September is National Pain Awareness Month, which means it’s a great time to talk about an often overlooked but very common area where people experience pain: the jaw and teeth. When tooth or jaw pain strikes, many people try to just wait it out and hope it goes away. However, in the long run, you could do serious damage to your oral health by ignoring your body’s way of telling you that something’s wrong.
Reasons for Tooth Pain
A toothache is a sign something isn’t right in your mouth. Your body protects itself by using pain to signal to your brain that a problem exists. Here are a few reasons you could be experiencing tooth pain:
- You may have a cavity.
- If you have fillings, one could have become damaged.
- You may have an infection in your gums or tooth.
- You may have cracked or fractured a tooth.
- You may be clenching or grinding your teeth. This could even be happening at night when you’re unaware.
Reasons for Jaw Pain
Jaw pain can make even the most basic of daily tasks like talking, chewing or yawning painful and difficult. If you’ve ever experienced jaw pain you know just how much it can affect your quality of life. Here are a few things could be causing your jaw pain:
- You may have a TMJ disorder.
- You may have injured your jaw bone.
- You could have a cavity or decay forming in a tooth near the jaw bone.
- You may have gum disease.
- You may have rheumatoid arthritis.
- Although rare, you could have mumps, tetanus or be experiencing a heart attack.
Don’t ignore tooth or jaw pain and just hope it will go away. Even if it goes away temporarily, there is usually an underlying problem causing the pain. The longer you wait to address problems, the more treatment you may need to get them under control and healed.
For any questions, or to schedule an appointment with Dr. Norman, call us today at (425) 374-1608.
