What should I do if I have a terrible toothache at night?

Toothache not only affects our normal life, but also affects our daily work. Severe toothache can cause facial swelling, inability to eat, and headaches. Some people do not feel much pain in the toothache during the day, but it hurts severely at night, which has a great impact on sleep. Poor sleep will directly affect the next day's work and study. In fact, we can divert our attention when we have a toothache.

There are two main types of toothache:

The first type is tooth and pulp lesions.

As the caries develops to a deeper level, it will cause stimulating pain such as cold and heat. If it is not treated at this time, it will further develop into pulpitis and cause spontaneous pain. If you do not go to the hospital for treatment at this stage, you will not be able to sleep at night due to the pain! After the acute inflammatory period, the pain symptoms will be alleviated until they disappear, but don't think that the inflammation will disappear. In fact, the inflammation not only erodes the pulp inside the tooth but also develops to the periodontal tissue. The inflammation penetrates into the alveolar bone and causes alveolar bone absorption, reaching the gums to form fistulas, from which white pus flows out. At this time, you should go to the hospital for more complex treatment, otherwise the tooth must be extracted.

The second type is caused by periodontal disease.

Common cases include gingivitis and pericoronitis caused by food impaction. In this case, you only need to clean the impacted food and apply anti-inflammatory, analgesic, and gum soothing drugs. There are also cases due to lack of attention to periodontal hygiene, which causes gum atrophy, alveolar bone absorption, exposed tooth roots, and even loose and falling teeth. The ensuing symptoms are pain when exposed to cold, hot, sour, sweet and other stimuli, but the pain disappears when the stimulation is relieved. At this point, treatment is more troublesome. In addition, bacteria may breed in the deep periodontal pockets formed by severe periodontal disease and infect the root tips, causing retrograde infection of the dental pulp and forming pulpitis, which requires comprehensive tooth-periodontal treatment.

Why does toothache cause headache?

The pulp nerve is not localized. When pulpitis occurs, the pain will radiate and become uncertain, so headaches will occur. This has obvious physical signs, such as caries, and the pain will be aggravated by drinking hot or cold water. The nature of the pain is mostly throbbing, dull, or stabbing. Some patients may experience dilation of the superficial arteries in the neck, with increased pulsation amplitude consistent with the severity of the headache. The headache can be relieved by pressing the dilated arteries with fingers. The most common explanation is that the nerve pain caused by toothache radiates to the head and ears. Once the dental problem is removed, the headache will naturally disappear. The most obvious thing about this phenomenon is that the headache will not occur on the other side. This is because the left and right nerve branches are not connected. At this time, what you need to do is go to the hospital for treatment, because this is already the late stage of the dental disease, and taking any painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs are only treating the symptoms and not the root cause.

Why does it hurt more at night?

Many people have had this experience: toothache is worse at night, and in severe cases there is an impulse to self-destruct. Why does toothache hurt more at night than during the day?

In ancient times, Guan Yu scraped his bones to treat poison and used playing chess to divert his attention and relieve the pain. The same goes for toothache. When people work or study during the day, a large amount of information is surrounding us, and their attention will naturally be distracted. At night, when the brain is resting, the senses should start to become sensitive, and due to the focus of attention, even minor pain will be amplified. For some blind people, their other senses will not be enhanced because the amount of information the brain is exposed to becomes less and can be used for other calculations. So, this is the obvious reason why toothaches are especially severe at night.

How to deal with toothache? Here are some ways to temporarily relieve tooth pain:

1. Take garlic, mash it, apply it to the painful area after warming it up to treat symptoms such as pulpitis, periodontitis and toothache.

2. Dissolve MSG in warm water at a concentration of 1:50, hold the solution in your mouth for a while and then spit it out. Do this several times in a row, and after two days the toothache will be cured.

3. When you have a toothache, you can cut a small piece of ginger and bite it on the painful area. You can reuse it when necessary, and it is also okay to hold it in your mouth when you sleep. This is a very safe and reliable recipe.

4. Put 100 grams of ordinary white wine into a teacup and add 10 grams of salt; stir, and after the salt is dissolved, put it on the stove and boil it. Hold a mouthful of it at the painful area, be careful not to swallow it, and the toothache will stop immediately.

5. Rinse your mouth: Take a mouthful of water (close to body temperature) and rinse your mouth vigorously.

6. Hand massage: This method can relieve 50% of the pain. Take a piece of ice and rub the "V" area between the thumb and index finger bones, and gently press the ice on this area for 5-7 minutes. A Canadian researcher found that 60-90% of people who used this method experienced relief from toothache. His research showed that this friction method can interfere with the transmission of toothache nerve impulses.

7. Massage the Hegu point with ice for 5 minutes.