http://www.quadrant.org.

au/magazine/issue/2011/9/9-11and-the-intelligentsia-ten-years-on
Intellectuals

9/11 and the Intelligentsia, Ten Years On

Mervyn F. Bendle It was 8.00 a.m., September 12, 2001, on the Australian east coast, only hours after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The students in my criminology lecture seemed in shock. Many were sitting silently, staring into the middle distance, while others were huddled together, leaning across desks and talking intensely and urgently. It was impossible to miss the American students, who were mostly very young and not even allowed to drink in their homeland, but game enough to travel across the world to study in our country. Some were weeping, while most were red-eyed, their faces drawn and pale. Other students were bewildered, having missed the cataclysmic late-night events and the morning news, and they now listened incredulously as their friends recounted the dreadful attacks. As the New York Times observed in its editorial that morning: It was one of those moments in which history splits, and we define the world as before and after the attacks of 9/11. What was there to say? Somehow, launching into a lecture about functionalist theories of criminal behaviour seemed wildly inappropriate. Here were eighty students who were looking for discussion, empathy, sympathy, and maybe some answers and reassurance. They knew something momentous had happened; that suddenly their lives had been profoundly affected; that the world had changed, and changed obviously for the worse. Terrible violent forces had been unleashed, and sinister forces driven by an intense hatred and rage had been revealed. And so we talked. Fortunately, most of my studies, research and teaching had been in systems of extremist thought, comparative religion, and criminology. Consequently, I was familiar with the rise of radical Islam and jihadism, as well as with various forms of religious apocalypticism, death cults and the history of terrorism. When we eventually turned to the days lecture topic, I felt we had gone some way in beginning to understand how these atrocities had occurred and what they might mean for the future. Faced with global crises of such magnitude and significance, academics with the relevant knowledge have a responsibility to try to illuminate their nature and significance. Certainly, I will never forget the moment, shortly after 8.00 a.m. on that Wednesday morning a decade ago, when the class finally became quiet and

the eyes of eighty students looked up expectantly: Lets discuss this, help us understand. How had all this happened? Who were these people committing these atrocities? And why do they hate us so? Consequently, over the decade since 9/11 I have tried to make a contribution, teaching the only comprehensive course in Australia on the history of terrorism, and publishing some fifty articles on terrorism, the crisis of Islam, Islamism, jihadism, the response of the intelligentsia, and related issues. I have also observed the more general academic response to the crisis, which clearly represented a great challenge for academics, especially in the arts, humanities and the social sciences. It was a chance for academics to demonstrate their capacity for rigorous, objective and fearless research, illuminating one of the most important issues facing the modern world. But it was a challenge that few academics revealed themselves prepared to meet, with far too many trapped in the left-wing postmodern intellectual monoculture that pervades university life. When academic voices were heard in connection with 9/11 it was usually to exploit the tragedy opportunistically to gain funding and to promote ideological or apologetic agendas, dominated by this radical orthodoxy. According to the radical orthodox perspective, the world must be analysed exclusively in terms of class, gender and race, which leaves no room for any consideration of religious dynamics, such as the emergence of Islamism and jihadi terrorism. Consequently, these phenomena were assimilated to a simplistic and uncompromising secular narrative of generalised oppression, allegedly directed by a system of Western patriarchal and racist capitalism, dominated by American imperialism, and mobilised against the Other, the great mythic realm of victimhood, which, after 9/11, was quickly extended to include 1.5 billion Muslims, who were added to the select set of groups deemed worthy of special favour, advocacy and support. To facilitate this, the new thought-crime of Islamophobia was invented. Accusing interlocutors of this new form of Western depravity makes it possible to silence debate about the activities of Islamists and other Muslim extremists, while also making anyone brave enough to raise their voices vulnerable to the various laws that have been introduced by the Left to suppress free speech. Another semantic game is the insistence that terrorism has no real existence or cannot be adequately defined. This is an error, as the term is no more or less precise than any other concepts that seek to encompass dynamic phenomena, while history and current official usage confirm that terrorism is accurately defined as unlawful actions or threat of actions made by a non-state entity intended to harm, coerce, intimidate or interfere with the government or the public with the intention of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause. The radical orthodoxy seeks to invalidate the term, as it views its use as an intolerable affront to its favoured groups. It resorts instead to moral relativism and simplistic clichs (one persons terrorist is anothers freedom fighter and the like), so that concerns that the West is under terrorist attack can be rejected as attempts to negatively label these groups. Alternatively, reference in the definition to nonstate entities is ignored, and terrorism is defined so broadly that it encompasses military action by sovereign states, making it possible to claim that the actions of Al Qaeda and other jihadi groups are no more immoral than those of American and Australian forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. This self-imposed blindness, silence, confusion and moral culpability meant that many vital issues escaped scholarly attention in the aftermath of 9/11. For example, there was clearly a need to identify and explore the nature of the deep-seated crises within the Muslim world, and to explore the emergence and nature of Islamism and jihadism as responses to these crises. There was also a vital necessity to compare and contrast jihadism with the relevant ideological, organisational and operational aspects of the history of terrorism and violent extremism dating back to the nineteenth century. I published various articles on these topics in the early years after 9/11 but it became increasingly obvious that another area of concern also demanded attention. This was the role being played by the adversary culture of the intelligentsia, with its fierce antipathy towards the West coupled with its sympathetic or tolerant academic response to 9/11, which would largely shape the academic response to terrorism and Islam. It became clear that there was a desperate need to defend Western society from its internal intellectual enemies, who historically have regularly embraced political extremism, and to explore the reasons for what the French philosopher Julien Benda once calledin the first age of fascismthe treason of the intellectuals, which lures academics and intellectuals into supporting and sympathising with political extremism and terrorists. This tendency has gone uncontested since the eclipse of the liberal intellectual tradition and the victory of neo-Marxist ideology and postmodern obscurantism, a catastrophic shift that I described in an article in Quadrant in September 2010 on Peter Colemans book The Last Intellectuals.

Indeed, this betrayal by the intelligentsia of liberal democracy is one of the most fundamental features of modernity, and arises from the intelligentsias elitist hatred of what it sees as the humdrum, bourgeois civilisation of the West, coupled with a messianic sense of mission; an attraction to irrationalist political ideologies; a fascination with power and those who wield it; a desire to remake society in its own terms; an eagerness to implement totalitarian solutions to achieve this desire; and an enthusiasm for political extremism, including political violence and terrorist attacks upon its own society. Consequently, I applied ideas derived from Karl Popper, Isaiah Berlin and Robert Jay Lifton to a comparative study of Western radicalism and Islamist terrorism, arguing that the benign attitude of academics and intellectuals towards jihadi terrorism reflected an elective affinity between the two ideologies, centred on their shared antipathy towards civil society. I presented my case in Existential Terrorism: Civil Society and its Enemies, published in the Australian Journal of Politics and History in 2006. This became one of that journals most downloaded articles, even though it had been held back from publication for several years after acceptance. The affinity between Islamism and Western radicalism is based on their shared totalising view of the world, and their shared rejection of the pluralism of liberal democracies. It is expressed most vividly in a shared hostility towards civil society, where ordinary people in Western societies live their lives and pursue their own interests, largely free of political and religious interference. Although one ideology is secular and the other religious, both forms of radicalism demonise this realm of freedom, presenting it as thoroughly politicised and corrupt, and therefore as a legitimate target for terrorism. This explains why so many apparently non-violent intellectuals and academics readily accept the mass murder of innocent civilians in railway stations, office buildings, nightclubs, and other targets in civil society; and why, for example, the mass murder of people relaxing in a bar in Bali, or waiting for a train in London or Mumbai can be considered a blow against America and the West by Muslim jihadis and Western intellectuals alike. The latter mimic Islamist ideologues in viewing such victims as not innocent, but as guilty and complicit in the actions of the state apparatuses of their societiesculpable proxies of George W. Bush and John Howardsimply by virtue of the fact they are citizens of their societies and pay taxes, as Ayman al-Zawahiri stated explicitly in the Al Qaeda declaration on Jihad, Martyrdom, and the Killing of Innocents. Even at their most charitable, Western intellectuals regard such victims as acceptable collateral damage in their morbidly romanticised narrative about the anti-imperialist struggle. These are not merely theoretical issues, because universities have become contested ground in the form of warfare being waged by the global jihadi movement. As I discussed in a 2008 article on global jihad and the evolution of terrorist-training doctrines, this involves many forms of forcemilitary, political and ideologicaland it proceeds in an undeclared or unacknowledged manner, operating through terrorist networks, franchises and leaderless jihad. It is low-intensity, long-term and transnational conflict, and it places a particularly high value on agitation and propaganda, or agitprop. In this type of agitprop struggle the capacity to recruit and mobilise university-trained knowledge workers is paramount, as it has always been in the history of terrorism and political extremism. And the critical factor here is the availability of a viable ideology, such as radical orthodoxy, which carries out a number of essential functions. (1) It is able to achieve intellectual legitimacy and preferably dominance within key university facultiesthe arts, humanities and social sciences. (2) It serves to justify the principal elements of Islamism and jihadist terrorist activity. (3) It mobilises and legitimates the growing Islamist cadre in the universities. (4) It de-legitimises all its critics. (5) It denounces and intellectually undermines the host or target culture, and especially its counter-terrorist policies. (6) It attracts the support or at least acquiescence of influential sections of the Western intelligentsia and media. This strategy has been facilitated in Europe, America, Britain and Australia by the availability of vast amounts of overseas fundingamounting to billions of petro-dollarsmostly from Middle Eastern interests anxious to promote the legitimacy of Wahhabism and other forms of Salafi (fundamentalist) Islam. In Australia alone it was reported in 2008 that the Saudis were establishing a $2.7 billion scholarship fund, and that several universities were eager to compromise their integrity to gain access to such vast funds, matters which I discussed in several articles at the time. Under such a strategy, Islamist and jihadi groups seek to radicalise and recruit high-value, tertiaryeducated personnel, especially doctors, scientists, engineers and other technically trained professionals. A 2007 study of suicide bombers consequently identified a trans-national neo-ummah (Muslim community), peopled by frequently multilingual university students who see the West as evil incarnate sinful and pernicious, and as a satanic entity that legitimizes the use of blind violence against it (John Zimmerman, Jihad, Theory and Practice: A Review Essay, Terrorism and Political Violence, 2007).

Such intelligent, technically trained and deeply disaffected personnel are invaluable in the form of asymmetrical warfare conducted by Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups, as this involves small terrorist cells committed to what jihadi theorists call the jihad of individual terrorism, directed at the far enemy of the West, and based on savage attacks, usually executed as so-called martyrdom operations. Such cells are expected to be largely self-radicalising, self-recruiting and self-training, with support by jihadi instructional and ideological material provided in a decentralised network that makes maximum use of the internet. So effective is this strategy of decentralised global jihad that the American government has recently declared that homeland attacks by foreign or domestic terrorists are now its top counter-terrorism priority. Britain has also finally recognised the domestic threat and revised its previously dysfunctional Prevent strategy to ensure that pro-terrorist ideologies and political extremism in universities and schools and on the internet are now combated. A rampant pro-jihadi sub-culture had flourished under the Labour government, as Melanie Phillips pointed out in her seminal expos, Londonistan (2006). After some appalling Islamist violence, even the Dutch have seen the profound errors of their previous ultra-tolerant approach and implemented a counter-radicalisation strategy. Australia is struggling in this area, as the federal government seeks to develop a coherent counterradicalisation policy that will meet national security requirements while also accommodating the demands made by the radical orthodox academics and intellectuals who seek to control policy formulation in this field. Consequently, the federal Attorney-General gave a major address in June this year on terrorist activity without mentioning Islam or Muslims. While he conceded that four major terrorist plots have been detected in Australia since 2000 and that thirty-eight people were charged and twenty-three convicted on terrorism charges, he chose to emphasise that significantly, 37 of the 38 people prosecuted are Australian citizens and 21 of the 38 were born in Australia. The nations chief law officer makes no mention of the fact that all these people were radicalised Muslims, implying instead that they were a product of the Australian population as a whole, and that the problem lies within the social fabric of Australian society and not within an identifiable group of disaffected fanatics manipulated by foreign forces. Such timid political correctness is deplorable because Australia has only avoided a successful terrorist attack due to the incompetence of the local terrorist cells and not because of any flaw in the basic jihadi strategy. One of these cells aimed to use huge bombs to kill a thousand people, at railway stations, Crown Casino, or football matches, including the 2005 AFL Grand Final. While this attack was thwarted, it is likely that the necessary mix of competency, skills and fanaticism will eventually be achieved by a local jihadi cell, with tragic results. This likelihood increases exponentially if the processes of radicalisation that lead young Muslims into jihadism are not disrupted. Any counter-radicalisation policy will ultimately fail, however, if it does not include effective action at the ideological level, confronting and overthrowing the jihadi-friendly radical orthodoxy that reigns in the universities and the intelligentsia. This radical orthodoxy seeks systematically to delegitimise Australia and the West as racist, exploitative, colonialist, militarist and Islamophobic societies, making them appropriate targets for jihadi attacks. It meets all the agitprop requirements listed above, portraying terrorism and jihadism in terms of an all-encompassing far-Left theory of global capitalism that has its roots in the Marxist-Leninist critique of Western imperialism that was renovated and re-launched by the New Left in the 1960s, subsequently inculcating a generation of academics who now control Australias universities. More recently, this radical narrative of Western perfidy was modified to incorporate elements of contemporary postmodernism. According to this, reality is a social construction, and consequently the study of terrorism should not concern itself with actual acts of murderous violence in a non-existent real world, but should instead adopt a critical stance towards every policy devised by the West to protect itself from attack, concerning itself not with real terrorists, but only with the concept of terrorism, seen as a signifier in an ideological discourse, and as a mythical entity promoted by the capitalist state as an object of fear designed by the ruling elite to induce powerful negative emotions, encourage moral panics and manipulate political affairs. In this fashion, radical orthodoxy begins with the premise that the West is the principal source of evil in the world, and insists that the focus of research into terrorism must be internal, concerned with the analysis of political and media discourses in Australia, the deconstruction of relevant government policies to reveal their imperialist and militarist agendas, and their implicit Islamophobia and fear of the Other, which is alleged in turn to have led to the unjust persecution of innocent Muslims on charges of terrorism. It follows, according to this radical orthodoxy, that little attention should be directed externally, outside Australia, to the realm of historical, political, social and ideological forces impacting upon Islam and the rest of the world, where global history is actually being determined, and where terrorists get their

inspiration, resources and ideological and operational guidance. To carry out such research, or to imply that there may be forces at large in the worldjihadism, for examplethat are violently opposed to liberal democracy, is to be guilty of Islamophobia, and Orientalism, which is another ideological confection designed to indict the West and stifle debate. The role of radical orthodoxy and the largely ideological response of academics to 9/11 must be emphasised because the question of the overall value of the arts, humanities and social sciences has been recently been placed on the agenda of university reform. The British government has withdrawn all teaching subsidies to these disciplines after concluding that they offered little of value to the pupils who studied them or to the society that funded them. This policy shift is an inevitable consequence of the academic adversary culture and the betrayal of the intellectuals noted above. In Australia, such options have also appeared on the agenda because of the growing public awareness that these disciplines have become, in the words of the University of Melbourne philosopher John Armstrong, inward looking anti-business and characterized by a left-wing monoculture, all of which contributed to a disconnect with wider society. And, as Lindsay Tanner has warned, these disciplines risk a descent into self-perpetuating cliques of obscurantists talking to each other. (The role played by this left-wing intellectual monoculture, with its simplistic class, gender and race template, and their effects within academia were matters I stressed in a submission and oral evidence to the Senate inquiry into academic freedom in 2008, where I also drew attention to the use of legal threats to stifle academic discussion, especially concerning terrorism and Islamism in Australia, and provided detailed documentation of threats made against me. This material was incorporated in the inquirys final report.) The academic response to 9/11 should be seen as an excellent case study of how the arts, humanities and social sciences in Australia failed to meet their responsibilities in the face of a major challenge. While there is undoubtedly a large number of talented and dedicated people working in various disciplines in these fields, the overall contribution the arts, humanities and social sciences have made to the understanding of Islamism, jihadism and terrorism has been extremely poor; has been dominated by this intellectual monoculture and radical orthodoxy; has let down a generation of students; and has generally been antagonistic and counter-productive to the interests of Australian society. Fiercely committed to their radical orthodoxy and proudly ignorant of religious history, too many academics simply dont comprehend that historically Islam has been a powerful, assertive and deeply entrenched ideological force that operates globally on a continental scale. Nor are they aware that Islam entered into a prolonged period of crisis in the twentieth century and was torn by internal and external conflicts, centring on the spiritual legacy of Islam, issues I explored in two articles in 2003. I argued that fundamentalist movements like Islamism were (paradoxically) ideological products of modernitysharia plus industrialisation as one scholar put it; that jihadi terrorism reflected the impact of modernisation on Muslim societies and the desperate attempts by various despotic Muslim regimes to deflect internal disaffection generated among their subject populations by the allure of modernity. Consequently, the insistence of Islamists and jihadis that they were involved in a holy war with a Christian West was deluded and self-serving, as it was modernisation and not Christianity that was threatening their religious and cultural traditions. These articles also pointed out the profound significance for the future of Islam of the recent rise of sectarian Wahhabism and how it was leading a well-funded and brutal war within Islam against Sufism and other traditional variants of Islam across the Muslim world. Again, this means nothing to the proponents of radical orthodoxy, who lack any comprehension or concern about the significance within Islam of its different spiritual traditions or of the role they have played historically in Islamic civilisation. Ignorance of such dynamics within Islam and global religions generally enshrouded the highest levels of academia in Australia, crippling academic debate in this area. To a large extent this reflected the abolition in the 1990s of the various religion studies programs that had once been available in Australian universities. This infrastructure would have been an excellent resource to draw upon after 9/11, if it had not been destroyed, leaving Australia as a land of many faiths but little capacity to engage with them intellectually or academically, or analyse how Australia is positioned in a world of dynamic religious phenomena. (The destruction of religion studies as a discipline in Australia was followed by the commitment of vast resources to academic centres dedicated exclusively to promoting Islam. Very little effort is being made to develop comparable centres for the study of Hinduism, the principal faith of India, which is a major trading partner and source of immigration for Australia. Adequate support for the academic study of Buddhism, Sikhism and other religions with a significant presence in Australia is similarly lacking.)

