What can be done at home to relieve severe toothache

Next you will learn:

• what can be done at home if the tooth suddenly begins to hurt badly (including under a filling or crown);
• what agents are usually used to relieve acute toothache, and which of them are most effective;
• what may threaten prolonged home treatment and delaying a visit to the doctor;
• useful and useless methods of relieving toothache - which options are better not to even try to apply ...

There are many situations when a tooth hurts and it is urgent to do something to relieve pain at home. And, perhaps, the most typical case is when the sufferer tries in every possible way to delay a visit to the doctor with the hope that the pain will gradually pass away by itself, and in the future, perhaps, it will not even appear at all.

We will talk about the perniciousness of such an attitude to our own health a little lower. In the meantime, we only note that if the tooth hurts, then there is always a reason for this, and if you do not eliminate it in time, then in most cases the situation will only get worse over time. Accordingly, the first what to do with severe toothache - Call a doctor and make an appointment.

However, there are also situations where a tooth or gums may hurt, but urgent treatment is not required. For instance:

1. After some operations, for example, immediately after tooth extraction (in the language of dental surgeons, tooth extractions are simple and complex, and sometimes simple removal causes pain on the first day even more than complex. All individually. Pain relievers are prescribed by the doctor on the first day after tooth extraction required);
2. When a wisdom tooth or another tooth is cut out in a child (however, the wisdom teeth are also not so simple - often the lower wisdom teeth without timely treatment begin to erupt with pathologies requiring surgical intervention. It is not by chance that a painful eruption even bears a special name - pericoronitis);
3. Immediately after the installation of the crown, before its adaptation to the gum (crowns can cause discomfort after fixation, especially those that are fixed slightly under the gingival margin, although acute pain is practically excluded).

In such cases, the pain can usually be removed at home, without fear for the grave consequences of "patience."

But most often the teeth hurt due to various pathologies: due to deep caries, pulpitis or periodontitis, and in these cases the pain can vary from mild and rapidly passing to very sharp and constant. In addition, swelling of the gums and cheeks (edema), fever, headache and other unpleasant symptoms can additionally be observed.

Let's see what can be done at home to alleviate suffering when a tooth hurts a lot, and immediately it is not possible to see a doctor for one reason or another.

 

Toothache Relief Pharmaceuticals

Modern painkillers in the form of tablets, water-soluble powders and drops are the most effective means for relieving acute toothache, far surpassing all kinds of alternative methods in terms of effectiveness. Analgesics give a quick result, provide a fairly long-lasting effect, and today they are available for use at home for almost everyone.

The following drugs are most often used to relieve toothache:

• Analgin - previously one of the most popular and affordable means, which, however, today is very outdated. It usually helps well with mild aching toothache, but with pulpitis, when acute pain is felt, its effectiveness may be insufficient.Analgin also has a pronounced antipyretic effect. It should be borne in mind that this drug has long been banned for use in many countries of the world due to dangerous side effects.
• Aspirin - many know it as an antipyretic, but it also copes well with not very severe toothache. However, with acute pain, aspirin will not help.
• Nimesil - a tool significantly stronger than the previous two. With its help, severe toothache is almost completely eliminated, regardless of the etiology. Its duration is 4-5 hours. The main drawback of Nimesil is the release only by prescription, which significantly limits the use of the drug at home.
• Ketanov is one of the most powerful drugs that helps relieve even very severe toothache. It begins to act about half an hour after taking the pill, and the pain completely subsides usually after an hour and a half. The total duration of the drug is 5-6 hours. Ketanov also refers to prescription drugs, and to buy it you will need to first visit a doctor (although in practice many pharmacies, departing from the law, sell it freely without a prescription).

By strength of action, the closest analogues of the Ketanov drug are Ketorol, Ketorolac, Dolak and Ketalgin. Of these, Dolak can be bought at a pharmacy without a prescription. All these products are available in tablet form. They are taken strictly according to the instructions, or according to the special instructions of the doctor (usually 1 tablet 2-3 times a day).

