The most common form of dental issue is a toothache. Just one symptom- general pain in the tooth, but it can be any number of larger problems. From a stabbing pain which wakes you up in the middle of the night, through to random aches deep in your gum, a toothache can drag on for days, bringing you down. You’re afraid to bite into an apple, eat ice cream or drink a hot coffee. Does this sound familiar?

There is no one cause for toothache. Tooth decay or sensitive roots, cracks in your teeth or missing fillings, all the way to infected teeth and dying nerves. Because there are so many reasons, your best bet is to see your family dentist right away.

If you don’t have your teeth looked at, it could lead to major infections, a lot of pain, even the loss of your tooth. The longer you leave a simple tooth ache, the more complicated the procedure needed to ease your pain, and the more money it can cost you.

Most of us at one time or another will have had a toothache. Sometimes the pain isn’t too bad and we can put up with it, whereas other times we find that we literally cannot sleep with a toothache.

Just like a headache, can be caused by so many different things, likewise there are multiple reasons why we may get a toothache.

Below are some common reasons:

• • Receding Gums

We all brush really hard.

The downside is that toothbrush wears away at our gums, exposing the millions of sensitive neck of our teeth, which causes sudden sensitivity, especially to hot and cold.

This is an extremely common condition which affects a lot of the population. It is a good idea to use a soft toothbrush and go easy on the brushing, to prevent our gums from receding further.

• • Cracked Tooth

If we play contact sport, a sudden impact can cause a broken bone.

Due to a constant chewing of hard things and chronic teeth grinding, our teeth can get cracked simply as a result of the wear and tear or a sudden impact due to chewing on something extremely hard, hence it is not recommend to chew ice, open bottles with our teeth!

The classic symptoms is when we get a jolt of sharp pain when we chew hard foods, or simply putting pressure on an area. Cracks can arrange in severity from a crack that runs across a certain cusp (valley) of a tooth, to a complete split of a tooth.

• • Tooth Decay

This is where bugs rots away at our teeth, the best analogy is think of a rotten apple. The bugs attacks the sensitive parts of our teeth causing pain. The symptoms ranges from food catching, pain on chewing and/or sensitivity.

• • Abscess/Infected Tooth

This is the classic case of the pain keeping us all night and pain relief does not take away the pain.

The tooth is hypersensitive and nothing can go near it. The bugs that causes decay has gone into the nerve of our tooth, which is basically like the heart of our tooth.

• • Sinus Pain

Our upper back teeth are very close to our sinuses, which are two air spaces on either side of our nose. That is why sometimes when get a cold, we get a toothache as well!

The symptoms mainly consists of a dull ache that runs across our upper back teeth, a lot of times on both sides.

• • Gum Pain

This is when we brush or floss, we spit out blood.

The bugs hiding in our mouth causes our gums to become inflamed, which is most commonly a localized dull ache when we press on the gums or our tooth.

Sometimes gum pain may indicate active gum infections, where the bugs and the toxin in our mouth are chewing away at the gums and our jaw bones hold our teeth. This explains why over time our teeth starts to be come loose.