Oral discomfort can come from many places. The two most common places that dentists and dental professionals look at are soft tissues and hard tissues. At your exam, your dentist will look at your soft tissues, or your gums, lips, cheeks, and other similar tissues in your head and neck for disease processes. Following that, your dentist will look at your bone and teeth, both by visual and radiographic, or x-ray, examination for disease processes. At that point, your dentist, and only a dentist, can determine, what is causing you tooth pain. There is no one cause of tooth pain, but rather a myriad of reasons, and it needs to be evaluated by a dentist immediately.
Sometimes, what people think is tooth pain is really one of these other possible soft or hard tissue issues that are appearing as a toothache. Without the proper diagnosis and treatment by your dentist and their team, the problem will never resolve on its own and you will just be chasing ghosts and throwing away money in the process. Alternatively, there are much better options. With a dedicated team, such as the one at Simply Smile, you can have a dedicated and directed care plan from diagnosis through treatment and recall. This will save you time, pain, money, and frustration.
For some issues, you may be able to take care of them at home or be able to relieve them temporarily until you are able to visit us for an exam and emergency dental visit. You may be able to target some relief with these easy at-home temporary reliefs.
For immediate hard tissue problems, such as cavities, tooth isolation is the best immediate temporary fix. You may ask, “how can I isolate my tooth from the rest of my mouth?”, but it really is pretty simple. Placing a piece of gauze or a cotton ball over the affected tooth can prevent irritants, such as cold air, hot and cold liquids, and other stimulants from coming into contact with your tooth.
For soft tissue pains, such as gum pain, small cuts, or healing wounds from extraction, a warm salt water rinse is your best friend. Using a warm salt water rinse gently several times per day will keep the area clean and restore the appropriate pH balance to your mouth for the time being.
For any discomfort that cannot be relieved temporarily by a piece of gauze and salt water, an over the counter analgesic is indicated, as long as it doesn’t interfere with any current medications that you are taking. Anything beyond that, let us at Simply Smile take care of you gently and easily while we restore your smile to its former glory. C