Consequently, over a decade ago when I was commissioned to assess the religion section of the Australian edition of a major international sociology textbook I was appalled by its obsolete approach and had to insist that it include discussion of the Clash of Civilisations thesis developed by Samuel P. Huntington, who argued that the primary source of conflict in the post-Cold War world would arise from the attempts by various civilisations, notably Islam, to assert their cultural and religious identities in the face of what they saw as the deplorable influence of Western ideas and values. This discussion was included for the first edition but the local editors, submitting to political correctness and the left-wing hatred of Huntington, subsequently deleted itjust in time for the 9/11 attacks, which pushed the thesis right back to the forefront of the debates about the global role of religion, and the origins of the Islamist attacks on the West. Similarly, there was little informed reaction to an article I published in the Australian a week after the 9/11 attacks highlighting the challenges and opportunities the attacks represented for scholars of religion. Nor was there much constructive discussion on the various online sociology and religion studies forums to which I was contributing at the time. Fortunately, a special session on 9/11 was organised by the sociological association for its annual conference in Sydney in December 2001, at which I gave a paper on the 9/11 attacks, which was subsequently published in 2002. This paper addressed the fundamental error that lies at the core of radical orthodoxy. It began by noting the apparent coincidence that the 9/11 terrorist attacks had occurred exactly a year after the violent antiglobalisation protests against the World Economic Forum staged in Melbourne on September 11, 2000. It emphasised the need to avoid conflating one 9/11 event with the other, therefore misperceiving both events as similar expressions of the one anti-globalisation movement, the key assumption that was to become central to radical orthodoxy. Instead, I insisted that they were quite different phenomena, even though they had converged at that moment around radical critiques of America and the West in general, I pointed out that there were now two main anti-globalisation tendencies, the secular and the religious. The secular tendency found expression in the anti-globalisation protests that took place in Melbourne, Seattle, Genoa, Barcelona, and in many other cities since. It has its roots in the anti-capitalism movement that goes back to the nineteenth century and was dominated ideologically by Marxism-Leninism, and now by the black bloc autonomist form of anarchism that has moved into the vanguard of the movement. It remains the central component of radical orthodoxy and the ideological worldview of the contemporary arts, humanities and social sciences. The religious tendency comes from an entirely different source, one that was not at all well known in 2001 and continues to be ignored. I pointed out that this was exemplified by Islamism, a modern political ideology based on the radical politicisation of Islam that seeks to mobilise a global jihad, destroy the current world system, and lead a Muslim resurgence to global dominion. Even though Islamism regards Islam as a comprehensive system ordained by Allah to dominate every aspect of life, there was little academic concern. Even though Islamism denied the validity of all other religions and systems of thought, including all aspects of modernity, especially liberal democracy, secularism, feminism and all non-Islamic systems of law, there was little academic engagement with the issue. Even though Islamism and jihadism struck at the very foundations of the Western freedoms and lifestyle that academics enjoy, the case for a co-ordinated academic response to this challenge has achieved little or no traction, at that time or since. Academics could only grasp the nature, origins, intentions and influence of Islamism by moving out of their ideological comfort zone, defined as always by class, gender and race, and they were reluctant to do this. Consequently, they refused to come to grips with the significance of a major new totalitarian ideology and the global Islamo-fascist movement it was driving. Instead, Islamism was assimilated to the familiar radical orthodox worldview, with Islamism being seen as just another species of the left-wing critique of capitalism and imperialism with which they were so familiar, and that it was therefore entitled to their sympathy and support. Looking back over the past ten years one thing that stands out is how little has been learned in Australia by academics, the intelligentsia, the media and the political forces of the Left about the nature and intentions of Islamism and jihadism. Various case studies can be cited to illustrate this. A primary example was the rapturous reception of David Hicks at the Sydney Writers Festival in May. Hicks was convicted by the US Guantanamo Military Commission under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, on charges of providing material support for terrorism. In Sydney he received a standing ovation from an audience of 900 people at a festival purportedly concerned with ideas and imagination, precisely those aspects of life that have no place in the Islamist universe. Doubtless it will not be long before such festivals are enthusiastically hosting leading members of the Taliban and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Another recent example is the award of the so-called Sydney Peace Prize for 2011 to Noam Chomsky. Chomsky is a far-Left ideologue who has been on the wrong side of every significant political issue for the past fifty years, relentlessly supporting totalitarian states, genocidal regimes, and every species of tyranny that seeks to justify itself by proclaiming its opposition to America and the West. His attempts to downplay and excuse the 9/11 attacks are notorious, as Keith Windschuttle recently discussed in Quadrant (JulyAugust 2011), and it is appalling that the Governor of New South Wales would preside over the award ceremony, revealing the iron grip of radical orthodoxy at the highest academic and political levels in Australia. Aside from the endless adoration of the Left for Chomsky, nothing better exemplifies the grip of radical orthodoxy than the overwhelming domination in academia and amongst the intelligentsia of Michel Foucault. The influence of Foucault is impossible to overstate, especially in the social sciences, arts and humanities in Australia. For example, one well-known Australian scholarly exponent of Foucaults ideas is Stephen Garton, currently Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Provost and Professor of History at the University of Sydney, where he was also Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences from 2001 to 2009, and where he was closely associated with the Sydney Peace Prize. Given this massive influence, it is extremely regrettable that Foucaults hyper-paranoid postmodernism is uniquely compatible with Islamism, as he himself quickly came to recognise when the Iranian Revolution broke out in 1979. Throughout his career Foucault portrayed Western society as a deeply politicised system of exploitation and oppression, reaching into every area of life. Moreover, he claimed every citizen of the West was both a product and an agent of this diabolical system. In this fashion, Foucault embraced the view of civil society shared by radical orthodoxy and Islamism, condemning the West as irretrievably corrupt, exploitative and oppressive, and therefore, for extremists, a legitimate terrorist target. Consequently, Foucault became the leading Western intellectual supporter of the Iranian Revolution. Working as a journalist, he met with the Iranian theocrat Ayatollah Khomeini, travelled to Iran, and wrote some thirteen articles about the revolution, promoting the Ayatollahs ultra-reactionary theocracy, and presenting the revolution as a positive turning point in world history. In these articles Foucault celebrated the most extreme manifestations of revolutionary Islamist fanaticism, declaring that the revolution signalled the end of Western hegemony, would set the entire region afire and forever change the global strategic equilibrium (Janet Afary and Kevin B. Anderson (eds.), Foucault and the Iranian Revolution, 2006). Foucaults assessment became rapturous, describing the revolution as a mystical manifestation of an absolutely collective will that has erupted into history, like God, like the soul. He endorsed the Islamist claim that democratic political systems are inherently corrupt, and that the Iranian theocracy, with all its brutality, expressed the collective will of the Iranian people in a pure and uncorrupted fashion that Western democracy could never match. This is a view of democracy shared by many Australian academics. Throughout his life Foucault was also fascinated with suicide and sadomasochistic sexuality. In Iran he was attracted to the ideal of revolutionary martyrdom and embraced its discourse of death. He was mesmerised by the marching columns of black-clad men, rhythmically flagellating themselves in prolonged rituals of mass penitence, celebrating a political spirituality that embraced death and would, he proclaimed with delight, overwhelm a decadent and materialist West.

Preoccupied with nurturing their devotion to Foucault, Chomsky, and the other demigods of the radical orthodox pantheon, Australian academics generally did nothing of value on terrorism, Islamism and jihadism for some five years after the 9/11 attacks. When I pointed this out in two articles in the Australian in September 2006 on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, the result was a torrent of abuse. Typical of this was the reaction of a coterie of postmodernist academics from major universities associated with Anthony Burke, Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations in the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Forces Academy, and publisher of borderlands, a radical academic e-journal, which lists the war on terror as its primary area of interest. Given the current debate about the value of the humanities, it is notable that borderlands portrays itself as a virtual intellectual space for forms of thought and writing in the humanities and social sciences, and claims to be peer-reviewed and therefore representative of the state of knowledge in these fields. Considered as a case study, the radical orthodox orientation of this group was exemplified by an article published in 2005 in borderlands by Katrina Lee Koo, a Lecturer in International Relations at the Australian National University. (ANU will host a conference in December 2011 on honour killing, viewed in postmodern terms as a trans-historical and cross-cultural phenomenon, [and] metonym for Islamic and

anti-modern cultures, and not as a hideous form of murderous barbarity introduced into Western societies by members of the Muslim diaspora.) This article, Terror Australis: Security, Australia and the War on Terror Discourse, alleged that Australian security policies are based on a commitment to the practices of violence, especially against the Other, and that the concern with terrorism in America doesnt arise from the fact that the country is actually under attack by well-resourced terrorists, but is merely a deliberately contrived fear generated by the media (for ratings) and the government (for political benefits derived from fear generation and domestic political compliance). That issue of borderlands also published a statement by the convicted Italian terrorist ideologue Antonio Negri, the co-author of the notorious neo-Marxist manifesto Empire (2000), in which he tried to rebut an expos of his activities published by Keith Windschuttle in the Australian in 2005. Negris work has been very influential amongst terrorists, radical environmentalists and anti-globalisation militants. His most recent book, Commonwealth (2009), has been described by Brian C. Anderson in the Wall Street Journal as a dark, evil book [and] a witchs brew of contemporary radicalism. Other articles published by this coterie linked anti-terrorism to racism, genocide and other alleged central characteristics of rapacious settler societies like Australia, while in 2006 they published a special Regimes of Terror Issue of borderlands to further push the radical orthodox agenda, indicting Australia, America and the West as the culpable parties in the war on terror. There it was claimed that the Australian government operates a regime of terror that produces racialised laws, sovereignties, securities, market economies and territories. Moreover, it was claimed that these regimes are inherent in Australian history, and that this coterie have carefully traced the historical continuities within racial and colonial relations of power with the post 9/11 discourses of security and terror that enable the contemporary formation of regimes of terror in contemporary Australia. Given the concern that academics now form self-perpetuating cliques of obscurantists talking to each other, it is worthwhile noting the titles of the articles in the Regimes of Terror Issue issue of this allegedly peer-reviewed e-journal. These include: Live and Let Die: Colonial Sovereignties and the Death Worlds of Necrocapitalism; Media Necropower: Australian Media Reception and the Somatechnics of Mamdouh Habib; Draconian Counter-Terrorism Laws and the Dj Vu of Indigenous Australians; Terror Australis: White Sovereignty and the Violence of Law; Sovereignty, Torture and Blood: Tracing Genealogies and Rethinking Politics; and Race Terror. The repeated use of the Terror Australis motif is a feature of the radical orthodox view of the country whose privileges they enjoy. As the influence of such work became clearer and increasingly sinister I published several long articles in Quadrant in 2008 on the rise of radical orthodoxy and the hijacking of terrorism studies, along with an opinion piece in the Australian that summarised this critique. Once again, the response to these articles was typical of academic debate in Australia in these fields: the academics involved made no attempt to defend their positions intellectually but instead resorted to abuse, threats of legal action and physical assault, and concerted attempts to have me sacked. Central to this campaign was Anthony Burke, whose work provides another case study of the radical orthodox position on terrorism and international relations generally, and especially the influence of Foucault and postmodernism. Burkes background appears to be in journalism, creative writing, cultural, media and literary theory, sociology and semiology, before he gained a PhD in international relations in 1999, only two years before the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent war on terror, about which he came to assert that he was an expert. He has received a $150,000 Australian Research Council grant to work on a book to be called Postmodern Conflict: Global Security and Asymmetric War, while his published works include Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence: War against the Other (2007), and Fear of Security: Australias Invasion Anxiety (2008). Considered as a case study in radical orthodoxy, we find that Burkes conceptual approach is presented in his Wikipedia entry as a radical grab-bag hybrid of poststructuralist themes (Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Butler and Agamben), post-colonial theory (Said) and post-Kantian critical theory (from Frankfurt School figures such as Horkheimer, Habermas and Fromm, to harder to classify thinkers like Arendt, Levinas, Buber, Heller, Heidegger). In his books we find the argument that Australias involvement in the war on terror is not driven by legitimate concerns with national security, but by Australias fantasies of sovereignty and self-centred dreams of security, prosperity and freedom, which depend on the enforced insecurity, persecution and death of the Other. Australian values and way of life are dismissed as mere ideological abstractions, and Australian foreign policy is condemned because its efforts to protect national security are selfish, and wickedly seek to ensure Australias security at the expense of the well-being of other people, such as Muslims and illegal immigrants, who want to come here.

In accord with radical orthodoxy Burke insists that the interests and rights of the Other must always have priority over all other considerations. He also denies that sovereign states like Australia have any ultimate legitimacy, or any right to preserve their security, defend themselves from attack, police their borders, or pursue their national interests, when to do so might impinge upon the interests of the Other. He also regards the terrorist actions of Al Qaeda as morally equivalent to the military actions of nation-states such as Australia and America, insisting that all such military actions are inherently terrorist in nature, and that therefore Al Qaeda terrorist attacks, like the Bali bombings, are no more immoral than Australias military activity in East Timor, Iraq or Afghanistan. As such case studies indicate, postmodern practitioners of radical orthodoxy dont provide objective analyses of terrorism, national security, foreign policy or history. Rather they indulge in a form of pseudoscholarly polemica sort of creative non-fiction purporting to be academic analysis. This uses postmodern theories, random alleged facts and tendentious moral judgments to demonise the West and condemn the ordinary people of Western societies, promoting the view that terrorism and jihadism are heroic protests by the Muslim Other to the imperialist depredations of the malevolent Western powers. Another book that serves as a case study of radical orthodoxy was Terror: From Tyrannicide to Terrorism (2008), edited by Brett Bowden and Michael T. Davis. Bowden was a Senior Lecturer at the ADFA, but is now Associate Professor of Politics and International Studies and a member of the Centre for Citizenship and Public Policy at the University of Western Sydney, which also houses the lavishly funded National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies. Davis, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Tasmania, distinguished himself by posting a letter online declaring that he was a trained pugilist, who was quite capable of physically assaulting me because I dared to criticise his book! The book certainly deserved criticism, and I provided this in a Quadrant article in September 2008. Although it was ostensibly a history of terrorism written by academic historians, the book was actually promoting an obvious ideological and apologetic agenda, the key elements of which should be summarised because they encapsulate the radical orthodox perspective, which seeks always to blame the West for terrorism. According to this argument: (1) Europe is both the home and principal location of modern terror and terrorism. (2) Britain was central to this tradition of extreme political violence. (3) Contemporary terrorist groups (jihadis, for example) have been falsely labeled as terrorists and are merely doing what various European and the British political groups have done throughout their history. (4) Excessive attention is being paid to contemporary non-state terrorist groups (such as Al Qaeda) in comparison to the state terror carried out by totalitarian regimes in Europe. (5) The central issue is not actual terrorist acts by Islamists and jihadis, but the alleged Islamophobia of Westerners, which is identical to racism. Despite the attacks that my critiques of such works attracted, my assessment of the Australian situation was not refuted, and actually received some support. For example, Carl Ungerer, who is now the Program Director for the National Security Program at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, contributed an article on Radical Pacifism in Terror Studies to the Australian (July 9, 2008), condemning the radical pacifism that reigned in university departments. He pointed out that this promoted an extreme hostility to sovereign nations like Australia and America, and drew a bogus moral equivalence between terrorism and counter-terrorism even blaming open societies for the rise of religious extremists. Inevitably, he observed, this meant that universities are consigning themselves to ever greater irrelevance in the formulation of government policy on terrorism, a view that has since gained considerable currency, as we have noted. Various overseas commentators made similar complaints. For example, Walid Phares observed in The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad that Western universities are dominated by a radical orthodoxy concocted on European and North American campuses by [those] favourable to the Islamist offensive against the West, and that this has been one of the most successful platforms preventing the identification of jihadism as an ideology per se and blocking mass mobilisation against it It has dominated most research in academia, influenced media and politicians, and [even] defense strategists. Another overseas scholar, Avishag Gordon, concluded in his article, Terrorism as an Academic Subject after 9/11 (Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, January-February 2005), that the academic response to 9/11 was an example of the Stockholm Syndrome, whereby: the victim who is terrified needs assurance of his protection, something that will build hope in him. This hope leads him to ignore the negative side of the abuser and eventually to adopt the abusers worldview and rationalization for the act. The victim comes to believe he deserves the abusers violence.

