If your pain comes from inside, usually it is
aggravated by cold, air, sweets, or heat. If any of these makes your tooth
hurt worse, your tooth is irritated. Then it becomes important to know if
you need to see your dentist.
There are two general cases where you absolutely
need your toothache treated. If, when the tooth is provoked, the toothache lingers for more
than one or two seconds, the tooth almost certainly needs to be treated.
For example, let's say your tooth is sensitive to cold. You drink cold
water, and you get a sharp jab in your tooth. In that case, it may not
need any treatment. But if that jab persists more than two seconds, see
your dentist. You probably need a root canal treatment.
Many people fear root canals. However, with recent technological advances, these appointments themselves are
generally not painful, nor are they traumatic—there isn't a
lot of grinding as there is with a filling or a dental
crown. Most of the work is
done with small hand instruments.
And when the tooth is dead,
which is often the case, it can even be done with no novocain. Root canal treatment
often means the relief of toothache pain, and often that relief is immediate and dramatic. Extraction—taking
a tooth out—is much more traumatic, from my experience as a dentist.
Also, if the pain progresses to where your tooth hurts without any outside stimulus, that is the second situation that definitely indicates you need to see a dentist, quickly. But if the pain is only provoked by a stimulus, and then it is only transitory, even if it hurts quite bad, there is still a chance that it could get better on its own.
The other source of toothache is the ligament that attaches the tooth
to the bone. When the infection inside your tooth spreads through the
tooth apex to the bone around the tooth, your toothache may become this
type. In this case, cold or heat or air won't bother you at all, but your
tooth will be sensitive to biting. However, most of the time when your
tooth is sensitive to biting, it isn't infected. Check the link below for
more information about sensitivity to biting.
The more promptly you seek attention for your toothache, the less likely
you are to have pain after the treatment. When your
tooth is infected, the
longer you allow the infection to become entrenched, the more likely you
are to have that infection try to spread when it's treated.
Additional information:
