to regular toothpaste. Sodium hexametaphosphate has shown tartar reduction as high as 55% compared to standard formulas, though a small number of people are sensitive to it. If one tartar-control toothpaste irritates your mouth, switching to a different active ingredient usually solves the problem.
These products slow tartar formation, but they won’t remove tartar that’s already there. Once it has hardened, professional removal is the only safe and effective option.