Listen to Your Mouth

Most of the time, we listen to what is coming out of our mouths but what I want to focus on in this article is listening to what is happening in your mouth.  Yes, your mouth is talking to you some of the time!  When your mouth is not talking to you it is pretty much a happy mouth.  But there are many times when your teeth and gums are trying to tell you something and sometimes we just aren’t listening.

If you bite into something cold and some of your teeth are sensitive to the cold sensation, then your mouth is talking to you.  If hot foods and the pressure of biting or eating something makes your mouth sore, then it is sending you a big message. The mouth really is an amazing place.  When something is going wrong, most of the time it will send you a pretty big signal.  The question is whether or not we are listening to our mouths or just going to ignore the messages coming out of it.  Generally, when there is any kind of tooth sensitivity, you can literally point right to it and say this is what is bothering me.  When tooth is painful, it needs to be taken care of right away.  Many times the nerves of the teeth, for a variety of reasons, may start to die.  This can result in having pain for a couple of days on that tooth and then the pain starts to subside.  Most people think that the problem has gone away, when what is really happening is that the nerve inside of the tooth, called the pulp, is starting to die.  The nerve of the tooth will then send you a few more jolts of pain until it has totally died.  At this point, it starts to leak out toxins into the surrounding bone and one day, seemingly out of nowhere, you will wake up with a huge pus pocket in your mouth the size of a small fruit.  Tooth pain that has come and gone should not be dismissed as having healed itself.  That rarely ever occurs.

Pain in your gums generally related to gum disease or what we call periodontal disease.  What happens here is that bacteria in your mouth start to eat away at the bony structure around the teeth causing a big gum pocket.  This then gets badly infected causing pain and loose teeth.  Again, your mouth is talking to you and telling you that there is a problem going on.  The pain then may disappear only to come back much stronger the next time around, which will send you an even bigger message.  The gums then easily bleed upon brushing or upon eating.  There is some old wives’ tale that bleeding of the gums is a sign of health when we know that is absolutely never true.  Bleeding in any part of your body generally means something is going on and generally is not a sign of health.  This is particularly true in your gums.  Bleeding of the gums is a sure sign that something more severe is going on and it is a problem that will not go away by itself.

Learn to listen to your mouth.  Pain upon chewing, sensitivity to hot or cold foods, loose teeth, bleeding gums, and holes in teeth mean that your mouth is talking to you.  It is similar to a crying baby.  The louder the cries, the more attention it is going to need.