Radical orthodoxy is dedicated to imposing upon all Australians this false sense of guilt and the moral inversion it entails, in order to allow domestic extremism to flourish. Unfortunately, but predictably, the academic situation has not improved, even a full decade after 9/11, and terrorism studies is still in a deplorable state in Australia. This assessment is supported by a 2010 article, Beyond Belief: Islamist Strategic Thinking and International Relations Theory, by David Martin Jones, an Associate Professor at the University of Queensland, and M.L.R. Smith, a Professor at the University of London, and published in Terrorism and Political Violence, the worlds leading journal for the study of terrorism. Jones and Smith highlight the role of ideology in the radicalisation process. They deplore the intellectual current that prevails in contemporary British and Australian social science [and that] deconstructs liberal self-understanding, and promotes histrionic empathy with a purportedly misunderstood Other. They describe how this ultimately provides ideological legitimacy for jihadism. Specifically, they condemn the radicalising effect of postmodernism and neo-Marxist critical theory on Islamist groups, especially in the context of homegrown radicalisation involving pan-Islamist Caliphist groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir. They emphasise how the relativist and critical approaches that have come to dominate the academic social sciences since the 1990s not only reflect a loss of faith in Western values in a way that undermines the prospects for a liberal and pluralist polity, but also promotes the strategic and ideological agenda of radical Islam. A vast amount of government funding is spent promoting this radical orthodoxy. The appalling state of the field is also made clear in a federal government report, Countering Violent Extremism Literature Review, published this year by the Defence Science and Technology Organisation. This report noted many deficiencies in the post-2000 research in the field of terrorism studies, including a lack of primary source analysis; a limited number of relevant articles focusing on empirical research; a general shortage of experienced researchers; a lack of engagement with terrorists or adequate fieldwork in the area; and limited methodologies and forms of analysis. Significantly, it complains that little academic analysis and critique of terrorism studies has been conducted, and cites one of my Quadrant articles pointing this out. That such a comprehensive and damning assessment can be made ten years after 9/11 is an appalling indictment of Australian academia, and it has been made despite the tens of millions of dollars that have been poured into academic institutions in the past five years precisely to the promote research which it is now revealed has not been competently carried outif it has been done at all. What in fact happened is that universities behaved as they must under the reign of the corporatist and managerialist ideologies that now dominate university and government bureaucraciesthat is, they said and promised whatever was necessary to get the funding on offer. They then built new facilities, employed lots of administrative staff, promoted smart operators, employed casual academic day labourers to do the undergraduate teaching, marketed themselves as world leaders, hired all sorts of people on the off-chance that they might have the relevant skills to produce something useful, and generally publicised their success in getting the funding. Whether they actually end up making a useful contribution to understanding the global crisis of Islam or protecting Australians from terrorism is treated as quite incidental to the fundamental raison dtre of such exercises, which isget the money! Much of this money went into oxymoronically named centres of excellence for Islamic studies, and similar bodies, established around the country to convey the impression that Australian universities possess high-level expertise and concern for the study of Islam and have an academic grip on jihadi terrorism. Aside from government funding, these centres seek petro-dollars, and also target military, security, police and diplomatic personnel, whose organisations can pay the large fees demanded for the consultancy and instructional services offered, and who are happy to get a day off work. Unfortunately, as the various articles and exposs revealed in 2008, they may serve also as front organisations promoting Wahhabi and Salafi sectarianism and propagating anti-Western and anti-democratic views. An example of the type of highly contentious contribution these centres might make to public debate has previously gone un-remarked, but has been made relevant again by recent events. These include the outbreak in 2011 of the Arab Spring in North Africa and the Middle-East, the July terrorist attacks on Mumbai, a court decision, and recent Islamist activity in Australia. An article, Long Climb to the Moral High Ground, by Dr Halim Rane and Dr Ashutosh Misra, appeared in the Courier Mail in 2008, just after the first Mumbai terrorist massacre. Rane is Deputy Director, Griffith Islamic Research Unit; Lecturer, National Centre of Excellence in Islamic Studies; and Associate

Investigator, Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security. Misra is a Research Fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security at Griffith. The article begins with the common radical orthodox tactic of absolving Islam for any such attacks, insisting that most terrorism is motivated by a perceived need to change the existing moral, social, and/or political order, and not primarily for religious reasons, suggesting that the concern with Islamist and jihadi terrorism is misplaced, and that its aims are really political, irrespective of what its leaders have declared innumerable times about their religious motivations. It then goes on to blame the Mumbai massacre with its massive death toll on Indias democratic system, while liberal democracies like the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, Israel and Australia were also accused of fostering extremist tendencies, and of being responsible for the terrorist attacks made against them. The authors also claimed that the US and UK imposed genocidal sanctions on Iraq [which] resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians, mainly children; and that their military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, carried out hypocritically in the name of the allegedly bogus ideals of democracy, freedom, and human rights, have subsequently resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. This genocidal behaviour of liberal democracies is then contrasted to the alleged peacefulness of Islam, which is presented as a faith whose holy book, the Koran, teaches that taking a single innocent life is like killing the whole of humanity, and saving a single life is akin to saving the whole of humanity. Such assertions are anti-democratic, elitist and tendentious. First, they echo the fiercely anti-democratic views of Islamism, which regards democracy as blasphemous because it places human laws above the commandments of Allah, and which wants to place political power in the hands of a theocratic elite; and of terrorism, which disdains democracy as incapable of expressing the true interests of the people, which can only be identified by the terrorist elite. Second, they ignore explicit statements extolling violence and warfare made by prominent and authoritative Muslim clerics like the Ayatollah Khomeini, who offers an entirely different interpretation of Islam and its teachings on violence, and explicitly denounces the view of Islam presented by these academics. According to Khomeini: Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers put them to the sword and scatter [their armies]. Khomeini emphasises that there are hundreds of [Koranic] psalms and hadiths [sayings of the prophet] urging Muslims to value war and to fight. He ridicules those who claim that Islam is a religion of peace: Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim (Khomeini, Islam is Not a Religion of Pacifists, in Andrew Bostom (ed.) The Legacy of Jihad, 2005). The Al Qaeda leadership has also left no room for doubt about the role of violence. Osama bin Laden specifically declared that battle, animosity, and hatred [of the infidel] is the foundation of our religion, and that it is a duty of all Muslims to kill Americans and their allies. Islam is spread with the sword alone, he insisted. Ayman al-Zawahiri is equally hard-line, claiming that the Lord Almighty has commanded us to hate the infidels, while his declaration on Jihad, Martyrdom, and the Killing of Innocents, provides seven Islamic theological justifications for targeting civilians in terrorist attacks, justifying mass murder in every conceivable circumstance (see The Al Qaeda Reader, 2007) This jihadi ideology of extreme violence has been set out in many publications, including the ten volumes of The Encyclopedia of the Afghan Jihad, and the Al Qaeda Handbook. A similar book was produced in Australia in the aftermath of 9/11, The Provision on the Rules of JihadShort Judicial Rulings and Organizational Instructions for Fighters and Mujaheddin against Infidels. The first part of the book focused on religious teachings and rulings about jihad, while the rest discussed the rationale, benefits and methods of assassinations and similar actions, and among the countries on the books hit list were Australia and America. (A Sydney man who allegedly compiled the book was convicted of terrorism offences in September 2008. It may be a sign of the changing times and the corrosive influence of radical orthodoxy that the conviction was overturned on appeal in June 2011, while a convenient loophole in the law means that similar material continues to be readily available on CDs, DVDs and the internet.) In the face of such evidence it is absurd for academics at these centres for excellence to extol the alleged purity and peacefulness of Islam and to attack democracy as morally bankrupt and inherently warlike in comparison. More than enough information on such matters is already in the public sphere to easily refute such claims. That they are nevertheless made in a major newspaper suggests a high degree of confidence in the control over the universities and public debate exercised by radical orthodoxy; that the public is ignorant and can be readily misled; and that nobody would dare contest such outrageous assertions, given the acute constraints of political correctness, backed up by various laws, which now surround and protect Islam from any critical discussion or debate. Such claims have a renewed significance in the midst of the current Arab Spring because, as Bernard Lewis has pointed out in The End of Modern History in the Middle East (2011), the passing of the Cold War

era and the emergence of the post-imperialist age means that the nations of the Middle East must, for the first time in some 200 years, accept responsibility for their own affairs, with the people of the region poised to make a critical choice between two contrasting ideologies: liberal democracy, based on some form of the Western model; or some form of Islamist theocracy, akin to that of the Iranian or Taliban regimes. Australian academics, especially those associated with centres of excellence, who raise their voices to denounce democracy as a corrupt system can serve only one purpose in such a polarised period. The ideological significance of this debate was compounded in July when the international pan-Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir held its annual conference in Western Sydney, attended by some 1000 Muslims. The principal objective of this group is the establishment of the Caliphate, encompassing all lands from Spain to the Philippines that have ever been under Muslim rule, and consequently it responded to the Arab Spring by making the theme of its conference, the Uprising in the Muslim WorldOn the Road to Khilafah. Conference participants strongly rejected the tendency in the West to see the recent events as evidence of a desire amongst Arab Muslims for Western-style freedoms. Consequently, speaker after speaker damned Western powers for seeking to appropriate the popular uprisings as the shoots of democracy rather than expressions of Islamic rage, with a Hizb ut-Tahrir spokesman declaring that calls for democracy have been misconstrued by some and hijacked by others as calls for liberal democracy, as we know it in the West (Australian, July 4). Instead, as the Hizb ut-Tahrir website makes clear, the new Arab Mindset is based, not on Western concepts of democracy but on the Islamist concepts of the Caliphate, jihad, Islamic politics, ummah, unity, sharia, with a single ruler governing not only the Arabs but the Muslim world as a whole. Clearly, ten years after 9/11, the ideological struggle goes on. It is a clash of civilisations, but also a clash of wills. Is it sadly true, as W.B. Yeats observed, that The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity? Do liberal democratic societies have the will and capacity to mobilise intellectual resistance to those forces that seek to destroy them and institute a new dark age of theocratic barbarity across the globe? Or will they succumb to their external and internal enemies, destroyed from within by those who snatch greedily at the benefits bestowed by their privileged position, while betraying the community that succours them? Time will tell. Dr Mervyn F. Bendle is Senior Lecturer, History and Communication, at James Cook University.

Web Security Services on Heretic Press Server log security maintenance, monitoring and access control. Robots txt

file International languages catered for

Creation and maintenance of Secure Password Protected Pages. Error 401 Access denied Security for email addresses in webpages. Email protection Controlling web-bots and search engine archives. Error 503 Temporary access denied Server error control File Not found pages. Error 404 File not found Server control of documents downloaded, volume control or time limited downloads. Server Log monitoring Intelligence gathering profiling and archiving. RMIT

access log

Psychological profiling of competition and hostile client access by IP. Server control of hot-linking to resources. Blocking unwanted web-robots by IP, domain name or user Agent. Error 403 Access Denied The identification, prevention and reporting of hacking attempts. A deterrent

Poison

IP Address: 58.109.30.151 Host: d58-109-30-151.dsl.nsw.optusnet.com.au

Home Remedies for Abcessed Tooth

WARNING: This home remedies site is intended to be archival in nature. The natural remedies here are submitted by numerous people from around the world, and we have no way to test or verify every remedy. As such these home remedies should be used for academic purposes only. Never use any home remedy or other self treatment without being advised to do so by a physician. NOTICE: This page was generated previously and may not be up to date. To view the most recent page, go to the dynamically generated version of the Abcessed Tooth home remedies page.

Abcessed Tooth Home Remedies: Submitted by Tony at 2009-04-07 10:20:56 As wwierd as it sounds and as bad as people tell oyu it is, chewing tobaco such as red man helps me with my tooth acs almost 100 percent.By chewing a little pinch where the site of the pain is, the pain is gone. rating: 10 (1 votes) Submitted by Ashley B at 2009-11-29 15:08:37 I have a toothache like no other, my wisdom teeth are rotting and breaking into pieces and there are times when live nerves are exposed to the air. I have tried absolutely everything, and what I have found best for instant relief is to in a teapot boil whole cloves, fresh lemon (rind and all), and lemon juice, allow it to cool to room temperature and then swish it in your mouth around the tooth with pain. It is an instant pain re leaver when the pain is so extreme that it is unbearable. Also eating a lemon whole, rind and all will help to remove infection from your mouth. rating: 10 (1 votes) Submitted by Ellie66 at 2011-08-08 11:00:20 Im haveing a horriable toothache right now my back molar is very broken ow! so the dentist is closed today i took 2 vicodin and it still hurt so i bought Red Cross Toothache its some oil that comes with cotton pellets and tweezers soak cotton in oil and stuff it up in the afftected tooth becareful i shoved it up there and hit the nerve major ow!! it helps pretty quick dont get it on ur lips or it will burn like heck. Hopefully my dentist will be open tommorow. but this works for now GOOD LUCK!!! rating: 10 (1 votes) Submitted by Harry at 2011-08-06 00:20:43 I'm 14; I've just had two teeth taken out ready for a brace, and i can tell you now the pain is vomit worthy. Its half five in the morning and ive had no sleep, but i found two things that helped ease the pain. 1; the old tea bag in mouth trick, and 2; read through all the submissions! Its taken me about an hour to read through under half! And it

really helps take your mind of it! Hope i can be of help. rating: 9 (4 votes) Submitted by Dr. Graxel Mc Kinley at 2008-11-27 21:46:17 Just take salt and dab it on to your affected area. IF that didnt work dab vanilla extract on to it. Then play a game or your wii to take your mind off of it. rating: 9 (1 votes) Submitted by Keshia at 2009-10-31 02:53:03 I have two cavities on my right side plus just broke the one and a bad tooth on the left which is chiped and everything. Well ive tried everythings. some times medicine helps some times not. I went to the hospital it got so bad. I also don't have insurance cause i just recently lost my job. Well i tryed this one i rubed icey hot on my check where it was hurting. then i brushed my teeth and flossed. it seemed to knock the pain down.. so hopfully i can get some rest for my 8 month old son. Thought i'll share.. ive also tryed everything.. but for some reason i couldn't do much cause i started to get sick. rating: 9 (1 votes) Submitted by tasha at 2010-11-22 02:56:09 If you are experiencing an abcessed tooth you will eventually need antibiotics. I'm a medical assistant at an urgent care n see ppl in great dental pain. I've been there. I actually ODed on accident on tylenol trying to kill the pain with no relief. When I FINALLY got to the dentist the dental assistant told me to try whole cloves in my gums if the horrible situation ever reoccured. Unfortunately it did :( but this time I tried her suggestion. And it WORKS better than all the over the counter pain killers you can get. Just buy whole cloves from the spice section. The look like tiny brown flower bud bases. Which is exactly what they are. I break off the spiny edges n stick then in my gums near where they are hurting. Subconsciously I've learned to associate the taste of the cloves with pain relief as well so its double the reaction. I hope this works for anyone that happens upon this link in their desperate attempts to kill the worst pain known to manDENTAL PAIN! Good luck! rating: 8 (5 votes) Submitted by Heather at 2009-03-07 21:11:59 Please don't play with abscessed teeth! I have a friend who is paralyzed from the neck down from the infection spreading all over his body just because he didn't have the money to visit a dentist. Most humans will understand and work with you. However, until my root canal this Monday, I have used the peppermint tea back as a helper, along with the antibiotics and lortabs an emergency dentist gave me and it seems to lessen the amount of time I need to take the pain pills. Please don't put your life in jeopardy. rating: 8 (4 votes) Submitted at 2010-02-13 21:50:11 Just sprayed some Chloraseptic sore throat spray on the tooth and it took the edge off.

rating: 8 (7 votes) Submitted by Amber at 2010-10-09 05:02:17 I'm up at 4 am. I'm on vacation in orange beach Alabama of all things. My boyfriend is coming to propose to me in two days. I always find out surprises... Anyway while I'm supposed to be enjoying my dinner at 'bubbas' tonight I can barely eat from pain. In our condo we don't have clove oil or vanilla extract. But I did bring listerine and my tooth brush. Rinse with listerine and gently massage the tooth and gum area with the brush. It helped me so much. Also when you're laying down to sleep try laying directly on your back and not tilting your head to the sides to even the blood flow on both sides if that makes sense. Also ice helped me numb the pain. And ibuprofen! rating: 8 (3 votes) Submitted by GSE-TeaTree-SeaSalt at 2009-05-25 23:27:33 My abscess is rather advanced... it's been coming on over a period of a year or more and then came to a crisis state about 3 months ago. Mostly after lots of garlic capsules + raw garlic + no sugar, + mostly organic diet, it has stayed in remission with just a hint of flaring up during times of high stress or little sleep. I'm sharing this because people's abscesses are at differing states. So while for me this Tea Tree Oil recommendation worked well for only about 1 or 2 hours and then quickly wore off, similar to benefit I've experienced from wild Oregano Oil drops directly on the affected gum tissue. Typically I use the shotgun approach when the abscess starts flaring up and take and do everything I can think of. Probably the best thing to do is either have the tooth pulled. At one point I believe my life was in serious jeopardy (when I experienced the crisis). My heart was hurting, the ear on the same side as the abscess was buzzing to the point I couldn't sleep without the TV on. I have not tried the lancing & drain, but the tea bag didn't help me much today, but upon adding some sea salt between the tea bag & abscess it seemed to help. About 20 minutes ago I tried the Grapefruit Seed Extract method and so far so good. If it puts me into remission, I'll post another comment. This site is a really big help. Thank you to the daring souls who put it up for us! rating: 8 (2 votes) Submitted by Anna at 2010-08-30 19:22:28 If you are experiencing pain so severe that there are tears rolling down your face as you desperately search the internet for some magical, cheap cure, then kid yourself no further. I have had an abscessed tooth that comes and goes with pain ranging from mild to severe for the past two to three years. I had a root canal done on it about 5 years ago; according to my dentist, it needed to be either re-done or extracted. I opted to do neither due to the cost even with insurance. Now fast forward to today... although I am still in some degree of pain, the relief could

not have come in any other form than a visit to ER. I have a pretty high threshold for pain after having three of my four children naturally, but the excruciating pain I felt Saturday night had me wailing like a stuck pig while curled up in the fetal position. I have used this site before for other ailments (dandruff, minor foot stuff) so I thought I'd try for this one...well, although some tips were plausible (salt gargle, alcohol swish), none provided more than a few seconds (yes, seconds) of relief for me.