If a tooth hurts in a child, you need to carefully read the instructions on the admissibility of using the appropriate drug in childhood and strictly adhere to the recommended children's dosages.

Also at home, it is sometimes possible to use solutions of Lidocaine and Novocaine. These are quite effective local painkillers, which are used quite differently from tablets: solutions simply drip directly onto a diseased tooth with a deep carious cavity (or put a cotton wool moistened with the drug in the carious cavity). Provided that the carious cavity is in communication with the pulp chamber, after a short time there is a loss of tooth sensitivity - a kind of “freezing” effect. It usually lasts no more than an hour.

Important!

It should be borne in mind that novocaine (in particular) is one of the most allergenic anesthetics today, so care must be taken.

In addition, no matter how severe the toothache, when using any medication at home, it is very important not to exceed the dosage. Usually, 1-2 tablets is enough for the drug to have the maximum effect possible for it. You do not need to swallow many tablets at once, since exceeding the recommended dosages is fraught with serious side effects and poisoning.

Before taking any drugs, it is advisable to consult a doctor - at least by phone.

Feedback

“Yesterday I still climbed the walls, I didn’t know what to do, my tooth hurt so badly. I cannot drink Analgin because of the kidneys. As a result, I spent the whole night in the bathroom, rinsing my mouth. In the clinic, I thought that I would come, they would quickly fill my tooth and that’s all. But no! I got a flux there with pus. The doctor said that in general the tissues are normal, the tooth can be treated, but only when the purulent inflammation has passed. She prescribed special medicines and gave a prescription for pain from Ketorol. With these pills it’s very good, they completely relieve pain, but you can’t drink them for a long time ... "

Katya, Tver

 

What threatens the habit of relieving toothache with pills

It is important to understand that pain is a symptom of pathology, and the stronger it is, the stronger the damage in the tooth itself or in the tissues surrounding it. If the tooth hurts a lot, this is a direct signal that it needs to be urgently treated, and it certainly will not work at home.

In practice, in many such cases, people are simply afraid to go to the dentist or do not want to spend money on treatment, hoping that the tooth will ache and go away on its own. So they endure toothache until the last, until it becomes unbearable already. But even in this case, when the exhausted organism is trying to tell the owner that it is no longer possible to drag it on, because the consequences will be very sad, a person often does not run to the dental clinic, but to the pharmacy to buy powerful pills to somehow relieve the pain.

The result of this approach is a variety of dental diseases and their complications:

1. Caries, which at different stages can manifest itself as weak and rapidly passing pain, and quite strong pain. If you suppress such toothache at home with pills, the carious process will inevitably get to the pulp, lead to pulpitis - and this is a much more severe pain, and treatment of such a tooth will be associated with the need to remove the "nerve" from it. This is often a long and expensive procedure, especially in the case of multi-channel teeth.
2. Pulpitis, which manifests itself with severe toothache, often worsening at night. If in this case you try to be treated at home, just relieving the pain with the help of tablets, then you can play out to periodontitis, flux and festering fistulas in the gums. Moreover, tooth extraction in some such cases is far from the saddest consequence.
3. Odontogenic osteomyelitis, phlegmon, sepsis - all these complications can already threaten a person’s life.

It’s also dangerous to endure toothache under the crown (especially if the pain suddenly appeared under a long-installed crown). The presence of unpleasant sensations here indicates the development of a hidden pathological process, the scale of which can only be assessed in the picture in the clinic. The situation is similar when a tooth hurts under a filling (long established) - in such cases the problem cannot be solved at home, a mandatory visit to the doctor is required.

On a note

Even a recently installed seal should normally not cause acute and prolonged spontaneous aching pain. Long-term pain from irritants (cold, hot, etc.), as well as pain when biting on a sealed tooth, is also no reason to endure, since often sooner or later this leads to pulpitis and (or) periodontitis.

It often happens that there are no organic changes in the pulp, but it is impossible to chew on the side of a tooth that is filled. Reason: the technique of setting the filling material is violated or this material is not suitable for a particular person. It is not advisable to wait for months and endure in such a situation, since it is enough to simply change the seal under the guarantee and (or) put it differently.

