Introduction
Who does not know it? Coughing, sniffles, hoarseness, mostly headaches, maybe also fever and a general feeling of uneasiness. The cold has really got to you.
In addition to these typical symptoms, toothache can suddenly appear and make the cold even more unpleasant. How toothache and cold are connected is explained in the following article. If one is affected by a cold, it is usually an infection of the upper respiratory tract.
The mucous membranes of the nose, including those of the paranasal sinuses, are affected, as well as the throat and bronchial tubes. Triggers are mainly various viruses, such as the rhino-, entero- or mastadenoviruses. In addition, bacteria can also be added to the clinical picture.
The disease-causing viruses are transmitted via droplet infection through the air directly or indirectly, through contaminated objects. Whether a cold breaks out after contact with the viruses depends on the quantity and infectious power (virulence) of the pathogens and the respective state of the immune system. In most cases, a cold is harmless after the incubation period is over, and after two weeks almost 90% of cases have subsided.
The clear division into a flu or a common cold is not very easy. With a flu, strong aching limbs and high fever are usually added. The symptoms of a cold are manifold.
They range from a sore throat to an inflammation of the nasal mucous membranes to headache and aching limbs. A severe cold can also cause inflammation of the paranasal sinuses (sinusitis), angina tonsillaris or middle ear infection (otitis media). Toothache is also a common side effect.
Causes of toothache
Usually the reasons of toothache are often caries, too high fillings or inappropriate dentures that cause an incorrect bite. At first glance, toothache and cold do not seem to go together, since a cold is a viral infection in the upper airways. So how can the tooth hurt?
As with many medical questions, the body is to be seen as a complete system whose individual components do not exist separately from each other, but are all connected. For example, a cold usually causes moderate to severe toothache, but this is also dependent on the person’s perception of pain. Toothache also has a negative effect on the level of suffering and delays healing.
One reason is that the painful teeth were already affected before the cold. Until the onset of the cold, the body had enough energy and its own defenses to fight the inflammation in the tooth. However, this energy is now needed to fight the cold and its viruses, so that the inflammation appears on the teeth.
Another cause is to be found in the sinuses. The sinuses include the frontal sinus, the ethmoidal sinus, the maxillary sinus and the sphenoidal sinus. They are arranged in pairs, filled with air and hollow.
Their tasks are to reduce the weight of the skull and to condition the air we breathe. This includes humidifying and warming the inhaled air as well as filtering out bacteria and germs. They are lined with the so-called respiratory epithelium, which has small fine hairs and produces bronchial mucus.
If you suffer from a cold, the removal of the mucus is disturbed, which causes the germs to remain in place and cause an inflammation. This results in an inflammation of the paranasal sinuses, which is a side effect of a cold. During this inflammation, the mucous membranes swell and cause pressure which presses on the roots of the teeth in the upper jaw, resulting in toothache.
The toothache becomes worse during physical exertion. The pain can also migrate in the further course, so that in the case of a particularly severe sinusitis, the entire lower and upper jaw can hurt. An exact localization of which tooth or where exactly the pain is located is not possible.
Toothache in the upper jaw is therefore not uncommon in the case of a cold, but the lower jaw is only affected in particularly severe cases.Another reason why pain also occurs in the lower jaw can be that infections from the throat, nose and throat area can also be deposited on the oral salivary glands and the temporomandibular joint, which then trigger a pain symptom in the lower jaw. In order not to put additional strain on the immune system, alcohol should generally be avoided during a cold. Especially if toothache is still present during the cold, strict abstinence from alcohol is advisable, as it can cause additional toothache.
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