4 Reasons why you have toothache at night
Toothache is a nagging thing that can disturb our daily activities. Noting is painful as sleep disruption due to persistent toothache. Whatever the cause is, the painful sensation in a tooth may get worse at night. You might get a few sleepless nights due to your toothache. Right?
One reason for such nightly pain is our mind does not have many distractions when we fall asleep. In such cases, our brain is more aware of the sensations in our bodies. This makes our mind feels that the toothache becomes severe in the night.
Similarly, various atypical habits and bodily disorders are also linked to such throbbing toothache at night. We have listed the primary attributes of such nightly toothache.
1) Unconscious tooth grinding
Sleep Bruxism is the common factor behind nightly tooth pain. Some people grind and clench their teeth without their knowledge when they fall asleep. Such persistent force exerted on the teeth will weaken its gum support. Moreover, it causes a wreck on the enamel layer. As people have no idea while grinding teeth, they encounter severe pain in the middle of their sleep. Intense toothache, soreness in the jaw when you wake up are the signs of night teeth grinding.
2) TMJ Disorder
TMJ (Temporomandibular Joint) is the connecting tissue that bonds your jaw bone and skull. Habits like teeth grinding and clenching will lead to TMJ Disorder.
Pain in this joint radiates all times of the day. As mentioned earlier, you cannot notice it in the daytime due to our daily routines and too many distractions. So you might feel that the pain becomes severe at night.
Remember that if you do not have cavities, repaired fillings, or restorations but have severe pain in teeth, you might have TMJ disorder.
3) Decaying tooth or Tooth fracture
The infection in a tooth that leads to cavities would cause pain often. Similarly, cracks in a tooth also provoke intense pain. The habit of eating late-night meals will increase the degree of nightly pain in the problematic teeth because the food particles may stuck between the teeth with which the oral bacteria thrive and aggravate toothache.
On the other hand, the elevated blood flow to our head applies extensive pressure on the infected teeth while lying down. It also stimulates extensive toothache at night.
4) Sinus infection
Yes. It can. When the sinus cavity gets inflamed, it becomes congested and applies pressure over the upper rear teeth because the roots of those teeth and jaw bone are located close to the sinus region.
Thus sinus infection causes pain and discomfort in your teeth.
Bottom line
If you encounter intense or unbearable tooth pain at night, it means the infection is getting worse and you should seek dental treatment immediately. Despite you can get relief from nightly toothaches with remedies like saltwater rinse, over-the-counter medications, hot or cold compress, a dentist should intervene to get a permanent fix.
Your dentist will identify the root cause of the problem and suggest the right solution that provides you a tooth pain-free sleep.