There is no other remedy for severe tooth pain (severe, meaning, throbbing pain, swollen glands, inability to eat talk or sleep)than the urgent care clinic or ER. I say this because you will probably need a shot of antibiotics to speed up the process of healing, and you will not need to provide money upfront. Of course, you'll get a bill days later about the equivalent of the cost of a brand new Kia, but if you plan to stick around in this world a little while longer, you will take heed. Tooth infections can spread to the ear and brain. My last piece of advice for very temporary relief before you go to ER is 1) 2 ibuprofens with 2 acetaminophens and 2) alternate cold compress with warm compress to the facial area near the affected tooth. rating: 8 (7 votes) Submitted by Tom at 2011-06-20 16:50:02 800MG Motrin is the best thing for pain,obviousley you will need a antibiotic to get rid of infection but at times i have taken 1 800mg Motrin and within 25-30 minutes very minimal pain. rating: 8 (4 votes) Submitted by Jim J. at 2011-06-10 15:18:56 Abscess remedy that worked for me: 1. Floss between teeth to clear a path for the good stuff to do its work. 2. Dip toothbrush in colloidal silver and brush affected area... swish through your teeth and hold for a few minutes before spitting (or swallowing). 3. Apply thin slice of garlic between tooth and gum for about 5 minutes, swishing through your teeth...chew it up as it loses it's zing (Do Not leave raw garlic in your mouth this way when you go to sleep or for a long period of time- It'll eat right through your skin leaving a raw painful area that'll take days to heal...trust me) 4. Buy some tea tree oil toothpicks (I prefer 'Thursday Plantation' chewing sticks. Chew on them through the day to keep your mouth fresh and clear of bad stuff and swish that around through your teeth occasionally as well. This simple process knocked out a recurring abscess that I'd had for about a year (keeping it at bay with garlic only) and I haven't needed a dentist. Of course, if your abscess has progressed too far, you'd be wise to just pony up for the dental visit. Hope this helps someone as it did me. rating: 8 (13 votes)

Submitted by Josh at 2010-04-07 21:55:59 I am begging you all to PLEASE GET THAT TOOTH CHECKED OUT IF YOUR ABSCESS GETS WORSE. I just spent 5 days in the hospital last week after emergency surgery as a result of using home remedies and delaying getting it looked at. By that point, it was about the size of a tennis ball and was pressing on my wind pipe. I had my neck cut open and tooth removed to drain the abscess and laid in a bed with drainage tubes in my neck and mouth. The removal of these tubes will be one of the most painful things in your life. I still have to wear gauze over the drainage hole in my neck until it fully heals. If the problem is money, talk to your local hospital. If you get checked at the E.R., most hospitals have a 'free care' program for those who fall above the medicaid guidelines, but can not afford insurance. This means after filling out some annoying paperwork, YOU PAY NOTHING. If the problem is minor, continue using whatever remedy works for you. DO NOT use any form of temporary dental filling. This creates a seal, much like a pressure cooker with a lid on it. This causes no place for the abscess to drain. This was part of my downfall. If things don't get better after a couple of days, GET CHECKED OUT! I hope this is helpful for some of you. rating: 8 (23 votes) Submitted at 2010-04-19 01:15:54 FOR SEVERE TOOTHACHE, THINLY slice or crush garlic and put on tooth and/or gums, pain should diminish within five minutes. Continue to reapply for up to one hour at first treatment. It will burn at first, and you don't want to leave the garlic on too long because fresh garlic can irritate your mouth. Stinks but it is a cheap and effective way to help with pain AND infection. Continue to reapply after meals and as needed at the first sign of pain, but be sure to rinse the mouth thoroughly aferwards to avoid irritation. Clove OIL is also effective against pain, but not as easily available. Be sure to use Q tips to place ONLY on tooth/ area of pain. FOR ABSCESS Tea bags probably won't help draw out the infection, except maybe echinacea or peppermint. Better to use a slice of onion placed inside the mouth at site of infection (yukky taste but great results). It should draw out the infection, which tastes and smells horrible anyway. You may wrap the onion in sterile gauze to avoid irritation. Never tried it, but baking soda should work also, as others have suggested. It is an effective drawing agent. FOR AFFORDABLE CARE Check to see if there's a dental school nearby, or if you live anywhere near the Mexican border consider going over there where you can get a root canal for less than the cost of a pulled tooth over here. The dentists are no worse there than here, believe me. rating: 8 (41 votes) Submitted at 2009-06-23 19:27:57 tryed a lot these things , nothing worked. i have an infected wisdom tooth & moler and the one beside it. ya 3 all side by side,on the top.i have got no sleep at all this week. swishing salt water seemed to work,but i think its all in my head. you know it will clean & steralize so therefor you think it will work.maybe the first time! I found the one thing that really , really workes. i hate going to the dentist too,but pain started around the middle of dec 2009,it's now june 23 2009 ouch. i need some sleep,so i maned up and went to the dentist, the nice man did not hert me,he gave me a scrip for clindamycin & a scrip for oxycodone. what a nice guy. going back in 3 days to get my teeth taken

out.good by pain. good luck , i am 40 and i have had broken & rotten teath for atleast 20 years.igot 2 out 1 & a half years ago. pain gone. get em fixed or taken out. it onley hirts for a little bit. rating: 8 (1 votes) Submitted at 2009-11-18 14:14:32 I found that you take a tea bag and add just a little hot water just to get tea to start. Squeeze off the water and place tea bag next to your gum and leave in for at least 30 minutes. It sucks away the infection and helps to pain go away. rating: 8 (1 votes) Submitted at 2010-01-07 21:25:22 I was in excrutiating pain with a molar almost to the point of vomiting because the pain was so bad. I covered the tooth in extra strength Anbesol including the surrounding teeth and gumline. I took 800mg of Ibuprofin and within 20 minutes - the pain completely subsided!! rating: 8 (1 votes) Submitted by ashley at 2011-06-20 00:41:54 I went searching for the alachol, tryed mouthwash and got short relief. The cavity i have is humongous and hurts worse than having a kid. So Theres this new alachol they have i usualy have a little voldka but Its called 99 bananas. it is 99 proof and i dont know what it is butit hurt for a seccond, but all pain is gone and i know its absecced. it tasts lie banana too:) In desperation i also cut off a peice of an old 'wife beater' shirt and soaked it in there and put it in there. now i may sleep and not cry like a baby. rating: 8 (3 votes) Submitted at 2011-08-15 20:17:48 abcess tooth remedy for me was brushing that tooth really really good when it starts hurting and gargle with mouth wash alot and sometime's use salt water but do it 4-5 times a day the mouthwash it kills that infection. do it before it gets really really bad. rating: 8 (1 votes) Submitted at 2007-11-21 23:17:05 IF YOU HAVE A TOOTH ABCESS AND CAN NOT GET MEDICAL ATTENTION, THEN THIS REGIMEN WILL HELP - TRY THESE HOME REMEDIES: IF YOU ARE IN AGONIZING PAIN, GO DIRECTLY TO MY SECOND SUGGESTION!!! 1) For an abcess that is just starting to throb and swell: Place a DRY tea bag inside of your check near the infected tooth. Leave it in for a couple of hours. This does help draw out the infection if it is just starting. If you can tolerate it, put some dry salt in the area before placing the dry tea bag in your mouth. For pain, MOTRIN works the best on tooth pain! Trust me on this one. 2) FOR AN ABCESS THAT HAS ALREADY CAUSED A LOT OF VISIBLE SWELLING & AGONIZING PAIN: This is a desperate measure and you will know when you are at the point of desperation.

ONLY DO THIS AS A MEANS OF SURVIVAL! .... The first time I was truly in agony I went to the hospital at 4 AM to get relief. When I did, my abcess was so bad, they put me on IV pain medicine which obviously helped, but what really relieved the pain was an I&D which stands for incision and drain. As soon as they drained the abcess, I felt instantaneous relief! That ER visit was 6 months ago...Last week I experienced my second agonizing abcess. My lower left cheek was so swollen I looked like a chipmunk. It hurt so bad, I couldn't smile or move my lower lip. I knew I should go to the hospital, but decided to take the following drastic measure because the pain was unbearable, it was 3 AM, and if I went to the ER I would have to wake my sleeping children and take them with me. Instead I did the following: Drained it Myself!! ** If you follow these steps exactly, hopefully the outcome will be the same as mine was... I did not feel pain when I broke the skin, the disgusting abcess blood & puss drained into my mouth, I spit it out and INSTANTANEOUSLY THE SWELLING WAS REDUCED BY 75% AND MY PAIN LEVEL WENT FROM A 10 TO A 1 !! How To Drain Abcess **ONLY DO THIS AS A LAST RESORT...IF YOU CAN GET PROFESSIONAL MEDICAL TREATMENT, ABSOLUTELY DO NOT DO THIS!! 1) Press on your cheek a few times as hard as hard as you can. You probably have been pushing on it all day in an attempt to relieve the pain, but this time really press as hard as you can. Sometimes this will cause the abcess fluid to force through the skin or tooth to drain. If this worked, you are now spitting out a mixture of blood & pus that smells and tastes disgusting. You may even here a gurgling noise as air & fluid drain out. Continue to press on your cheek hard so that all of the fluid drains. You NEED to get it ALL out. If successfull skip down to step 5 below! 2) boil water to sterilize a sharp pointed object. I used a safety pin since I could not find a suitable needle. 3) Run your finger along your gum line to pinpoint exactly where the abcess originates and runs into your face. You will feel a bump. If unsure, run your fingers along the unaffected side and the abcess side a few times to compare the difference the abcess is making. Put your index finger inside your mouth and press your thumb on the outside of your cheek and squeeze lightly into you find the area with the most fluid. 4) You can ice inside of your cheek, but at this point, I was not afraid of the pin prick inside my mouth so I passed on the ice. Instead, I put my index finger inside my infected cheek and with my thumb pressing on the outside, I pulled my lip back looking in the mirror, I placed the needle lightly onto the inside of my cheek closest the gum line. Then I pushed it in slowly, you may prefer fast, but I was surprised it really did not hurt (probably because the pain was nothing compared to what I had been dealing with and

I knew this was going to work). When I started to see blood, I pushed it in just a bit further and there it was...disgusting bacteria pus and blood pouring out...you will know if you hit the spot...keep pushing on the cheek, squeezing as much of the infection through the incision as you can...the more that comes out the better you will feel... 5) Take a moment to enjoy the relief ! The area may feel sore, but that agonizing pain should be gone. If you have hydrogen peroxide, you might want to put a little bit on a cotton ball and dab the spot when you made your tiny hole. Brush your teeth and rinse with anti bacterial mouth wash if you have it. After I did this, I put in a dry tea bag and let it sit for a couple of hours in the hopes that it would draw out any left over abcess fluid. JUST REMEMBER THAT YOU STILL NEED TO TAKE CARE OF THE UNDERLYING DENTAL PROBLEM AND IF YOU CAN GET AN ANTIBIOTIC, YOU ABSOLUTELY SHOULD!!!! ONLY DRAIN THE ABCESS YOURSELF IF YOU HAVE NO MEANS TO GET HELP!! IF THE ISSUE IS MONEY, FIND A DENTAL CLINIC IN YOUR COMMUNITY

rating: 7 (196 votes) Submitted by sasha at 2010-04-20 14:31:51 i have had 2 abcessed teeth for about 4-5 days now and like everyone else i have tried everything so today i decided to try chloraseptic sray. what ya do is get some chloraseptic spray for a sore throat, i used the menthol you may be able to use a diffrent flavor i'm not sure if cherry or other flavors would bother it..first brush and rinse with listerine then spray directly onto the tooth or you may use a qtip maybe try to drowned a cottonball with the spray cause it's known to wear off quikly this helps just enough to take care of the kids or do what have to do also enough to sleep. in all honesty it probably won't take all of the pain away but the worst part of it. rating: 7 (5 votes) Submitted by don at 2010-05-20 15:01:54 Hello fellow sufferers! I need 3 more extractions (2 lower wisdom teeth and shattered right lower molar), 4 root canals, 3 crowns, and countless fillings. The pain has been unbearable for some time and I am no longer able to sleep.. Here's what works for me (a little): Strong drinking alcohol, swished. Strong drinking alcohol, mixed with vanilla extract (real), applied directly to tooth. Benzocaine, look for cough drops, they work better than sprays/liquids. Too much use increases pain. I will be trying raw garlic cloves, raw onion, clove oil, tea tree oil, and green tea bags thanks to this site. The pain is incredible. Vicodin works okay, oxycodone/contin is better.. however I do not have a prescription. Also, like all opiates (and opiate analogs) these drugs just make you not care about the pain. It's still there.

I am ashamed to live in a country where it is legal for a doctor to reject patients for lack of insurance, yet illegal to purchase drugs to alleviate pain without a prescription from said doctor. I could walk down the street and buy heroin for 5 dollars (THAT would cure the pain all day long) but cannot go to a pharmacy and acquire SAFE painkillers. We can't even buy antibiotics without a 100 dollar doctors visit (the exception being those of you taking pet antibiotics, to whom I wish the best of luck but will never emulate.) rating: 7 (25 votes) Submitted by MW at 2011-06-16 18:46:56 This really really works. Get powdered activated charcoal capsules at any drug store. About $4 a box. They are usually sold in the stomach remedy section. Split open 2 capsule in a small bowl. Becareful black powder can get everywhere. Add a bit of water until it's like tooth paste. Coat it all over the tooth and gums that hurt. Charcoal will pull out the toxins and bacteria that are making it throb and you'll be able to rest and sleep because the pain goes away. You still need to get to an endodontist though...because the it can't cure the root. rating: 7 (11 votes) Submitted by mama dee at 2006-09-20 16:05:20 Abcessed tooth take 2 - 200mg ibuprofene with water, then rinse mouth with mouthwash, any kind will do, as directed on bottle. Do not eat or drink for at least 15 minutes after rinsing. You then can take a steaped hot tea bag and put in your mouth and hold it on the tooth for as long as you can stand. This will help with any infection. rating: 7 (3 votes) Submitted by Mandy at 2006-07-23 02:12:24 This is a problem that requires multiple treatments in my opinion. You need to relieve the pain and to fight the infection. First of all for the pain there is ice or very cold water, swirl it in your mouth every few minutes to help with the pain. Secondly there is tea bags or potatoes. Both can draw out an infection, I prefer the teabag myself. This helps with the pain by drawing out the infection and relieving the pain caused by the internal swelling. Simply tuck a dry teabag into your cheek against the sore tooth. Lay down for awhile I usually change the bag every 2 hours or so, but that is partially because I tend to bite down on it and I don't want it to rip open and pour tea leaves down my throat. Secondly you need to fight the infection, garlic tablets and vitamin C have always been the best cures I have found. I can't tell you how much to take as I usually pour out a handful from each bottle and put them in my pocket and take one or two each time I take a drink of my cold water. Secondly I up the water intake to about a gallon a day or so to keep my system rinsing itself out and fight the infection. Also several times a day I rinse my mouth with peroxide letting it soak on the offending tooth for several minutes then spitting it out, I do this two or three times in a row about 4 times a day. Usually I'm fine in between 24 and 48 hours, the infection and the pain are gone and I'm able to just go about my life.

Let me say that I know that whoever posted a million posts in this thread is correct in saying if you have an abscessed tooth you should get medical attention, unfortunately not all of us can do that, I myself have NO money, No insurance, and small kids to take care of, and a job i have to go to no matter how much pain I'm in to pay the bills and keep a roof over my head. I have had a tooth that is broken in half for about 2 years and gotten about 4 infections in it. It isn't fun and I wish I could afford to fix it so that I didn't have to keep dealing with it on my own but the truth is I just can't. I can't pick my tooth over food for my kids or paying the electric bill. But using a combination of the above tricks I've found I can at least keep the infections at bay and hopefully in the next few months my new job will Begin offering insurance and I can get it fixed Good luck! rating: 7 (284 votes) Submitted by linda at 2011-04-30 13:20:32 My home remedy if for tooth aches. I have a bridge in the front of my mouth and one of the tooth on the bridge is starting to hurt because I have some swelling of the gum which seem to be an abcess with some infection around the tooth and gum. I would press down on it and it hurt really bad. So I was in pain and a thought came to me to get my apple cider vinegar and baking soda and a cotton swab(the small soft ball kind). I poured a small about of cider in a saucer then added a pinch of baking soda enough to make a paste. It will bubble up like peroxide but don't worry. Rub the cotton ball in the solution and put the pasty cotton ball under your gum where the tooth ache is between the gum and tooth. IT REALLY WORKS!!! it takes the sorness out too. Gud Luck try it till you can get to the dentist. God Bless rating: 7 (10 votes) Submitted by julia at 2009-09-18 22:25:28 I live with four bad teeth for about five years now. its not a money problem cause I live in Israel and in here the treatment is not that expansive plus if you don't have any money there's a free treatment clinics (which I don't recommend if you have other choice). I just have this really big dental phobia due to a tooth extract without anesthesia at the age of six when I lived in Russia. firs of all I have to say, if you can some how get to a dentist, you have to do it eventually cause if you have an abscess it means that you have a rotten tissue in your mouth. and even if you heal your abscess you can still get an other one and an other one which eventually can cause serious complications like an infection in the brain (in cases of upper jaw abscess) or heart infection (bottom jaw). If you still can not go to the dentist the most important thing is to prevent the abscess from forming in the beginning (I used this method for two years now and it works wonderfully). Firs of all after every meal brush tour teeth and rinse with salt water (1.5 tsp for a cup of water) until all food particles are washed away if you dont have this at least rinse with plain water. if you cant get the food particle out with water try a tooth pick and rinse again. bacteria use the food stuck in your teeth to reproduce and cause infection and food stuck in your cavity will cause pain! you can use mouth wash though I prefer salt water it works best for me and it kills bacteria. chew an onion for a minute every morning (you can try garlic to) and use vitamin C and garlic tablets (its very healthy and straitens your immune system. brush your teeth every other day with tea tree oil.

