why does a toothache seems unbearable compared to any other body ache?
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From the perspective of an OMFS I’ll give you the following answers
1. Pain is relative. There is a strong psychosomatic effect when it comes to dealing with physical/emotional pain in addition to a purely psychiological one. I’ve seen patients with giant radiographic abscesses and open pulp chambers who barely even notice something is wrong yet when I go to deliver an IAN injection they nearly jump out of the chair.
2. There is only one nerve that innervates sensation to the face called the trigeminal (CN V) nerve and two of the three branches (V2 and V3) receive sensory information from the maxilla and mandible respectively. Often times there is a compounding effect when one particular tooth hurts and it sets off a chain reaction of referred pain.
3. Dental abscesses can become life threatening VERY quickly. It’s your body telling you that there is a problem which can no longer be ignored.
Tooth pain is only the worst because it comes with the “Oh great, now I will probably need a $1,400 root canal and a $1,000 crown” pain, and the knowledge that it will NOT get any better on its own.
Try extensor tendonitis on the top of your foot… Holllly fuck does it hurt. I think toothache still takes the top. Haven’t had kidney stones though
Bones are made for support and to do work and teeth are no different.
Add the exposure to different foods and temperatures doesn’t help either.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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