why does a toothache seems unbearable compared to any other body ache?
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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.
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
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.
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.
I think it’s because it’s all nerve. I’ve broken bones, had gout, and they all are terrible. I once stomped down the garbage and had a broken glass come in through the side of my shoe directly into the nerve bundle in the ball of my foot. It was the most excruciating pain I’d ever felt, UNTIL I had a tooth go bad. That tooth pain just short circuits your brain until it’s fixed.
You’ve never had a hemorrhoid operation. It is bad before the operation and insanely bad afterwards. But once it is all over, sweet, sweet relief.
Its because the nerves all along your jaw get activated by accident, even if its only one tooth, it feels like the whole mouth sending that same signal.
Physician here. Pain is completely relative to an individual. I’ve taken care of grandmas in their 80s and 90s who don’t even flinch when I poke a needle into their artery to do special blood tests (it’s a lot more painful than a regular blood draw and I can corroborate from my own experience of a friend doing it to me). Then, I’ll do the same test on a 28 year old man and they’ll be freaking out and even had young guys cry.
I’ve even seen an 88 year old grandma barely “wince” when an orthopedist put her dislocated shoulder back into place, and she didn’t want pain meds or anything else to take the edge off. I’ll never forget that lady, she was cracking jokes with me afterward saying she’s humpty dumpty and so silly for tripping and dislocating it in the first place. 😂
Point is, a toothache can be very painful for some, and merely “annoying” or “irritating” to others. People have different pain thresholds, different pain tolerances, and different ways of coping with it when it occurs. A woman who has experienced childbirth often uses that as a measuring stick for other types of pain, since childbirth ranks up there (I’m told, and from what I’ve seen as a male physician). Another one I hear people saying as the worst pain of their life are kidney stones and gout.
If you’ve not had something more painful than a toothache, then sure, it will rank up there for ya. It tends to be on the more painful side due to the constant irritation to the nerve (mouth movement, air moving around the teeth, chewing, clenching, tongue pushing on the tooth etc.) which stimulates the pain sensation to the brain. But again, take two people with similar tooth problems and one may feel significantly more pain than the other.
Hope this helps answer your question.
It doesn’t, though. There are far more painful experiences, especially acute pain, whereas tooth pain tends to be dull and easier to move to the background.
As someone whose had a tooth infection, in the middle of intense cancer treatments, I feel uniquely equipped to answer this. The reason it feels like “the worst pain” is because it’s inside your face and, worse even, inside your mouth. There is no ignoring it. There isn’t even a way to dissociate comfortably while it’s happening.
Your head is where your brain lives. It’s where your thoughts live. It’s where you live.
Your mouth never stops moving, whether you like it or not. Your tongue and your jaw muscles are always flexing and tweaking.
It’s truly unbearable.
It’s easier to ignore the pain of a needle going through your spine, than into your face, trust me.
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