Now if your tooth starts to feel tender that's a big chance you'll have a toothache so first of all brush your teeth and wash it from any food particles with salt water and then wash your mouth with 'Chlorhexidine Gluconate' mouth wash which you can get at a pharmacy for a minute or at least 30 sec. after 30 minuets brush you teeth with tea tree oil hold it in your mouth for a minute, dont swallow! and wash it away. if the tooth still feels tender after about an hour repeat the process with out the Chlorhexidine Gluconate' and after a hour repeat with 'Chlorhexidine Gluconate' but with out the tea tree oil alternate like this until it passes. if the tooth get worse and it starts to hurt (it can happen cause it can take time to kill the bacteria but chances are small so don't worry)take some pain killers like ibuprofen (Advil and such) or even better take naproxen (Aleve, Anaprox) don't mix them! then repeat the process above and place a dry tea bag inside the cheek near the affected tooth(not the kind with fruit added but plain black tea). 10 minuets after you placed the tea tree oil remove it after a hour and a half and repeat the process as much as you can. you can gargoyle with 1.5 tbs of backing soda on a cup of water for the pain and use clove oil (not to much its toxic). last time I had a problem I used grape seed extract instead of the tea tree oil and it worked great (Ive read about it in here) use 10 drops for half cup of water and gargoyle with it the best thing is to alternate it between the tea tree oil. If all this didn't work or you are to late and the pain is to strong or you have an abscess you have to get antibiotics especially if its an abscess. the best antibiotic for dental abscess is augmentin (other names are clamp and Synermox and it contains the antibiotic amoxicillin with lavulanate) its much better then amoxicillin alone and you really need it to get read of the infection. it wont work instantly but with the methods above it will work much faster. try not to overuse the Chlorhexidine Gluconate and don't use it more then seven days and always brush your teeth before you use it or it will darken your teeth and more important dont use antibiotics to frequently it can cause damage to your kidneys and make the bacteria resistant to it. Hope you'll feel better and I`d suggest you to go to the dentist for the antibiotics prescription and to drain your abscess. Refua shlema to all of you(it means in hebrew 'whole health'). rating: 7 (9 votes) Submitted by D at 2011-08-07 03:21:47 I have an abscessed tooth and everything I have read on here hardly did nothing for me..Suffering for almost 3 days, popping 7 Advils every 3 hours, ice pak, even had good antibiotics I was taking every 4 hours, NO relief! I'm built like a bull so I have a high tolerance for pain meds..GO TO THE ER!!!! If you are in severe pain and suffering, there is no reason to continue..It's not gonna magically go away..If you can jump around and try all these remedies, you have the strength to get your butt to a Hospital. Hello?? They're open 24/7 AND you WILL be treated even if you don't have insurance coverage, ITS THE LAW!! I couldn't stand the pressure and pain anymore and I had enough! Just got back from ER hours ago and feeling so much relief!! Got 2 shots of antibiotics and a Dental Block shot in my mouth which totally numbs your tooth for hours!! I was also given pain meds while there. If you don't have a prescription plan, ask for Generic brand when DR is writing you a script. Use a prescription RX card you can get for free online, look it up, they are called RX Savings cards.. Don't mess with your Health! You can seriously damage your heart or brain from the puss and bacteria, it can travel!

And get your butt to a Dentist!! Suck up your pride if you are embarrassed, trust me they've seen the worst! No Ins.,they will work with you!! Remember, it won't ever go away unless treated professionally..Nothing is worth days of pain without proper treatment! rating: 7 (13 votes) Submitted by ashley at 2011-06-20 00:50:15 I forgot to add that you shouldnt forget to swallow the alachol as the more you drink the less you feel LOL. But Anyhing you can put in there (after making sure the germs are gone ) that resricts the amount of air flow to the tooth should ease the pain in a trumendous amount rating: 7 (6 votes) Submitted by Boo at 2011-07-28 02:32:38 Do NOT put a temporary filling/cap on your tooth if you have an abscess, you'll make it much worse because it needs somewhere to drain, if you cap it you're just creating a build up of pressure. The best thing you can do is take pain medicines and keep the tooth as clean as possible. Any antibacterial or anticeptics that are able to be in the mouth should be put around on the gums and on the tooth hole. If you have pockets of puss put some oregel on the site and open the pocket with a sterilized needle or blade. I will be trying a new method next week, I ordered antibacterial throat lozenges off amazon called Strepsil. I read somewhere that if you keep the lozenger on the gum site where the abscess is that it will disinfect it and destroy the abscess. It sounds pretty promising. rating: 7 (4 votes) Submitted by Melanie at 2011-08-18 11:05:11 Ever since my operation to remove my wisdom teeth 3 years ago, I suffer from severe toothache because the anaestethic weakened my teeth. I've had so many root canals done and crowns because my teeth just break in half. Normally I have to wait a month to go to the dentist because they're so fully booked. So in that month of agony I have tried many home remedies that don't dig too deep a hole in your pocket and found a couple that have worked. 1) A shot of brandy on the aching area. Just hold there for as long as you can, it tastes horrible and you smell terrible afterwards, but it works wonders. 2) Making a paste of clove oil and asprin. Rub onto the affected tooth and surrounding gums. Tastes awful, but really really works for me. 3) Prodol teething drops. Yes I know its for babies, but a person gets despereate. Just apply a little bit of the solution on the affected tooth and voila. Pain free for a few hours. 4) Baking powder works wonders. Just apply to the tooth and surrounding gums and it numbs it for a while. 5) Ipobrufen. Myprodol or Mypaid (South Africa) works amazingly but takes a while to kick in.

Hope these few remedies helps someone else out there! rating: 7 (4 votes) Submitted at 2011-08-23 04:53:22 WHOLE GARLIC CLOVES... peel crush and sit it in ur mouth on the sore tooth. it will burn but it will help the pain in the tooth for hours rating: 7 (2 votes) Submitted by Crab Shack at 2007-10-27 06:27:19 I was blessed with crap teeth, and personally tried and experienced all remedies and information posted below. For sharp, unconstant pain, which most likely means your cavity has NOT reached your pulp(Nerve), most of the remedies posted on this site will work. For enduring, throbbing pain, which most likely means you need a root canal, and perhaps have an infection, many of these things will not work alone. They will have to be used in conjunction. Of course brush and floss often and before these remedies. Dental TAPE(Not floss) is ideal because it is thicker and more effiecient. Clove oil- Works great, but temporary (Will not work long enough for you to sleep)It is toxic, so use small amounts, and wash your mouth out after. Listerene antiseptic- Beneficial for infection, and also temporarily relieves pain. Hydrogen Peroxide- Do not regularly use store bought hydrogen peroxide because it is made with wierd chemicals.You can taste them. However, it kills bacteria, and is fine for temporary tooth pain. For every day use, use food grade peroxide dilluted with a certain amount of water(Look for directions elsewhere)- It naturally cleans and whitens your teeth. REFILIT- A little jar of filling mould-like substance that can be purchased at the store. After you clean your tooth with something else, apply this around affected area to prevent food and saliva from further reaching the effected area. You can even eat with it in.I use this when I need to sleep. Vanilla extract-Contains alcohol, works temporarily. Gin, vodka, ect.- Kills bacteria-temporarily relieves pain Pain Killers- not to be used singularily. Use in conjunction with others. Merely masking your pain alone is not preventative! Green Tea- A natural anti- inflammitory. I will drink this in the morning to make my infection subside. At night you can drink uncaffeinated. Of course if it's super hot it will super hurt!Minimizing an infection without antibiotics is preferrable in my book.... Papaya- Although it contains some natural sugar, it is also a natural anti-inflammitory. You can apply the papaya to the effected area. It is a old remedy, and the best tasting

one! Please do not follow the sugar on a warm rag with ice remedy. Granulated and confectioners sugar is the reason you are in pain in the first place! Get your butt to a dentist or endodontics doctor(Root canal specialist) asap, if you have constant throbbing pain. It will not go away, and the sooner you get an appointment, the less at risk you are for guarenteed, ever increasing pain. Yup. rating: 7 (83 votes) Submitted by gus at 2010-09-18 21:38:17 Its 2.25 am and this is night 2 of my second abcess episode. Last time it was my tooth, now it's in my tooth/jaw - OW.. My pain is helped a LOT by holding a hot water bottle (as hot as I can take) underneath my jaw (I was previousky using a towel - but a bottle is much better) This 'releases' the pressure in my tooth. Coldness has the opposite effect for me - makes it much worse. The pain is caused by swelling from the bacterial infection. The heat seems to loosen things up - absolute life saver for me. The recommended combination of antibiotics is amoxicillin plus metronidazole. Thus spoke my dentist. I am having surgery in two days time. Takes 48 hours minimum to starting killing the infection. I would be sceptical of other antibiotic combinations mentioned here. Get antibiotics as soon as you can - the quicker you start the quicker the infection will go. Good luck everyone. rating: 7 (12 votes) Submitted at 2010-01-26 21:24:18 I see that a lot of people have had success with Ichthammol Ointment 20%, but I think that anyone who plans on using it now, or in the near future, should be aware that Goldline(the manufacturer) has stopped making it. They still sell ichthammol ointment, but it is not the same ointment that was made years ago. My dad is a pharmacist, and when I recently got a boil on my leg, he gave me his last tube. He told me that when he called the manufacturer to reorder some for the pharmacy, they informed him that they no longer make the same ointment. It still helps to relieve the pain, but the drawing effect is reduced. It still may be worth a try though. rating: 7 (5 votes) Submitted by Ron at 2007-05-22 21:15:54 Here is a home remedy that I used to battle a painful abscessed tooth and gum (with swelling in the cheek and lower jaw). I got the great idea of using a teabag from this site (thank you very much!), and I have added more specific information that may help

someone else. As others have mentioned, I too tried using ice, cold water, Ambesol, ice packs, heat, and probably a few other things. Nothing gave me any lasting relief. The steps below worked almost miraculously for me, and I hope they will work for others. Do not delay in combating any tooth abscess or gum abscess. An oral infection is a serious matter -you should promptly seek medical help if you are unable to substantially diminish the swelling and pain within 24 hours. What you will need: Ibuprofen 200 mg -- 50 count (grocery/drug store). Helpful for pain and inflammation. Lipton Cold Brew teabags (grocery store). Helpful for abscess drainage, pain, and minor sanitizing. Crest Baking Soda/Peroxide toothpaste (grocery/drug store). Helpful for sanitizing area and some brief pain relief. Nature's Way Garlicin 350 mg -- 100 count (health food store). Helpful for fighting infection, lowering fluid pressure, and some pain relief. If Garlicin is not immediately available, you can use generic garlic tablets (grocery/drug store) as a less effective substitute until Garlicin can be obtained. You will have to use the equivalent of 1000 mgs more frequently until you can obtain the Garlicin. 1. Take 2 ibuprofen with water on an empty stomach. Repeat every 4 to 6 hours, depending on pain tolerance. Ibuprofen appears to me to be more effective on an empty stomach. 2. Apply a dry (make sure it is dry, not wet) Lipton Cold Brew tea bag between tooth and gum for 45 to 60 minutes. For better effect, lay down on non-swollen side with head slightly raised so the tea can soak over the gum and tooth (keep your mouth closed also). I tried both the dry and wet bag technique -- the dry bag technique worked the best for me. I used cold brew teabags, since I felt that the effect would be enhanced over hot brew teabags. It definitely worked for me. 3. After removing the (now mushy) tea bag, wait 15 minutes and then gently brush teeth with a baking soda/peroxide toothpaste. I have used Crest baking soda/peroxide toothpaste for years. It is very effective at keeping the mouth clean. 4. At least 1 hour after the ibuprofen, take 3 Garlicin caps (350 mg each). Repeat every 8 hours (if using a generic garlic tablet, repeat every 4 to 6 hours with 1000 mg equivalent). I use 2 Garlicin caps daily to help lower blood pressure. In the larger doses, it appears to be a fairly effective antibiotic. Garlicin is different from other garlic supplements -- it is not dissolved in the stomach, so it has no odor. It reaches the intestine and is released there, and you can usually 'sense' when it kicks in. 5. Apply a new teabag for same amount of time as before. Repeat as frequently as necessary to help relieve pain and/or reduce swelling. 6. Swelling and pain may begin to subside within 6 hours. Abscess discharge may begin within 12 to 24 hours. That is what happened with me. The swelling and pain were much lessened within 6 hours, and I was able to get a restful sleep. The main discharge started about 18 hours later when I was lightly pushing against my cheek on the gum. 7. If you notice any odd tastes in your mouth (probably abscess discharge), briefly brush teeth again and reapply teabag. The teabag will help to draw out any drainage. If the swelling and pain have gone down, you may also assist the drainage by lightly pushing against your cheek near the abscess. 8. Continue regimen of 2 ibuprofen every 6 hours and 3 Garlicin every 8 hours until all

swelling and discharge are gone. You may be able to cut back on the ibuprofen dosage and/or frequency within 24 hours, but continue the full dosage and frequency of Garlicin until you are able to see a dentist. Continue brushing with a baking soda/peroxide toothpaste 3 times a day. It would also be a good idea to continue with the teabag regimen at least twice per day even after all swelling appears to be gone. There will be residual drainage over several days. 9. Consult with a dentist to start an antibiotic regimen and to subsequently make a decision on what to do about the tooth. Do not assume that any lessening of swelling or pain means that everything is OK and you can stop the regimen. All oral infections are serious and can create problems in other areas of the body. If you do not obtain relief within 24 hours, get medical help -- a medical professional can prescribe an appropriate antibiotic for you. rating: 7 (102 votes) Submitted by Melissa at 2010-04-17 18:19:33 Ok so this isnt exactly a 'home remedy' but if you have an abcess/infection and like always its the weekend when it starts killing you look in your medicine cabinet for some antibiotics almost everyone has a few left over from one thing or another you should google whatever you find to see if it will work. Penicillin and drugs in its family like amoxicillin , augmentin, etc. work best and thats what the dentist will give you Monday anyway and it'll work better and somtimes even faster than anything else ibuprofen helps alot too because its an anti-inflammatory. I know all about the overuse of antibiotics and don't care to hear any lectures about it. If you dont like my advice just dont take it. I simply know how horrible tooth pain can be and if this solution hasn't occured to someone perhaps the suggestion could help them get some relief. You should know though that the pain will most likely come back if you don't see the dentist to fix the problem and this is just a temporary solution. So good luck and I hope everyone in pain will feel better really soon I know its terrible. rating: 7 (34 votes) Submitted by S.K. at 2011-01-16 17:39:29 This is my second time having a really bad toothache within the last couple of years. I stumbled on this website after doing a google search. I wanted to see if there were any new remedies or approaches to alleviating the pain since my last toothache. I have seen a few new things to try-if/when necessary. It is funny how toothaches seem to take place on the weekend. I have a job-but no insurance coverage is offered. Here in Michigan, you can't ask for much more these days. Right now, this toothache is slightly worse than the previous one I had. Only my lower jaw was swollen with the previous one. This time (although it is in a different area), my entire jaw is swollen to the point where half of my nose is raised. I have been successful with the pain relief. I have tried a couple of different things, but one things seems to be consistent for me. I had read one time that whiskey was good, but I didn't have any at the time, so I thought I'd just give what I had at home at the time a try: Cognac--Hennessy to be exact. And it works! Now I will say that with my first toothache, the only thing I had to do was periodically swish it around in my mouth a

few times and spit it out--and that would do the trick. Then after a few hours, the paid went away for good. However, this time, the toothache is a little worse-so the pain was a little more intense. I tried swishing and it would work for about 20 minutes and the pain would start to come back. So what I did was poured a small amount into the cap and tore a small piece of papertowel (I am sure cotton will work just fine)and soaked it in the cap-full of cognac until it was completely soaked. Then, I folded it up into a piece small enough to fit into my mouth. I then placed it inside my mouth between my jaw and my gums-where the abcessed tooth is and just let it stay there. It works perfectly-no pain at all! Because it is alcohol, it does burn a little at first-for just a few seconds. But once the burning subsides, I felt the difference almost immediately! That was over two hours ago and I have not had any pain since. This worked even better than the vicodin I tried yesterday. I don't know that it will work for everybody, but it's worth a try. Good luck! rating: 7 (10 votes) Submitted by Henry at 2010-05-18 11:36:51 Unfortunately none of the remedies I found here worked for me and spent all night clutching the side of my face, wishing the pain away! There has only ever been one thing that works for me : Scotch or brandy! Take a moderate size sip and keep it on the tooth for as long as you can (eventually the burn goes away as your gums numb out). Spit it out when you think its been on long enough (should be no pain after a few minutes) and you'll be pain free for a good while after !! You dont have to swallow it, so wont be getting drunk off it! Only problem is the smell! You end up smelling like a liquor store, but eh, if it takes the pain away!! Hope this helps! My next dentist appointment is friday - Double root canal and extraction... oh dear :( rating: 7 (11 votes) Submitted by Kyle at 2011-05-22 13:43:12 so ive tried pretty much every remedy on this page besides the red cross kit! i was thinking about getting it last night but today i feel a little better, might not need it. these remedies helped me most. 1. IBPROFEN - there is no substitute, i was taking norco, tylenol, soma, asprin. nothing took the pain away but the ibprofen, somone posted take 4 200mg pills every 4 hours, worked really well for me. pills can take up to an hour to kick in if you have a full stomach, so dont miss doses and have the pain come back!! 2. rinse mouth out with hydrogen peroxide. i gargled this on my tooth for about 30 sec 1 min intervals cause it really felt like it was stinging or drying out my gums. but i would rinse my mouth out with mouth wash, water, salt water, water, EVERYTHING but when i let the peroxide sit on the tooth and bubble in there, it pulled out some black crap!! pretty sure it worked out whatever was in my tooth causing the infection. i would suggest rinsing every hour if you can. or as often as you can.. 3. warm salt water rinses felt good, but didnt last long. kills many germs in mouth 4. crushed cloves on my tooth, kept them in my mouth a little while to get them soft, bit

on them with good teeth a little to soften them too, then crushed them on infected tooth and let it sit on it for about 20 mins. 5. the tea bag trick worked for me, but only once.. i tried it again and idk it wouldnt stop the pain. but it worked really well the first time around 6. EAT AND DRINK HEALTHY! dont be drinking soda and eating sweets while your tooth is infected. this isnt helping your body fight the infection. drink lots of water. and just make sure you get rest, if youre not sleeping then your body prob isnt doing a good job healing. also i wouldnt smoke either. i know its hard, but this helps. good luck guys. my heart goes out to all of you! rating: 7 (15 votes) Submitted at 2009-06-11 06:17:47 I dipped some q-tips in both whiskey and vanilla extract and let it sit on the gum for awhile. After doing this about 10 times, the pain definitely began to subside. I also combined this with 3 motrin (or ibuprofin). rating: 7 (4 votes) Submitted by Amanda at 2011-03-11 21:13:30 I have no idea if I have an abscessed tooth or not, but I am in pain and trying as many of these remedies as possible. In August 2010 I had to get a root canal and crown. The pain I was in prior to that, nothing really helped. I was ok, although crowned tooth was a little sensitive every now and again, until yesterday. My gums above the crown hurts. I have no idea if I irritated it or if something is really wrong. Usually when I felt sensitive, it went away in a day or so. Now its starting to hurt. Well, I guess I know something is wrong, since I was supposed to get my deep cleaning, but everything went wrong and I no longer have insurance. So I must have an infection again. I wouldnt be so worried except I no longer have insurance. So I know nothing will be affordable at the dentist. I barely afforded my services with insurance. However, I plan to make an appt first thing monday, to at least get antibiotics. Anyway, in the mean time i'm gonna keep trying these remedies. rating: 7 (8 votes) Submitted at 2011-06-20 23:21:07 Tea Tree works great. You may also try clove, inexpensive, antiseptic, and numbs incredibly well. rating: 7 (8 votes) Submitted by Renee at 2005-11-29 20:47:30 A good solid rinse with either OTC hydrogen peroxide (or, even better, there is an

