I Feel Sensitivity and Pain in My Tooth or Gums. What Should I Do?

 
Tooth and gum sensitivity and pain can become very disruptive to your life. It gives you discomfort when you’re trying to carry out the daily aspects of your life. Plus, eating and talking can start to feel impossible. If you’re in enough pain, you might never find comfort or be able to sleep at night.

This kind of situation can’t go on for long. Yet even mild tooth and gum pain or sensitivity could indicate a serious problem or one that is likely to worsen in time. When you have tooth and gum ache or sensitivity, what could be causing it? Do you need to see a dentist? Let’s take a look at 10 tooth and gum symptoms and explore some of the potential causes for why a person's tooth and gums hurt.

Mild tooth pain might not seem like much of a concern. You may figure you can deal with it and it will probably go away, but this might not be the case. Mild pain can sometimes indicate the beginning of a dental problem.

In this kind of case, the pain and the underlying problem could worsen into a more major concern if it goes unaddressed. Especially if the mild pain in the tooth doesn’t stop or sporadically returns, it’s probably time to see a dentist.

If you consider your pain mild, it might feel like a dull pain. Or it could be a sharper pain that you only experience periodically or don’t find too disruptive to your life. Often, dull pain means the tooth has a cavity, which is a decayed area. Another reason for feeling this type of pain could be the gums decreasing in size and creating tooth sensitivity, which tends to start because of gum disease. And possibly this dull pain could be the first sign of an infection.

Severe tooth pain is the type you really need to address, if only because you can’t go on in so much pain for too long. Also, this type of pain is most likely your body’s way of alerting you to a serious problem that needs to be treated. This type of pain tends to be sharp, and it might feel like stabbing or throbbing.

If the pain comes when you bite into your food, it could be from a crack or decay in your tooth or from a loose filling. If the pain sticks around after you’ve had foods or beverages with high or low temperatures, this could indicate that the pulp inside your tooth is swollen or dying. If this problem is not treated in time, the dentist may not be able to reverse it.

The pain can be severe and feel like it’s radiating when you have developed a serious cavity or have experienced trauma to the tooth, such as the tooth being knocked or hit. Severe pain could also be stemming from more advanced gum disease. You might notice that you have an infection if there is pain in your tooth and also in your jaw, head or neck. If you also have symptoms of a fever, sore throat or jaw pain, it’s essential to seek immediate treatment because you could have a severe infection.

If the cause of your tooth pain is allowed to progress untreated, it’s possible to develop a painful abscess. An abscess can be serious to your overall health, as it can result in a brain abscess, infection in the blood or swelling in the heart lining.

You might notice swelling in your gums that often accompanies other symptoms like redness. Swelling can come with numerous dental problems, so you might need to look at other symptoms to figure out the cause.

Swelling can develop with something as simple as brushing too hard, which can actually cause damage to the gums. Another main cause of swelling is gum disease, which is called gingivitis in its milder form or periodontitis when it’s more severe. With periodontitis, you can experience extreme swelling along with pain and bleeding.

If swelling in the gum is present along with severe pain and sensitivity to touch, you might have a tooth abscess. This means that the tissue and bone around the tooth has an infection, which can be a serious problem for your oral and overall health.

You’ll know you have a broken tooth if you see a crack in the surface or a piece falls out. Nonetheless, you may not realize the problem unless you notice other symptoms that can alert you to it. These symptoms include pain when eating and sensitivity to temperatures.

When you think of a broken tooth, your mind might automatically jump to an injury that breaks the tooth from force. Of course, this is one cause but not the only one. A break can also result from a tooth weakened by a cavity, a lack of oral care, teeth grinding or biting a hard item. These causes could also cause a small chip in the tooth instead of a crack.

Black or brown spots in your mouth can be unsettling, so it helps to understand what might be causing them. They can develop on the tooth enamel and the gums, and smoking is one of the causes that can affect both areas. Nonetheless, there are many other causes specific to the teeth or gums.

When the spots are found on the teeth, they could be indicating decay. The discoloration could also be coming from an excess of fluoride, which is called fluorosis, or from plaque that has turned into a brown-hued substance called tartar, which tends to sit on the tooth at the gum line. Another potential contributor is celiac disease, which is an autoimmune disorder.

