Finding Relief: Treating Tooth Pain and Toothaches
The Smile Center is proud to serve patients in and around Virginia Beach, offering advanced general dental care as well as state-of-the-art restorative dentistry to alleviate pain and discomfort. Our procedures also emphasize patient empowerment, prevention, and natural aesthetics.
A number of patients visit our practice suffering from toothaches. We thought it would be a good idea to use this post to explore the issue of dental pain, namely its common causes and ideal treatment options.
Tooth Decay and Serious Cavities
If you suffer from serious tooth decay, it's likely that you will experience issues with major pain and discomfort of your teeth. Not only will the serious tooth decay lead to pain while biting and chewing, it can also make eating hot foods or cold foods quite painful.
Tooth decay can be easily dealt with thanks to dental restorations such as fillings, inlays, onlays, and crowns.
Tooth Injury: Chips and Cracks
When you suffer from a severe chip or crack of your teeth, this can lead to similar pain and discomfort as major tooth decay. Even minor cracks can result in significant problems with tooth sensitivity and pain.
As with tooth decay, dental restorations are the best treatment.
Root Canal Infections
Within each tooth is a chamber full of soft tissue known as dental pulp, which was essential for the development and maturation of a tooth. If you experience major decay or tooth damage, this can expose the dental pulp within to serious infection, which can be quite painful.
When a tooth is infected, endodontic therapy can be performed to remove the diseased dental pulp.
Receding Gums and Sensitive Teeth
When your gums recede, it exposes more of a tooth's root structure to potential harm. This means an increased chance of tooth decay and tooth sensitivity, not to mention a high chance of experiencing a root canal infection as well.
Thankfully a gumline can be rebuilt thanks to modern soft tissue augmentation procedures.
Crooked Teeth
When your teeth are crooked, dental pain can occur for a variety of reasons. For one, crowding and spacing issues can make it painful to bite and chew. In addition, the teeth may be pressing against one another in a such a way what pain is unavoidable.
Orthodontic care is the best option for dealing with serious malocclusion.
Tooth Grinding (Bruxism)
Tooth grinding occurs when you are asleep. When you are under stress or your teeth can't find a comfortable position, your teeth will gnash, shift, and move as a result. This increases the chances of tooth damage occurring (chips and cracks), and the constant pressures placed on your teeth can lead to gum recession as well as general soreness.
Tooth grinding can be treated through orthodontics, mouth guards worn at night, stress management techniques, or a combination of these.
Impacted Wisdom Teeth
Wisdom teeth are the extra sets of molars that grow in during a person's late teens and early twenties. When the wisdom teeth come in crooked, they can press against the existing molars, causing severe pain and possibly even cracking the molars in the process.
A routine wisdom tooth extraction surgery can help alleviate problems with impaction.
Schedule a Consultation at The Smile Center
For more information about toothaches and dental pain, it's important that you contact our cosmetic and restorative dentistry center today. The team here at The Smile Center will help you have the healthiest smile possible.