excellent oral rinse that I cannot remember the name of but it is in the dental aisle in a white bottle w/blue lettering, specially made for mouth ulcers, canker sores, denture tenderness, etc.) After the good swishing for at least 60 seconds, spit it out (try not to swallow it). It should not sting but you may feel the tingle of the bubbling action. Afterward, gently squirt undiluted clove oil into the affected, tender area with a small (perhaps a baby syringe). It may not taste great but it will help relieve the pain until you can get in to the dentist to make sure the infection is dealt with. rating: 7 (9 votes) Submitted by Veronica S at 2011-07-11 06:45:19 Literally I am the toothache queen. I constantly get toothache pain caused from ongoing Chemo treatments. Although my physician warned me to fix all teeth before going into treatment. I just didn't have the finances to do so .. this is MY 5 STEP remedy when my teeth at the root and gums begin to work its fiery. 1.RINSE WITH WARM WATER AND SALT TO CLEAN YOUR MOUTH.(Do not brush , although it may help a little at first in the long run it just aggravates it because you are using an abrasive method.) 2.USE ORAJEL LIQUID RATHER THAN GEL IT WORKS FASTER. Apply it to the Jaw area of the tooth that is bothersome for you as well as the tooth and surround gum area(I use an eyedropper for precision) 3.TAKE 3 ADVIL/Eleve FOR THE FIRST DOSE (2 EVERY 4-6HRS THERE AFTER IF NEEDED (Tylenol does not work as well and has no anti inflammatory medications in it) 4.USE A MUSCLE RELAXANT (I use robax)IT is an ANALGESIC AND WILL HELP YOU SLEEP AND NUMB the PAIN for multiple hours. (Very effective combined with the Advil) when you get sleepy pop in a cepacol between your cheek and gum it has active numbing agents and will help you sleep longer (Do not swish, Do not suck on it, Do not bite it.) DO NOT USE WHISKY OR RUM. I HAVE TRIED THIS METHOD IT WORKS INSTANTANEOUSLY however it LASTS 5 MINUTES AND THE PAIN AFTERWARDS WILL INTENSIFY GREATLY when your pain begins to numb , Do not play with YOUR TOOTH, this is hard to do I know, but tolerable pain is better than excruciating pain!!! hope it works for you as well as it works for me, GL . rating: 7 (18 votes) Submitted by Alexakai at 2011-02-13 00:02:22 I can't believe I am going to say this... I was in total disbelief that the tea bag would work... Being in severe pain, and my dental not kicking in until the first I was desperate... I used a black tea teabag ran it under HOT water for about 2 minutes, and placed it on my tooth for about 15 minutes... Since I am pregnant, and this pregnancy isn't going smooth as it is, I didn't swallow any of the tea (which led to a bit if drooling lol, thank goodness Hubby is underway for 2 weeks) needless to say, THE PAIN IS GONE! I mean completely gone... I've been using orajel liquid literally every 10-30 minutes for days, along with tylenol and that didn't even provide me nearly as much relief as this did... Granted the tea kinda tastes funny in tea bag form, but trust me, ITS WORTH IT!!! rating: 7 (19 votes)

Submitted by Susan at 2009-03-25 13:33:56 Here is the BEST home remedy: You can go to ebay or any online vet supply, go to the aquarium section, and buy almost any antibiotic you need with no prescription. They are the SAME pharmaceutical grade antibiotics your doctor or dentist prescribes, but since they're labeled for aquarium use only, no prescription required. I've used them for about five years on various bacterial infections, and they work great. Added bonus, my doctor/dentist didn't relieve me of ninety six dollars to prescribe what I already knew I needed, to treat what I already knew I had. rating: 7 (32 votes) Submitted at 2007-01-06 15:00:13 Tea bag!!! Really did help. I have been in pain for 5 days now. I have tried Ibuprofen, Orajel, Anbesol, Hydrocodone, Vanilla Extract, Mouthwash, Warm compresses, and placing this tea bag between my cheek and tooth has relieved my pain from a 10 to a 1. It's easy too. I ran out of Lipton but i had Jasmine tea bags and it seemes to be working great, but it is only temporary. I am still surfing the web for the best solution aside from going to the Dentist which is what I should have done already but with 4 growing children I have to wait. Try it though. I have had this tea bag in my mouth for an hour now and it is still working. rating: 7 (65 votes) Submitted at 2011-02-25 21:44:15 Ok, here I am to tell my story. When I was a young woman I had thyroid cancer. I did have surgery but because of the lack of certain hormones my teeth started to decay. Now, I am 51 and cancer free. But, I do on occasion have trouble with abscessed teeth. I think I have found the miracle cure for abscessed teeth and the pain associated with them. As you know an abscessed tooth or gum boil is an infection and inflammation of soft tissue which can be extremely painful. If you cannot afford to go to the dentist and get antibiotics and or pain medication this is what I recommend: These spices work the best .... garlic, turmeric, ginger, coriander, black pepper, cumin, cinnamon, cloves. For the pain, I crush whole cloves into a fine powder. Then I add cinnamon and ginger powder, I use about 1 TBS of cloves and 1 tsp of each of the other ingredients. Mix them up and put them in empty tea bags. I pour the tea out and refill them with my spices. Then I use 2 tablespoons of pure vanilla in 1/4 cup of water. I microwave the vanilla and water and steep the teabag with the spices in it until it comes to a boil. I let this sit until it cools off ... and you can use a Q Tip to put the mixture on your tooth. You can also use the bag on the affected area. It is easily stored in the ice box in a baby food jar or ? It is better than Red Cross and lasts longer. Always use Ice pack on your cheek instead of the heat. Heat will cause the infection to spread and it also causes blood vessels to dilate which makes you throb ! Ice reduces inflammation and swelling and also numbs your cheek and jaw. It also reduces the

blood flow and slows the spread of infection. Now for the infection part ...Rice is a natural starch which when cooked with the right spices can work as an antibacterial or antibiotic. Internally and directly. Hot rice is also a comfort food which relaxes you and helps you sleep. I have a recipe for rice and broccoli that I swear by when you have an abscessed tooth ! ( It works I swear ! ) 2cups of basmati rice rinsed & soaked for 30 mins then drain. Put about 1/4 cup of butter or margerine in a pot and heat Add to the butter about 1/2 cup finely chopped onion and 2 TBS of minced garlic Cook these until very soft. When done add the rice and about 3 cups of water. Then add 2tbs of ginger, 1tbs coriander, 1 tbs turmeric, 1tbs cumin,1/4tsp of cloves,1tbs salt, 1tbs black pepper. Give it all a good stir and then add broccoli flowers and 1 can sliced carrots. Let it cook until rice and veggies are tender. You can add extra butter if you like. Serve this warm ... you will notice right away that it has a sort of numbing effect and it will feel good on your tooth or gums. Eat a good sized bowl of it and you will automatically have a sense of well being. It will also relax you and make you sleepy if you are not careful. It will make you feel all warm inside as well. The starch in the rice along with the turmeric and salt will help draw the poison out of the abscess. It will also kill the bacteria. The garlic, ginger and other ingredients will work as a pain killer. And it is soft easy to chew and good for you ... You should always keep these spices handy and include them in your diet. They are good for your blood pressure and heart. They are also good for digestion, and they help keep you from catching the common cold and a sore throat. Oh they are also wonderful antioxidants !!! PS ... the more ginger and garlic you use the better it is for pain. This is what works the best and fastest for me and it only takes about 35 minutes to make ! rating: 7 (16 votes) Submitted at 2008-01-14 18:00:59 I use Grapefruit Seed Extract. It is one of the most potent antibiotics of all times.. They use it in hospitals.. I still have not removed one bad tooth and I've had it for 4 years. Petrified of dentists.. dont have the money and doctors in dentistry want all money up front.. So, I found out that they use this Grapefruit seed extract long ago to sterilize hosptial equipement and I read about the long standing things it does.. I take 10 drops in 1/2 cup water. Its very very strong.. I take a sip and let it lay on the tooth for many

seconds and spit out and repeat.. If you do this until the 1/2 cup is gone, your tooth ache will leave completely and stay that way until you either get another infection, OR you disturb your tooth so much so that you inflame it.. It KILLS Infections of the tooth which infection is usually the source of most of tooth pain... IT WORKS for me 100% of the time.. I know I have most of my tooth missing, the rest of my teeth are great. Its just when this tooth cavity occured I did not have money and the dentists here are like not humane and seeing they are not accoutable and can turn away patients due to them not having money, they in my mind are some of the most cruelest docs out there.. Anyway, Grapefruit Seed Extract is very bitter.. Yes its got a horrible taste.. When you are using it, it will at first hurt like heck for about 20 to 30 minutes, soon after the pain will simply leave.. I have had this work for months and now years.. However, if you so lucky to find a doc to treat you I recommend that if possible to eradicate the entire problem.. The thing to not let happen is do not let infection to set in. Grapefruit Seed Extract kept the pain away and also keeps it free from infection.. Instead of numbing the pain, it kills the source of the pain.. rating: 7 (83 votes) Submitted by Scoop at 2010-02-07 09:46:22 THIS WORKS TRUST ME! Any time you have pain in your mouth most likely it is an infection. If you do not get rid of the infection anything else is a bandaid. Place some table salt and inpact it into your infected tooth keep it in there and add some peroxide. Hold the peroxide into your mouth(with the salt) tilting your head twords the infected area. (You will be able to feel it penitrate) Try to hold it as long as you can you will begin to feel the pressure ease.(REMEMBER DO NOT SWALLOW) Next and last step after you spit you want some listerine. Listerene kills bacteria and is a great antiseptic. You must hold the listerine as long as you can as you did with step 1 You will actually feel a sting but it will feel SO MUCH better. In a few minutes you will most likely feel the infection coming out of your mouth it will leave a very bad taste. Try not to swallow and keep spitting . You do not want to swallow the infection. This will give you some time to save money for a dentist.Just repeat as needed. You may want to do it 2-3 times a day or as needed to contain the infection. Hope you feel better! rating: 7 (21 votes) Submitted by jeannie at 2009-03-11 10:00:21 If you have an obvious abcess (not just pain but swelling with a clear locus) you will have to sterilize a needle and lance and drain the abcess to get any relief. Another post here gives a very good description of how to do this, but if you have one I'm sure you already have the idea. Just make sure you spit all that stuff out and swish with hydrogen peroxide after until it comes out clear when you spit it out. Two other things will help: 'oil pulling' - sesame works best, not the toasted kind, but most any vegetable oil will work. Swish about a tablespoon of oil around in your mouth for as long as you possibly can. By the time you spit it out it should be white and foamy.

Have a glass of very warm water to rinse with after and also spit that out. The other helpful thing, which will kill the pain, is very strong sodium bicarb in water, about 2 tablespoons in one cup of warm water, and swish keeping it in your mouth for a few minutes, spit out and repeat until solution is all used. If you have an exposed nerve this will knock out the pain within a few minutes. You will have to repeat it in a few hours but this makes sleep and waiting for a dental appointment possible. rating: 7 (25 votes) Submitted by Dr. N at 2010-02-28 00:25:53 I'm a dentist and if your tooth hurts more at night then in the daytime, or if its just killing you all the time, your tooth is probably abscessed and needs either to be extracted or to have a root canal treatment (preferred). There are some dentists who will call you in a prescription for an antibiotic at no charge if you promise to return for treatment. If they do this for you, make an effort to see the dentist as soon as you can afford it. It usually costs LESS than $200 to pull a tooth with no insurance. If you can afford the luxuries of a cell phone and cable t.v. then shame on you if you can't afford this. If you really are nearly homeless, there are free dental clinics in nearly every town. Until morning, dose up with Ibuprofen (Advil) , a warm compress, a lil' booze will help too...then call an emergency dentist. rating: 7 (19 votes) Submitted by Lee Lee at 2007-09-06 20:49:21 Place a piece of an raw potato in between your cheek and and the painful tooth i tried it and it kept the pain away for at least a week. rating: 7 (1 votes) Submitted at 2008-06-09 01:17:21 Alright, Well i was suffering from major pain, I have a wisdom tooth that has been broken in half for about a year now.... It hasnt bothered me before until last night.... I found this website, I tried a few on here... None of them worked for me. So I got to thinking, Oregano oil and leaf has numbing properties and baking soda has numbing and cleaning properties.. So I kind of made my own.. warm water, thick coating of baking soda and about a dropper full of oregano oil or you can use the lead if you would like. Swish in your mouth... The pain should go away right away and stay gone for a good 3 hours, it does taste horrible but at least it takes the pain completely away for a short time.. rating: 7 (4 votes) Submitted by yo at 2008-11-27 00:25:13 I have been in pain for days...prob killed my liver with all the motrin i've downed...dentist put me on an antibiodic and tylenol 3 with codine....needless to say it still didn't help with the pain tonight. I decided to google how to treat this pain and saw a method that involved using a dry tea bag...after ransacking my kitchen I found a box of peppermint tea bags tucked one between my cheek and gums and have enjoyed an almost painless hour now...thanks for the ideas. rating: 7 (1 votes) Submitted by Stephanie M. at 2009-01-08 02:00:30 Use Dr. Tichenors Antiseptic as a mouthwash, or dip a cotton swab in it and rub it on

the affected area(s). As a mouthwash you're supposed to add five parts water, but since my pain gets pretty severe, I just used a cap-full without diluting it. It burned so much, but the pain was gone for quite some time. rating: 7 (2 votes) Submitted at 2009-06-10 09:12:31 osha root good for abcesses. get at asin or organic food store. peel off piece of root chew (tastes awful but worth it) then pack into hole where abcess is and leave till you bcan stand it or it starts to break up can swallow juice (acts as stimulant)but i dont, too nasty. rating: 7 (1 votes) Submitted by Nicole at 2009-07-16 23:46:36 You guys this really works i had a bad wisdom tooth and it hurt like crazy my sister who is a lpn told me to use warm water and salt swish your mouth with it before bed and i promise you it will work and also that red cross works to but if it's really bad go to a dentist i'm going tomorrow and i juist tried the extrat and it don't help rating: 7 (2 votes) Submitted by Gilbert at 2009-12-27 10:41:57 Like many that have posted on this blog woke up with an intense pain in my tooth that I immediately felt like pulling it out with pliers. What worked for me: 1) reading the honest accounts from others that were suffering from the same symptoms; 2) taking two extra strength tylenol, massaging gums for two minutes, swishing the affected area with warm water, salt and baking soda, and then 10 minutes later taking 400 mg of ibuprofen; 3) taking 30 mg of nyquil to sleep really does work! My best wished goes out for all those that are suffering:) rating: 7 (1 votes) Submitted by Earl at 2010-06-06 13:11:00 Try Lipton Spiced Chi tea bags. It has black tea,cinnamon, allspice, ginger root, black pepper, cloves. It worked great for me. See dentist ASAP. rating: 7 (3 votes) Submitted at 2011-01-23 20:29:04 Ipsab Herbal Gum Treatment by Heritage Products. Can be gotten online if not at your health food stores. Does it for me every time. Use Q-tip and smear on gum. Usually completely gone by 3rd application. rating: 7 (5 votes) Submitted at 2011-03-14 17:34:28 After reading the suggestions here. I found a few things that really works. It tastes pretty yucky but rinsing my mouth with warm water and a few drops of Tea

Tree oil. Then put a damp tea bag (I used black chia) against affected gum and tooth or teeth. I also have been using Ibuprofen. To treat the infection I am using Echinacea (follow directions on bottle) Garlic Oil capsules (follow directions on bottle) Cayenne Fruit (follow directions on bottle) also I have been taking Zinc Vitamin B Complex and Vitamin C. Lastly, when the pain is real bad I use oralbase by colgate with is %20 benzocaine. I am amazed at how much the infection has gone down in my moth. rating: 7 (9 votes) Submitted at 2011-04-20 04:58:47 try getting honeysuckle flower and infuse it like a tea. It is believed to draw out toxins. It works for me. It can be bought from china town. Tried hydrogen peroxide and the rest, those stuff works on the surface but with an abscess, i think it needs to be treated from within. I am trying not to take antibiotics as far as possible. Draining the abscess really helps. rating: 7 (15 votes) Submitted at 2011-05-20 18:51:50 garlic stuffed in hole of tooth will kill infection and fill tooth , chage 3 times a day and this will stop pain in 1 or 2 days and kill infection in about a week. Brush teeth well then chop garlic a tiny bit bigger than the hole and stuff it in good and proper. Good luck. rating: 7 (2 votes) Submitted by Reggie at 2009-01-29 14:00:46 I searched internet for home remedy for tooth abscess and came upon this site. What a relief! Several posts mentioned good ole peroxide which is a staple in my home. So here's my two cents. Swish mouthful (normal amount used for mouthwash) full strength generic hydrogen peroxide for ten minutes 3 times did the trick for me! First 10 mins. rinse I noticed pain relief. Second 10 mins. rinse, swelling relief. Third 10 mins. rinse, I was completely relieved of pain and swelling AND SENSE OF TASTE temporarily. A bit extreme to say the least, but worth getting rid of mind numbing pain and chipmunk cheek. This method kept misery at bay until my dentist appointment four days later. I hope this helps you too. rating: 6 (15 votes) Submitted by Joshua at 2011-05-09 10:30:32 Too Abcesses are very dangerous. If it has gotten to the point you cannot sleep because the pain is so bad every time you lay down its all you can think about, stop fooling yourself. You need to seek medical help immediately. Your bodies Immune system will fight off infection as best as it can but if you cannot sleep that will compromise your immune system and bring even worse problems into your body. I have read people suggesting lancing and draining techniques. Let me caution you, from the very mouth of my own dentist when I asked her about the practice. DO NOT DO IT. An infection is dangerous as it is, it gets even more dangerous once it enters the blood stream. If you are not a medical professional do not try lancing an abcess. If the infection gets into your blood stream you will become septic and can die.