When you see the spots on the gums, they can actually be from bruising like you get on your skin. This can happen from various types of injury. Other causes could include a fluid-filled cyst, a mole called blue nevus, harmless freckle-like spots called melanotic macules or the harmless condition of oral melanoacanthoma. It’s also possible that the spot is from amalgam from a filling or from oral cancer.

You’ve probably seen some bleeding in your mouth at least once in your lifetime. Sometimes, it’s your dental care that’s contributing to gum bleeding. Brushing backward and forward instead of in a circular manner can lead to gum bleeding because it can cause damage and irritation to the gums. Also, flossing too aggressively can cause the gums to bleed. If you’re brushing and flossing gently and correctly and still noticing blood, you might have gum disease.

Bleeding in the gums is one of the indications of gum disease, especially with its more severe form of periodontitis. Bacteria on the gums can lead to bleeding and other symptoms like swelling and redness.

Sometimes, tooth pain doesn’t actually originate in the teeth but in the sinuses instead. This might be the case if you feel the pain in your upper back teeth. Sometimes the pain is felt on one side and sometimes both. You can feel pain in the teeth when you have a sinus problem because the same nerves go between them. Along with the tooth pain, you might feel sinus pain and nasal congestion.

Another possible cause of pain in the upper teeth and jaw is teeth grinding, or bruxism. This can happen when you consistently grind your teeth without noticing it, often while you’re asleep but possibly also during waking hours. If you feel a dull pain that originates more in your teeth and jaw than the sinuses, consider this as a potential cause. Another symptom that can help identify bruxism is that the teeth are damaged in some way, whether they are flattened, chipped, broken or loose. You would also notice tight muscles in the jaw and possibly pain in your neck, face or head.

It could be the jaw that is experiencing pain, whether by itself or along with pain in the teeth. Jaw pain that includes tension in the jaw muscles could be caused by teeth grinding. Another source of this pain could be impacted wisdom teeth, which are wisdom teeth that are stuck from fully emerging from the gum surface.

Another possibility of jaw pain is a temporomandibular disorder. These disorders take place in the joint of your jaw, and they can create pain in that joint, as well as facial muscle spasms, popping or sticking when you open your mouth and headaches. These disorders have numerous causes, including teeth grinding, an injury, improper teeth alignment, tension, arthritis or tumors.

Sometimes, the pain you feel in your mouth is coming from your gums alongside or instead of pain in your teeth. The gums can experience pain from gum disease, brushing and flossing improperly or too aggressively, oral cancer or an abscessed tooth. Also, hormonal changes can create painful gums for women.

You might also get canker sores, which are mouth ulcers, on your gums from time to time. These sores are common and tend to heal on their own, yet they can create sensitive gums especially when they are touched. While the causes of these sores are not known for sure, some potential contributors could be bacteria and viruses, food sensitivities, oral injuries, hormones and certain other triggers. There is an increased likelihood of developing these sores in certain populations and with specific health conditions such as an autoimmune disorder.

Are you experiencing any of these 10 dental symptoms? If so, it’s a good idea to see a dentist, who can determine the cause of the symptom and recommend the correct treatment. By addressing a dental symptom early, you could prevent it from worsening to become more severe and costly to fix. If the problem is already severe, it’s essential to get it treated immediately.

You should especially see a dentist immediately if you experience pain that is severe, pain that doesn’t go away for two days or accompanying symptoms like a fever, sore throat, earache, jaw pain or pain when you open your mouth. Even if your symptom doesn’t have an underlying problem that needs to be fixed, a dentist may be able to offer a solution to ease the discomfort.

If you live in the Rockville, MD or surrounding areas such as Washington, DC, Potomac, North Bethesda, and Silver Spring, Dr. Seifi at StarBrite Dental is ready to offer dental emergency services, as well as diagnoses to determine the cause of your painful of sensitive teeth and gums. Request an appointment through our website or by calling 240-241-7194 if you ever wonder, "why do my gums hurt".

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