why does a toothache seems unbearable compared to any other body ache?
In: 23
Because its inside your head.
Ive had to wrangle with ear issues for half my life and the pain can easily equal tooth pain.
Im actually quite good at tolerating pain, but the things inside your head are just inescapable.
Every small movement will set it of. And each stining sensation will often spread through at least half of your head.
And your head is you. If your arms hurting you can see it as something thats hurting on an extension of yourself.
But when your heads hurting it feels like your everything hurts because you cannot focus on anything besides that pain.
Toothache is just the worst pain you’ve experienced so far.
Other pain can be worse.
Migraines, childbirth, kidney stones, acute glaucoma, bone metastases, etc are just some other things which are exceptionally painful and can be worse than toothache.
Each tooth has lots of nerves and blood vessels that provide nutrients and responses to it.
probably because it is not. good enough analgesics work on any pain, and tbh toothache has nothing even close to nonstop contractions in active labor.
My dentist explained it pretty casually to me once. Your teeth are actually really close to your brain.
When you have a problem with your teeth or gums, whatever nerves are involved pretty much have a direct red alert hotline to your brain. Whatever infection your mouth is fighting off, it’s also coursing through your brain as well.
It’s more or less the same reason that earache or neck pains are far more aggravating than say, joint pain or stomach pain.
That said, other body aches are perfectly capable of reducing you to tears. Food poisoning for example, isn’t something you can casually push through.
The nerves are closer to the brain ?
From a physiological perspective, it is because the mouth has a lot of nerve endings. You see all over your body you have peripheral nerves that work in two ways: sensory and response. Sensory nerves are responsible for pain, pressure, temperature etc. while motor nerves send responses to muscles and help coordination. From a physiological perspective, anywhere that has a lot of sensory nerve endings, is more sensitive. This is the same theory as to why paper cuts hurt more than deeper cuts.
Dental student here, simplifying the answer as best as I can –
It’s because the living, soft part of the tooth (the pulp) is at the core of the tooth structure. It’s surrounded by layers of hard “dead” tissues (dentin and enamel)
It is literally surrounded by these hard tissues on more than 98% of its surface.
When the pulp gets infected, it doesn’t have breathing space per se. It’s in its own small chamber and pressure builds up because there is no proper escape for the decaying tissue – hence it results in unbearable pain.
A possible evolutionary reason: In the days before modern dentistry, it was still possible to have a tooth violently removed, and that might be necessary when it’s the only way to deal with abscesses, etc. It takes a *lot* of pain to motivate someone to have their tooth removed in those circumstances, so your nerves are just trying to give you the motivation you need.
Other forms of pain are often just telling you something like, “stay in bed and rest”, and it doesn’t take constant agonising pain to do that.
You clearly haven’t had endometriosis pain, it’s on a whole other level of pain. Some women vomit and even pass out because of how painful it is.
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