I had no insurance but my back tooth was killing me(not a figure of speech) I ended up getting a loan using my car title to go see the dentist, they gave me antibiotics, a powerful painkiller and two weeks later extracted three of my rear teeth, two of which had been permanently damaged by the infected one. If you are in that much pain as i was in what ever material possessions you have that can be sold i suggest selling them to go to the dentist, they can be replaced, your teeth can be replaced, your life cannot. rating: 6 (26 votes) Submitted at 2010-12-31 19:13:32 I was surprised to find how many alternative remedies u can find for tooth ache hanging around in your kitchen: Heres what i have found helpful.Firstly, Take Advil or IBprofen. Do not use aspirin as it thins the blood and can make the pain worse by increasing the throbbing. Second use warm salt water and hold in your mouth for a few minutes, followed by hydrogen peroxide 50/50 water mix. Rinse and repeat, this usually helps immensely. Rinsing with mouthwash or anything else with high alchohol content also seems to help but mostly temporarily. You can also massage the gums or hold the temple on the affected area to prevent bloodflow when pain is really bad. Lastly if you can afford a hundred bucks or so, go to urgent care and explain ur tooth is infected but you cant get to a dentist and demand antibiotics. Or u can get an appointment with a dentist for about 60 dollars and do the same. The antibiotics will solve the problem usually for at least 3 months. rating: 6 (8 votes) Submitted at 2010-04-23 10:46:08 I had a horrendous tooth ache that was getting to the point where I was debating shooting it out. Finally I drew the line and got myself about a quarter of Marijuana. I sat down, smoked about an eighth of it and BAM, I feel great. :] rating: 6 (57 votes) Submitted at 2009-02-08 06:30:35 Oil of oregano is not the kind of oregano that you would typically find in your kitchen.....for those who don't know about it. It is the oil of a wild oregano plant. It is used as an antibiotic and use to be used in hospitals to steralize operating equipment at one time. You can easily find places that sell it on the internet as well. It helps to steralize your mouth/teeth. Place a drop of the liquid on a cotton swab or the end of your finger to apply. It burns a little like maybe eating a hot pepper...but it won't kill you. Just don't use it in your eyes, or on mucus membranes. It most likely will not stop tooth pain all by itself, but it 'will' help to kill the infection that is causing the pain. rating: 6 (7 votes) Submitted by hekate at 2011-07-30 05:04:57 External treatment for tooth abscess: An abscessed tooth is always a severe condition and needs medical help, but as a first aid you may try following multiple treatments and home remedies: 1. Place a dry black teabag or small piece of raw potato inside of your cheek against the sore tooth and keep it in for a couple of hours or overnight. It can draw out the infection

and drain the pus. The result is diminished pain and swelling. 2. Make a gum poultice or packing around the painful tooth with salt and baking soda. Mix half baking soda and half cooking salt and dip a wet cotton ball into the salt mixture and stuff it in your mouth between sick tooth and cheek. Keep it in for several hours. Repeat this pack for a few times, it is able to drain out the gum boil. 3. In between swish around your mouth with Hydrogen Peroxide 1,5% as a mouthwash in order to disinfect the inflamed area. If you do not prefer Hydrogen Peroxide, you may use also Tea Tree oil in some water as a gargle. (You can use Colloidal Silver or Grapefruit Seed Extract as natural antibiotics as well.) 4. If the abscess begins to discharge, pus is coming out, you feel an odd taste in your mouth brush your teeth (perhaps with a baking soda/peroxide toothpaste) and repeat the disinfectant H2O2 gargle. After rinsing take a cotton ball and soak it in Hydrogen Peroxide and place it on the opened, discharging abcess. 5. You can assist the drainage by lightly pushing against your cheek near the tooth abcess. BUT, only lightly! If you press strongly you may push pus into the bloodstream or nearby tissues which can cause a more serious infection. 6. Take 3 or 4 garlic capsules (300mg) a day for 5 days as a natural antibiotic and Vitamin C 1000mg three times a day for 3 days. 7. Consult with a dentist to start appropriate antibiotics and to check the abscessed tooth. rating: 6 (14 votes) Submitted by Painless at 2011-03-06 12:22:59 I've had an abcessed tooth before and there's one surefire cure for what ails you. Try this. Grab a small microwaveable cup fill it half way with water. pour in a decent amount of sea salt or normal table salt. add in some cayenne pepper a few whole cloves and some fresh ground ginger stir the concoction and microwave for about 30 seconds. swish the mixture in your mouth for about 30 - 45 seconds then spit. repeat as necessary..

The ginger and cloves are excellent natural antibiotics and the capsaicin from the cayenne pepper is an excellent remedy for pain. Give it a try, you'll thank me later :P OH! and eat a lot of garlic and onions.. they are both natural antibiotics to treat infections. rating: 6 (13 votes) Submitted at 2007-05-11 02:19:28 im not promoting this, but smoking cannabis can relieve almost any pain known to man including a dreaded toothache that no amount of ibuprofen, clove oil or any other remedies can cure. When used in the right context and not abused, it can be extremely beneficial and medically effective. rating: 6 (181 votes) Submitted by Moonliitee at 2010-11-20 23:29:17 GARLIC !!! I was reading through all the remedies, which I have to thank you guys for :D I'm in sooo much pain, its the weekend and I got my dentist appointment on Monday. Garlic helped ease the pain. At first it stings extremely bad and you really dont want to keep going. Keep at it. Right now I feel no pain ( knock on wood ). I hope you guys feel better. The pain is excurciating, but don't give up. FEEL BETTER SOON. rating: 6 (6 votes) Submitted by Fiddle at 2010-09-05 12:22:38 I bit down hard on a pebble-like object and I could feel the nerve in the tooth react. It felt like my tooth had been hit with a hammer!!! The next day the tooth felt like someone was holding a blow torch to it. The pain was intense so I walked in to my dentist's office for 'warranty check.' The dentist said there was no sign of a crack and the gums looked OK. the pain however, was excruciating. There were tears in my eyes and at one point I was doubled over. Warm salt water rinses helped as long as the water was not too warm. Cold water held over the tooth provided temporary 100% relief, but I noticed the colder the water, the more the tooth hurt after the water was removed. I swished with luke warm water and very gradually raised the water temperature until the pain gradually subsided in about 3 hours. This gave me several hours of relief. I tried to keep the water temperature just barely cool enough to get pain relief without cooling the tooth so much that the subsequent temperature increase would take my head off!!!

The pain came back again. Maybe it was thirsty ( :) ). I tried rubbing garlic powder on the gum above the tooth. Not sure if that helped or not. I tried peroxide. That seemed to have an effect. I notice that 2 200mg ibuprofen plus 2 80 mg aspirin taken together may have helped. I was doing so many things I don't know what finally did the trick. After each thing I tried, the pain kept coming back over and over again. I put some sensodyne toothpaste directly on the gum. That worked for a bit. I tried brandy over the tooth and gum area. I tried putting brandy on a cotton swab and holding it in place on the gum area. Last, I tried Ambesol which is OTC at Walgreens. I got the liquid form and dipped a cotton q-tip in it and held it in place at the back of my mouth right where the dentist usually stick the needle in and then over the gum area above the tooth. 100% percent relief in 3 minutes. RESULT: 100% relief since yesterday evening!!! I drank a few cold beers last night and swished the cold liquid over the tooth and no painful reaction at all!!! I could (gingerly) eat food with the tooth and no counter-reaction!! It has now been 15 hours with no pain whatsoever!!! --Fiddle rating: 6 (5 votes) Submitted at 2011-05-27 23:28:58 Hi guys. Last Saterday, I got my teeth tightened(I have braces) and all my teeth got sore and such after that. So after all that pain went away and I could CHEW food, a few days after THAT, one of my teeth started to hurt. Like HURT. It felt like it always did when it got sensitive when I breath in cold air around this tooth. This tooth was the only one thats sensitive like this in my mouth. But not it feels sensitive 24/7! Like I'm continuously breathing in cold air around it D: Lately I would go to sleep and wake up an 1hour later because of the pain and get annoyed by it. It hurts, like in the inside. Using stuff like oralgel made the outside of my gum numb, but I could still feel the pain so I assumed it was withen my root. Im not sure if it's an abcessed tooth though, it just happened all of the sudden. Maybe it might be my braces. Oh! A few years back, I've also had two fillings done on the same tooth, one of the side(with a bracket RIGHT ON IT) and one on the inside. Oh! And earliar that day, I was drinking juice like no tomorrow(like kool-aid and sunny d). I think that may have been the cause. Nothing is swollon, It only hurts inside the tooth where I cant reach it. Heeelllppppp plleeaaseee D: I've only used simple 2 minute relieve things D: A few years back, I was suppose to get a root canal(for reasons unknown to me) but they canceled it because of my responses when they were seeing if I needed it. in to make it temp. Like using more pain to make it stop hurting. As in water and swish around infected area, hydro...something...eww okay

that taste icky. I didn't taste it at first but...yea eww. Mouthwash...so if anyone could help me please, it hurts and I'll have to wait a week before I can see my dentist cause I need an overdued checkup >.> and it distracts me from studying .-. rating: 6 (5 votes) Submitted at 2011-06-09 13:09:46 I used the warm salt water rinse, cloves, rinse again, and then i cut a clove of garlic in half with a little rock salt and set it right next to the tooth. it didn't relieve all the pain, but I was able to finally sleep! Def worth a try. rating: 6 (5 votes) Submitted by lee at 2010-10-05 07:24:12 ok,,, i have 5 broken and rotted teeth on the bottom,,the infection started sept 29 and progressed to an unbelievable pain,,,,i started rinsing with peroxide and listerene,,,5 to 6 times a day,,, it is oct 5 ( i also took ibuprofen) and today is no pain finally,,,, i suggest you get some antibiotics,,also,,, but the rinse was great,,and actually helped with the pain,,,,, my heart goes out to all those who suffer from this,,, it is horrible and i can't believe this country we live in ,,, where people who don't have insurance or money have to suffer like this,,,, god help us rating: 6 (33 votes) Submitted by Emma Sparrow at 2010-02-15 15:16:32 I have suffered from repetative abcesses for about seven years now, and being that I am unable to afford the rip-off prices that dentists here in the UK charge, I have been forced to look for my own home remedy. I have found something that works absolute wonders to numb the pain and make them go down fairly quickly. It's easy and very cheap! Here in the UK (Don't know if you guys get it in the U.S. or other countries) but there is a liquid antiseptic called TCP. Everytime I get an abcess, I tear a bit of tissue and kind of scruch it up into a size that will fit at the abcess, wet it in the TCP (UNDILUTED!), and pop it in my mouth right on the abcessed tooth. I keep it there for a few minutes or more when possible, and afterwards the pain is numbed completely! TCP is great, it can also help mouth ulcers (I can get them at the same time as an abcess!), and also be used externally too on cuts, spots etc... so it is very multi-use! DON'T SWALLOW IT THOUGH! Spit out what you can after aplication! The only downside is that TCP stinks, so everyone will notice it on you - but it beats being in pain or have your breath smell like the abcess! Also the taste will be quite overwhelming for some - I personally have got used to it now, so just give it time. Even if TCP isn't readily available in your country, I highly recommend finding a way to get hold of it by buying it on the net or something, even if you have to import it somehow. It really is worth it! It has definately been my miracle help! rating: 6 (8 votes)

Submitted by Tanya at 2010-05-24 02:19:29 Hey guys, I'm just a teenager with a really TERRIBLE toothache and it hurts like hell. Ive tried painkillers, advil liquid gells, even the salt water cotton ball thing, I believe it or not even tried sucking it up for about 4 hours and its 2 am right now, this cavity is killing me! So I decided to get my mind of it, so i listened to music, to be specific Alternative rock and metal. And...oh my god this worked perfectly! one song that helped me the most is Astronomy By Metallica. Thats my advice guys good luck, and go find a dentist soon. =] i can finally sleep zzzz..music is..a life saver. rating: 6 (8 votes) Submitted at 2010-06-17 05:22:18 Ok I had a tooth needed a root canal. Horrid pain, no insurance. I live on Omaha, NE but have a small town dentist I see who is about 45 min away. I sugest you find one. He charges very little compared to normal dentist whole root canal about $100 and he lets me make payament. But for relief incase you cant do that! CLOVES the stuff the dentist uses to numb me after the work has extract of cloves as the numbing agent! But there is more to this story. After opening me up and draining it a bit he put a cotten ball with that cloves stuff in it and put in temp filling. (never let them do that) My face swelled up like a baloon as the infection filled my tissue. He even admited he should have left it open when I called and asked what was going on. (apprently if there is little infect you can close it back up, but mine had more than a little.) He opened it and a lot of the pain went away till that night then it got bad again. I crushed up some cloves put in a paper towel, wet it warm water, and put it on the tooth. I then took a hot shower, don't think the shower helps the pain but it takes your mind off it. 30 minutes later the pain is nearly numb. I put rice in a sock and nuked it for heat on my face and that was the end of the pain. So I suggest: 1) Find a small town dentist work with them on a payment plan. 2) Cloves will really numb the pain, takes a while though. 3) Hot shower to take your mind off the pain 4) Hot rice pack 5) Alieve/Ibeprophin/asprin -- It Can't Hurt!!!! rating: 6 (4 votes) Submitted by carla at 2008-03-08 13:29:11 I see missing a Classic Point for mouth pain, swelling, and absess do not Pass over Sea Salt rinses Along with peroxide. Sea salt More effectively draws out an infenction then peroxide and Doesnt Further damage the Area like Alcohol, peroxide, and regular table salt can (Iodide destroys healing tissue) Also remember too something that will actually help Get rid of an infenction is Hot tea (hot compresses) are an Age old remedy for killing infenctions however Note it is more painful way to go about it but one of the quickest to help an infenction. Any kind of alcohol, or chemical based rinses should be a temporary solution if used to often they will actually increase the pain. rating: 6 (15 votes) Submitted by dawn3 at 2010-12-13 00:14:41 Oh, I feel bad for anyone going through this pain. I have had several abcessed teeth over the years and the pain is truly unbearable. Of all the different kinds of pain there

is, abcessed teeth has got to be one of the worst, if not the worst. Here are some things that have brought me temporary relief. Cold..either applied directly to the tooth or held to the cheek. Helps with pain, but the downside is that sometimes the pain will come back even worse when you stop applying ice. Hot..a warm heating pad or bean bag heated in the microwave can also relieve pain, however I have heard that heat can draw the infection deeper into the cheek and jaw which is not such a good thing. Rinses with either saltwater or good strong mouthwash can provide relief at the onset of an infection, once the infection is bad and the pain is constant than these rinses don't help much. Clove oil..oh yes! this one does help with pain a great deal. It tastes terrible and it burns the tongue and lips. It can also be difficult to get it directly into the tooth, but it's worth working at because it really does numb the area completely. Sleep in a sitting position whenever possible. For some reason the pain becomes even worse when trying to lay down. A recliner is great if you have one. I don't have a recliner anymore so I just have to kind of prop myself up in bed. Problem is that once I fall asleep, I will lay down and the pain will be back. Teabags..this works too but I have always found it a difficult item to work with. It's hard to get the bag into the correct position and when I finally do, I am uncomfortable and drooling. Worth the pain relief though. Finally when all else fails, get prescription antibiotics if you can. Normally they take 2448 hours before you will feel relief. One way I have found to speed this up, is that instead of just swallowing them like a pill, I a pill up and then hold it in my mouth, allowing it dissolve directly into my tongue and gums. This seems to work because I usually have total relief within 12 hours. Lastly, we are all going to end up at the dentist at some point. Dental infection cannot be completely destroyed with either home remedies or even prescription drugs. A little infection always hides within the tooth where antibiotics cannot reach. As soon as treatment stops this tiny little infection will start breeding, until eventually it will rage out of control again. For some people this happens within just a few weeks of treating the initial infection and for others it takes many months before the pain returns. But it will come back and often times when it comes back it is resistant to treatment and much more painful, so please try to find a way to see a dentist if you can. rating: 6 (7 votes) Submitted at 2011-05-05 01:51:22 Mouthwash with hydrogen peroxide gives immediate temporary relief. Then get to the dentist as quickly as possible, and tell the greedy bastard to just pull it. Who can afford to save the tooth anymore? rating: 6 (20 votes)

Submitted by Adge at 2008-05-01 12:04:39 My brother and i have had very bad abcessed teeth before. My brothers was swollen for about 3 days. we tried swishing listerine and peroxide. but then i noticed what lookd like a vein leading to my brothers eye. The abcess got so bad in those 3 days it was trying to infect his right eye and we got an earbeating from the dentist who told us we made it just in time. So please be careful. Do yr best to make it to a dentist. And do what you can for the unbearable pain. rating: 6 (22 votes) Submitted by grapple at 2008-05-17 11:51:39 I have had several abscessed teeth I have dealt with and had the doctor pull 2 of them. Since i am running out of teeth :( I opted to hold onto the others till the bitter end. I used the Garlic and tea bag treatment and it REALLY works. When you finally get the infection gone, I have came up with a regimen that has kept my remaining teeth in great shape as well as my gums. I had a couple of deep fillings that would abscess often so I came across TEA TREE OIL! The stuff is heals about everything and is a must have for anyone. It penetrates easily though the gums and down to the roots of your teeth and is a strong natural antibiotic. After I got rid of the infection on the teeth initially, I religiously floss then brush my teeth and gums thoroughly with straight tea tree oil then hold the remains in my mouth for a bit and swishit around. It tastes pretty strong but I have come to love the sanitized feeling I have after. After my teeth felt really good for a while...of course I slacked off and stopped my tea tree oil and flossing and a couple weeks later, the lovely abscess was back and so I got back into the regimen and all has been well for several years! The tea tree oil will also cure impetigo, ringworm, acne, and all sorts of stuff. the closest thing to a cure-all as I have found. Wonderful stuff! rating: 6 (15 votes) Submitted by Beth at 2008-10-02 03:25:47 I have more than 12 cavities. I cannot afford to go to a dentist to get them fixed. I have had worse pain then what I was in tonight. My remedy is either 2 Tylenol or 4 Motrin. Narcotics don't seem to help me much. I use the generic pain pills, they work just as well at a fraction of the cost. Also the ice pack thing works wonders to numb the pain. rating: 6 (3 votes) Submitted by Christian Madrogaba at 2009-05-23 13:23:38 Hi I just want to share this remedy that worked well for me. You need: 3-4 cloves of garlic 1 cup of water 1 tablespoon of salt Boil the cloves of garlic with salt for 5 minutes and use it like a mouth wash. It may be smelly but it really works. rating: 6 (6 votes) Submitted by JEAN at 2009-08-06 18:22:20 I took a qtip and applied rubbing alcohol directly on tooth. Don't swish cause it burns and it taste horrid,but it WORKED. I poured a little in a bottle and kept with me at work til I could get to the doc.