Thus, means for relieving toothache should be used only for a short time - for the period of waiting for qualified dental care. An attempt with painkillers to avoid treatment is nothing more than an independent destruction of one's health in general, and teeth in particular.

Feedback

“I started this two weeks ago ... Before that, the tooth ached periodically, but there was nothing extraordinary. And then I feel that it starts to hurt very much, then my cheek is still swollen. I’m calling the doctor, he writes me down only the next day, and I already have a face, as if I had picked nuts on my cheek! The doctor said to rinse your mouth with warm water, and went all day with warm tea in your mouth. Then she found out that it was periostitis against a background of nerve inflammation in the tooth. Until now, I have not completely recovered, I hope that next week will be the last visit to the doctor. "

Olga, Moscow

 

Warm rinses: why are they needed and how to do them correctly

Oddly enough, warm mouthwashes help with many diseases of the teeth and gums.They, of course, do not replace treatment and the disease itself does not eliminate, but often they can really significantly reduce the pain syndrome, and besides, rinse the inflamed areas of the tissues, removing part of the pus, if any.

Moreover, by and large, it is not so important what exactly rinses. Another thing is important:

1. Rinse your mouth with a liquid with a temperature of approximately 45 ° C. Above is impossible - you can get burned. If the temperature is close to room temperature, the effect will be much lower.
2. Rinse often - at least once an hour, and preferably once every 30 minutes. In this case, you need to rinse your mouth, not your throat.

For such home rinses, you can use plain water, saline (a teaspoon of salt per liter of water), water with baking soda, decoctions of herbs with anti-inflammatory activity - chamomile, mint, string, immortelle, sage. You can also use a decoction of oak bark.

It is advisable to rinse your mouth even when the pain has subsided or subsided - before the visit to the doctor.

Another tip about relieving pain at home:

“I want to share my experience, as I tried to treat toothache myself. Last summer, my tooth ached a lot, so I just took a glass of warm water, added a quarter of a spoon of soda to it and rinsed my mouth with this solution every half hour. At the same time she drank mint tea, it soothes. The next day the pain subsided a little, but a swelling of the cheek appeared. She continued to rinse, but still prepared a decoction of oak bark and added it to the rinse. The pain was already so pulling, unpleasant, but not sharp. But the tumor did not pass for a long time. After a week I could not stand it and went to the doctor. And there everything turned out to be serious, I even had to do an operation ... "

Ksenia, Moscow

But it is absolutely impossible to warm the cheek outside the diseased tooth - this will only lead to a strong increase in edema without any positive effect (those who try to warm the swollen cheek from the outside with a heating pad, or clinging to the heating battery, invariably become convinced of the inappropriateness of this approach).

 

Useless and even harmful folk remedies for relieving toothache at home

The people stubbornly continue to "circulate" several alternative methods, supposedly able to soothe even severe toothache, which, however, cannot be recommended for use at home. Moreover, some of these methods are frankly harmful.

For instance:

1. Drinking alcohol inside or rinsing your mouth with alcohol. Drinking regularly with toothache is perhaps even worse than suppressing pain with pills. As for the rinses, alcohol in most cases will not affect the intensity of the toothache in any way, unless it antiseptic the oral cavity, but for this purpose it is better to use infusions of herbs or oak bark.
2. Some popular methods of relieving toothache involve frequent tooth treatment with honey. However, it should be borne in mind that honey and solutions containing it are excellent food for cariogenic bacteria, while glucose and fructose, of which honey consists, do not have any analgesic effect on a sick tooth.
3. Garlic and horseradish, which are recommended to be placed in the carious cavity of a diseased tooth or compresses in gauze based on them. If the carious cavity has a message with the pulp chamber, then in most cases this will only cause a significant increase in pain due to irritation of the inflamed pulp.

By the way

If you hold the pulp from garlic for a long time in a deep carious cavity, then, having suffered incredible pain, you can kill the "nerve", and the pain really almost subsides. However, the dead pulp in the following days will begin to gradually decompose (rot) directly inside the tooth, so a visit to the doctor will still not be avoided.

