Temporary Fillings At Home

You may be faced with the difficult situation of having lost a filling, either temporary or permanent, and cannot get an appointment to see your dentist. Luckily, there are certain things you can do to temporarily fill your cavity. Note that this is not a permanent solution, and you should still see your dentist as soon as possible.

What to do

First off, buy some over the counter temporary filling, or any sort of dental material containing zinc oxide. After this is done, disinfect your hands with soap, and your mouth with mouthwash. If you do not, an infection is likely to occur. Apply some topical, non-toxic anaesthetic (oil of cloves works best, and is easily accessible) to the cavity in question. Next take the temporary filling material, and roll it into a ball in your hands. Make sure it is big enough to cover the entire gap, and all of the affected tissue around it. Place the ball into the gap or cavity. Bite down rather hard, pushing the temporary filling material into the cavity all the way. Bite down hard until the material hardens. After the temporary filling has set, you can remove all of the bits that are overlapping, if there should be any.

Why you may need a temporary filling

Underneath each tooth is a nerve. The smaller the barrier between the nerve and the outside world is, the more discomfort you may feel. If the barrier, or tooth material is thin enough, then even a slight breeze may become painful, and even sucking on your tooth may cause a serious painful reaction. This is why you need to fill the tooth as soon as possible, to prevent such pain from occurring. If you are already experiencing pain, not to worry, most temporary fillings have a pain relieving material in them that will start to take effect immediately after placement.

But you should get that cavity filled as soon as possible even if you do not feel any pain. The reason is that an open tooth can get infected or break further quickly. This can result in painful and expensive root canal treatments, not to mention if the tooth becomes too infected, extractions, which are a big problem, as they can result in tooth loss, a condition rather than an occurrence. Even if the tooth is no longer alive (meaning it has no nerve that is keeping it alive), or has been root canaled nearly out of existence, you should try and save it anyway, for the reasons mentioned above.

In Conclusion

Do not forget that even if the temporary solution works extremely well and you are not feeling any sort of pain anymore, you still  need to go and get the dentist to take a look at it. The reason is because you simply cannot do a permanent filling, and one will be needed to replace your old ones, as the ones you have now will come out eventually, and an infection may occur even if you took a lot of time and effort to sterilize your mouth before handling the filling.

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