“Do dentures lead to receding gums?”

When you have natural teeth, the roots of the teeth spread the force of chewing way down into the bone. When you have dentures, the force is just on the top of the gum covering the bone. This pressure causes the bone to be destroyed over time, the gums along with it. The reason they sell so much denture adhesives is that all those folk have the same problem...years of bone destroying force only on the tops of the gums. Implants can help slow down the bone loss, by spreading the force deep down into the gums.

Denture wear can cause the supporting bone to wear down. Receding gums is due to periodontal disease which causes loss of attachment of the gums to the tooth. Unchecked periodontal disease leads to bone loss supporting the tooth, and the tooth becomes loose and falls out or is extracted. You can also get some receding gum issues by over zealous brushing of the gums, but that is not so common. There are also some situations where a frenum attachment can cause a pull on a gum, causing it to recede.
If you have a full denture then there are no teeth to see gum recession. But when there are no tooth roots in the bone, they have all been extracted, over time the bone supporting the denture will wear down. That is why dentures become loose and have to be relined or a new denture made. If you are wearing a partial denture, where you have some natural teeth supporting the partial denture then you won't necessarily see gum recession around your natural teeth. What can happen is that the partial denture can put extra pressure on the natural teeth causing them to loosen a bit.

Imbalances in the way partial dentures attach to and use existing teeth for support can cause receding gums around the existing teeth. Complete denture do not cause loss of gums and bone. The loss of gums and bone with complete dentures is a result of losing the teeth roots that anchored and supported the gums and bone before they were lost.