If the tooth hurts under the crown, then little can be done at home - no folk lotions and recipes usually help. At best, gum inflammation can be relieved.

 

If a child has a toothache ...

Destruction of even baby teeth in a child can lead to no less dangerous consequences than in adults, and toothache in childhood is usually accompanied by screaming and crying. Attempts to somehow endure a toothache at home, in the hope that milk teeth will fall out soon - this is a big mistake of parents and even, one might say, mockery of a baby. In some cases, delaying a visit to the dentist can put an end to healthy teeth in the child in the future.

Therefore, the first thing a bona fide parent should do in this case is to try to take his child to the doctor as soon as possible. And only if an immediate visit is impossible, then you will have to fight toothache for a while at home. Listed below are some tools that can help, but consulting a doctor before using them will still not hurt.

1. Nurofen for children - can be used for children from 3 months, allows you to quite relieve even severe pain. Suitable for older children.
2. Nurofen in tablets or capsules - can be used to relieve toothache in children over 12 years old (in a dosage of 200 mg 3-4 times a day). To relieve pain as quickly as possible, you can use 400 mg 3 times a day. Children from 6 to 12 years old are recommended 200 mg, but not more than 4 times a day. In any case, the maximum dosage is 800 mg per day, it can not be exceeded. "Adult" varieties of Nurofen should be given to children whose body weight is more than 20 kg. For children weighing less than 20 kg, it is better to give Nurofen for children. The recommended safe time interval between doses of the drug is at least 6 hours, and for prolonged-release tablets is 12 hours.
3. Nimesil - give half a packet (for children over 12 years old) once or twice a day, depending on the age and strength of the toothache.
4. Or you can rinse with warm water with anti-inflammatory drugs - perhaps this option is many times better for health than any pill. It is advisable to choose herbal decoctions (chamomile, sage), but you can also rinse with soda-salt solutions in weak concentrations, if the child does not oppose this "biaxa". If rinsing does not help, then only in such a situation will it be possible to recall the tablets.

On a note

Do not even think to give your child Analgin. It is time for all parents to remember that Analgin is a dangerous medicine, albeit extremely cheap. Often causes agranulocytosis.

It is important to remember that often in young children gums hurt during teething. This is perhaps the only case when a visit to the dentist is not required. But it will be useful to show the child to the pediatrician - the doctor will be able to accurately confirm that the pain in the child arose precisely because of teething.

Medicines to relieve teething pain:

• Gels based on Lidocaine and Menthol: Kamistad, Dentinox, Dr. Baby, etc.
• Suppositories and syrups anti-inflammatory and analgesic: Ibuprofen syrup, Viburkol candles, etc.

Before using these products, it is also recommended that you first consult your doctor.

And in conclusion, let’s say a few words about the faith of some people in all kinds of conspiracies and prayers for toothache, in various homeopathic remedies and self-hypnosis. Even if we assume that people who own the technique of self-hypnosis can really control their own pain, including toothache, then even a meditation guru can hardly “repair” a carious cavity or restore a rotting rot in the root canals. And in case of acute toothache it’s better not to rush to the old healer, but still to the dentist’s appointment, even if he will take more money from you for the treatment.

Feedback

“I’ll tell a story exactly a week ago. Everything is very commonplace: my tooth got sick. And he got very sick, and not just ached. I have a track record from seminars with Milton Erickson, his daughter, and about 10 other specialists in the field of NLP and self-hypnosis from the top twenty in the world. It is clear that the first thing I did was sit down, put in a trance and turn off the pain. She went through with me and my tooth did not hurt while I was doing important things. Do you know what I did when I was free? I called my dentist. He is a professional guy and his work is more expensive than the work of 95% of other dentists in St. Petersburg. And all because I know that if a tooth decays to a nerve, then no self-hypnosis will help me restore it. ”

Oleg, St. Petersburg

 

An interesting video on how to quickly relieve toothache at home without the use of tablets

 

About the removal of toothache with garlic (this tool is only for the most extreme case - for extreme people)