The Connection Between Migraines and Tooth Pain

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the connection between migraines and tooth pain

Migraine attacks typically cause severe pain in one or more head areas, including behind the eyes, around the cheeks, and on the scalp. But did you know that migraines can also cause pain in your jaw and ear? If you have been experiencing intense toothaches with no obvious dental problems, then a migraine may be the culprit behind your pain.

So, how can a migraine cause problems with your teeth? While we still don’t know the specific cause of migraine, experts in migraine pain prevention near you suggest that they are caused due to abnormal brain activity that causes issues with the nerve signals, blood vessels, and chemicals in the brain. The resulting pain can radiate to your teeth.

How Can You Treat Tooth Pain Caused by a Migraine?

As you may have guessed, tooth pain that occurs as a migraine symptom needs to be treated by addressing the cause of the migraine, not the teeth.

While there is no cure for migraine, there are many available treatment options for migraine pain prevention in St. Albert. To ease the pain from your migraine, you can try the following:

● Taking over-the-counter pain medications such as ibuprofen when you feel a migraine attack coming on

● Sleeping or resting in a dark room

● Getting acupuncture

● Eating something small

● Drinking water

What Are Other Symptoms of Migraine?

Migraines may cause sweating, nausea, light sensitivity, and head throbbing. About one-third of individuals who experience migraines also get visual auras, such as blind spots or flashes of light that appear right before the migraine attack. Most of the time, migraine attacks last between four hours and three days, but they can cause fatigue for up to a week afterward.

When Should You Speak to a Professional?

Toothaches caused by migraine can feel similar to the pain felt with:

● A sinus headache

● An infected tooth

● An impacted wisdom tooth

Since some of these conditions can be quite serious, it is important to visit our dental clinic near you as soon as possible when you experience intense and sudden pain in your teeth. This is even more important if it is not accompanied by other symptoms such as swelling or redness.

If our dentist cannot find anything wrong with your mouth after your examination at a dental office near you, they may refer you to a specialist, such as a neurologist, who can screen you for migraines. While there is no single test to determine if one is experiencing migraines, it is possible for a neurologist to diagnose migraines by figuring out a pattern of attacks that occur alongside other symptoms.

The Bottom Line

A migraine causes intense headaches that may radiate pain down the teeth, mouth, neck, and jaw. Migraines can happen once or continuously until they become chronic and are often accompanied by other symptoms such as sensitivity to light and nausea.

If you are experiencing severe tooth pain, your first step should be to book a comprehensive dental exam with our dentist at Dentus Family Dental to ensure you are not dealing with any dental problems. From there, our dentist in St. Albert can guide you to a specialist who can help address your migraine and ensure that you find relief.