rating: 6 (3 votes) Submitted by Lea at 2009-12-31 07:13:49 I haven't been to the dentist in four years because I have no dental coverage, and last year was the first time I've ever experienced a toothache. What I thought was excruciating pain last year doesn't come close to the pain I'm experiencing right now. In two weeks, I managed to chip a back tooth three times. At first, I felt no pain. I went a couple of days pain-free until my jaw and tooth started aching. Recently, I have had many sleepless nights. It's gotten to the point where my jaw and ear ache as well and it's pretty unbearable. Tonight was the first night that I started crying out of pure agony and exhaustion. Here are a few things I have tried: 1. I am completely exhausted and wanted a couple of hours of uninterrupted sleep the one night, so I propped up my pillow and managed to dose off a bit. This helped for a short time - it certainly eased some of the tension in my mouth. I wouldn't call it a cure, because it doesn't eliminate the constant throbbing and swelling my toothache is causing. 2. Aleve and Amoxillian have been the two, most effective pain killers for me. I find they work best together. It takes awhile for them to kick in, but once they do, I feel much relief. 3. Salt in luke warm water has done nothing for me. In fact, I find it makes the pain worse. The only thing it has remotely helped with is to wash out some food chunks after eating, but other than that, the pain doesn't subside whatsoever. 4. A heating pad has helped me immensely, but I also read online that heat can spread the infection, so I'm a little skeptical, or I've been misinformed. I have no idea, but I do know that the heat seems to work for me, as far as instant relief goes. 5. Cough drops have done nothing for me as well. I have tried a couple, but they don't ease the pain at all. My resources are pretty limited because I'm on a student budget, but I'm frustrated and this site has offered many suggestions. I plan to try a few of the remedies, including chewing on a dry tea bag, rubbing Vicks on my cheek, and dabbing a q-tip in Vanilla Extract. It's already 7:12 a.m., so I'm hoping something works. Thanks for the information fellow posters! rating: 6 (3 votes) Submitted by Cheryl at 2010-08-04 14:53:05 Yesterday started getting an abcess. Never had one before, but that's the only thing it can be. Last night put on some no name orajel with benzocaine. That got me through the night. Today there was swelling, and realized was abcess. So I made some colloidal silver (ionic silver solution). Swished it around my mouth, concentrating on really bathing the area of the abcess.

The pain is much relieved and the swelling is starting to go do. Also using a bit of hydrogen peroxide on a cotton swab to rub on the opening (located right at the gum line and does bleed if pressed with a q-tip, so is able to drain. I'll keep drinking the silver solution every two hours (about 2 Tablespoons at a time). rating: 6 (9 votes) Submitted at 2010-09-30 01:13:31 I promise this will work almost everytime. Step one- brush with Sensodyne (other brand will work too)at least three times a day. You can even coat the tooth with this for a few minutes to help numb the paid while the other stuff starts to kick in. Step two- take GARLIC OIL soft gels (I use the odorless), this stuff is awesome. This works like a natural antibiotic and will start attacking the infection that causes the pain. I take 2- 1000 mg gels every 8 hours for the first day or two (this dose starts working on me in a matter of 15-20 minutes). You can start to reduce the count a little at a time to 1 gel every 8 hours after a couple of days. Step three- take fish oil gels (this is a natural anti-inflammatory). I do this about 2 gels every 8-10 hours. You can reduce this dose later as needed. If the garlic alone is working you can cut this out, but what the heck fish oil is good for you anyway. Step four- ibuprofen or tylenol as recommended on the bottle (I usually alternate the two at each dose). I just do this until the Garlic has had a chance to start working more long term and it is the first thing I stop taking when I don't need it.

After a few days the Garlic Oil alone will keep the pain at bay. rating: 6 (21 votes) Submitted at 2010-11-20 00:35:17 several options are out there to help, with a abcessed tooth.As I write this I'am with alot of you as could not find a dentist that would pull it right now. A tea bag warmed with water and applied to the tooth will pull out the infection at the gum line.Avoid peroxide at all cost.If there is a hole or a section of the tooth missing,clean out 1st with warm salt water.applying clove oil will deadin the pain.cover the tooth with soft parifin wax.this will block out cold/food from getting back into the hole of the tooth.Garlic oil will also pull out infection. You can get all of this at Wal-Mart. The wax is in the craft section. An old Indian trick was to use 2 table

spoons of wiskey,1 teaspoon of lemon juice or lime,mix with baking soda until it's a paste.put on tooth or around gum area.going to sting a little but will kill infection fast.do 2-3 times a day to keep infection down. Don't brush the tooth or area around it this just cause's the nerve to be pissed.bottom line:tooth has got to, be fixed or come out.Hope I helped a, little. rating: 6 (6 votes) Submitted at 2011-08-04 03:35:43 After being up for 46 hours straight, I litterly was about to get pliers and rip my own tooth out. I was drinking ice water the entire time. It was the only thing stopping the pain. I was taking 4 advil every 4 hours and it was doing nothing. Ice water was the only way I could even get any relief. However, there was noway to sleep, because I had to constantly sip the ice water. I found this site and tried pretty much everything suggested with no response to the pain. Finally I took 2 excedrine migrane and held a qtip soaked in vodka on my tooth. The pain is not completely gone, but it is at a tolerance level that I can finally sleep! rating: 6 (3 votes) Submitted at 2011-08-07 10:22:41 Everyone is right, I also about the Red Cross kit, it removed the throbbing pain into my jaw and ear, I still have the general soreness from the extraction itself but taking 800mg of an NSAID for that. I had an infected/abscess tooth removed, the general dentist could not do it therefore I got sent to an oral surgeon so I had a lot of abuse done to the area as well. I still have a salivary gland stone issue but I will take any relief I can get!! rating: 6 (3 votes) Submitted at 2011-08-18 02:09:47 My back molar started hurting 5 days ago I took some pain killers and brushed it very good for the next 4 days while also using a liquid called Eugenol that came in a filling repair kit that you can get at any grocery or drug store the one I purchased was made by DenTek. All of that worked until this evening the 5th day I started to get some swelling early in the evening and the swelling got so bad it now looks like I have a golf ball and a half inside my cheek, you would think that I would be in excruciating pain luckily I wasn't it was very sore and irritating, and let me say I don't handle pain well, but it was mostly bearable however I did end up going to the ER which I'm very glad I did and would STRONGLY suggest you go too!! Yes you have to wait but believe me by the time I got the antibiotics and steroid shot I was in enough pain it was all worth it!! If you decide to wait though I will say the Eugenol liquid worked wonders and using a cold compress. DO NOT use the actual filling part of the kit it will only make it worse I found that out the hard way! Hope this helps!!! rating: 6 (6 votes) Submitted by JP at 2011-02-25 11:24:37 Vanilla Extract for an abscessed tooth -- just swished around my mouth for a minute or so (had no QTips) -- and it worked -- almost instantly!! Still tender and sore, but the swelling has gone tremendously and 12 hours later is still down. Have since seen the

dentist and am getting my antibiotics -- but at midnight last night - this was a lifesaver. Thanks to all posted! rating: 6 (11 votes) Submitted by Dawn at 2011-01-17 03:50:06 I read all remedies posted and headed straight to Walmart. Since this is the only 24 hour store in this small town I live in, I had no other option. They had no first aide kit and no clove oil. I was in such pain I had to come up w my own concoction. I purchased ground cloves in the seasoning aisle and a small bottle of olive oil. I went home and mixed the two, then I cut in half a tea bag and dumped the tea into the trash. I put the oil and clove mixture inside the tea bag and twisted it into a parachute type shape. I squeezed the tea bag over the trash until the oil quit dripping out. I then stuck the ball into the hole where my extracted tooth use to be and bit down slowly until I had a good bite. I kept a papertowel in hand to spit,while still biting down. It took a matter of minutes to relieve the pain. Not sure how long this will work since I am still biting on this as I type, but this sure beats the hell out of the pain I felt moments ago. Sometimes its hard to find the things you need at 2:30 in the morning so you need to imperavise. If you find yourself in my position, I hope this helps. rating: 6 (10 votes) Submitted by Danny83 at 2011-06-19 05:54:44 This is sure to alleviate severe infections. No sugar - this aids cellular respiration and promotes bacterial growth. Dry brushing - Brush until the gum around the infected tooth bleeds. This can be painful but this is the body's way of draining the infection. Salt water rinse - Salt causes osmosis in the bacterium and the loss of fluid stops the growth of bacteria and reproduction. Ice pack - This is the key, keep it cool. This will keep the swelling down and the swelling is what causes the massive pressure against the tooth and the excruciating pain. And sleep or rest upright - This slows the blood flow and reduces the blood pressure around the tooth and minimises the throbbing sensation. Hope this can be helpful to someone. rating: 6 (22 votes) Submitted by Darren at 2010-12-20 11:10:34 OMG have been in so much pain,,i have a broken back tooth and the tooth next to it has broken down to the gumline also,i had root canal on both these about 3 years ago,i swear the dentist never did it properly and have been getting abcesses ever since,i hate the dentist so much from bad experiences including where the assistant was hungover and stabbed me in the back of my throat with her tool :(..anyways its day 4 now and i have been reading all 30 pages on this site,i have try'd many of the remedies suggested,garlic didnt work for me,onion helped for about half an hour,tcp helped for 2 minutes,crushed up paracetamol directly into the hole did nothing,salt water both hot and cold did nothing,hot water bottle next to the affected area on my face put me to

some relaxation,Dentogen clove oil gel helped heaps,numbed it down to pain barrier i could handle(thanks to my lovely girlfriend)teabag may of helped me get some sleep but it was prob all the pain killers i have taken that made me sleepy,dangerous i know but i was a man in desperation...i have been waiting for the abcess to start to project its way through the side of my gum so i can pop it somehow but it hasnt dared show its face yet or so i thought....anyway my pain has now died down to a minimum thanks to my puppy,he was so happy to see me that he jumped on me and head butted me in the affected side of my face...ouuuuchhh,this was the worst pain i had felt,my whole side of my face was banging now,but it did something good,all the blood pressure it built up finally worked its way to my abcess and i heard a pop and gushed out with blood and puss,the little bugger was hidding just behind my back tooth :) some kind of relief :) am just now waiting for my mother to collect my antibiotics from the chemist whilst i am awaiting my dental appointment on wednesday,this time i am going to man up and get them both pulled out,i am sure it cant be as much pain as i have been in,its taken me a long time to brave this,but after reading all about you poor people who have to have insurance and pay mega bucks to get any kind of help really put me in my place and i feel so bad for all you girls and guys over america who have to deal with that and this pain...I hope you all get the dental help we all deserve,it has to be the worst pain know to man kind...Darren uk resident rating: 6 (12 votes) Submitted at 2006-01-29 07:38:47 If your pain is caused by a tooth with an abcess in it then fill the hole with clove powder. This works much better as a topic Anaesthetic than anything else I've tried. rating: 6 (30 votes) Submitted by Many Moons at 2010-12-12 01:27:00 Tooth ace pain relief/ inflamed gums or infected/abscessed tooth remedies: Witch Hazel (Astringent) ~FamilyDollar: for relief of Minor Skin External Irritations. Take a q-tip or cotton swab & dip it into the liquid: apply directly on the swollen or affected area. (In this case the Gum's surrounding the effected tooth. Takes the pain away straight away. (the bottle I have is 14% alcohol)-apply as needed. but avoid swallowing. Its for external use only, but if applied as described above, it took the pain away, for hours. Walgreen Pain Reliever: (Aceauminophen)Fast release quick gel caps (500 mg each). Take only 2 gel caps every 4-6 hrs as directed. It definately dull's the pain, but will effect your liver if taken for an extended time. Flush with warm salt water as often as possible.(salt is a Natural antibacterial). Poultice/Compress: minced garlic or pressed fresh & (any type of tea leaves or tea leaf blend) or cold tea bag (soak in cup of water to soften)if you don't have cold use a reg tea bag soaked in warm water, remove from water, squeeze out excess water. Open Tea bag remove tea, mix a small amount w/garlic (natural antiseptic) taken out of the tea bag (keep the rest or later use as you will want to make another compress/poultice: mixed together & rolled a pre-cut to size piece of gauze to fit between the check & teeth,('rolling paper size' works well). a small amount folded flat will to fit the roof of your mouth and gum's. If you don't have gauze but have tea bag, some have 2 compartments which can be cut in 1/2 and fit better into you mouth. Tea has natural components to heal. Garlic is also a natural antibiotic /antibacterial. In my case the one on the roof of my mouth & another poultice packed on the other side of the tooth, in between the cheek. (upper moler was effected) applied for 1/2 hr at a

time. Let the air get to your gums to heal the healing process. late sat afternoon I took a clean rubber tipped tooth cleaning tool (and after the pain killers had taken effect) but the pressure was there, I poked the rubber up between the teeth, into the gum area, It was a bit painful but I had released the presser of the abcess and over the sink spit out the bloody infectious liquid which was released. I wasn't expecting this but I got instint relief and with the warm salt water rinsed, flushing around the mouth. Again, pressing the rubber tip of the tool deeper into the gum area, then, gargling and flushing it out, SPITTING OUT; again reapplying the rubber tipped device to push out much the infection. If this is swallowed it will spread in your body!! I was able to spit out the infection and blood till it stopped and spit out clear and clean. It was painful but also a relief!! I then brushed my teeth w/ a baking soda paste (can be homemade as well).Reapplied lightly the Witch hazel to the inflamed and sore area, it numbed the pain on contact! I began having pain mid Friday, throbbing pain all night, by Sat.afternoon I keep the Gel Caps going and by evening I was able to take a nap and lightly applying the Witch Hazel. (its a liquid with alcohol)form as referred to above. Alternating with warm salt water flush & spitting it out. I have been alternating remedies to help get rid of the infection. I only put the poultice in my mouth for a 1/2 hr at a time. Also having a spit cup and wash cloth handy. (It's very nasty tasting & uncomfortable). It worked before, then lapsed my regular brushing and flossing ritual of clean my mouth maintenance; coming back worse months later (my present condition). Additional remedy is Apple cider Vinegar put 2 teaspoons in a cup of water before every meal drink it down. (daily as a preventative and internal cleaner and body health maintenance. I found this in and (old Vermont folk medicine book written by a doctor, recommended for animals and people) Apple Cider Vinegar is a good source of Iron,and other trace minerals & Vitamins. It the apple a day in cider form blended with the vinegar. Natural preventive and can cure internal infections, is some of what I read. Another natural antibiotic is Iodine, can be found in a dropper bottle~Organic Liqui-Kelp (natural Iodine daily supplement I have had on hand, 2 drops (stronger if needed) in water should help clean the infection as well. Good luck to all of you, with what works for you, as we all know, its a big red flag something is wrong, and I want to keep this tooth if possible, before the infection could damage or kill the root. 'The End' by ManyMoons rating: 6 (9 votes) Submitted by Lux at 2011-02-08 01:58:36 I got this toothache from hell about 2 days now and sleeping is like hell to me with this horrible toothache, Desperate for a remedy I googled and stumbled upon this page and thank God I did so. My remedy is putting a pea size toothpaste on your gum it provided like 5 hours of relief of no pain or eating peanut butter, delicious and effective. rating: 6 (9 votes) Submitted by chuck at 2010-08-29 04:21:38

My pain was so bad, I know I had infection inside the root, I was starting to get nauscious, and aches in rest of body also. I gargled some rubbing alcohol that I poured through a loaf of wheat bread and diluted with equal part water, that killed the infection. Then I crushed up some pain killers that I had from a unrelated pain prescription and rubbed them over the effected area. Pain went from a 1343 to a 1. rating: 6 (11 votes) Submitted by Laura at 2011-07-26 08:21:47 If you've had one you can relate, this just occurred and I wouldn't recommend it unless you're very, very desperate, but I was clueless. Warning, this is gross. Okay. I had an abscessed tooth that was basically a rotting stub that was long ago root canalled and ground down to nothing. But the hollow root stays in my head. I get a nearby tooth filled. Something about this procedure sets off a series of events, that begins with mild pain and swelling on my gums. I take antibiotics. The swelling continues. Ed the dentist sees me again to poke some holes in my gum to release the gunk. It's sort of effective, but a couple days later I awake in pain. The swelling is back. Bad. My right cheek above the gums is beginning to look chipmunk-like and is warm to the touch. More antibiotics. The next day, more pain. Dentist discovers the tooth that was filled recently, the 'healthy' tooth, in fact must have it's nerve rooted out. This sucks because it involves a thin needle being injected directly into live nerve tissue. That happened this morning. I went to an appointment in SilverSpring. My face continues to swell. I get home and note that the right cheek is sunburned (not a surprise) but is also starting to break out and look really oily. I mess with the cheek and scrub the burnt skin off. I notice a strange taste, like blood, barely present on the dead, long rotted tooth nub to the right of my mouth. As I press harder on my upper cheek, a little more pusblood oozes out. BINGO! I think. Time to get rid of this pressure. It helped that my appointment in Silver Spring was with a hypnotist who taught me a technique to reduce pain, specifically for my toothache. Without hesitation I grab a box of dental grade plastic toothpicks, the kind with the pointy end and feathered end also, and start digging. It's surprisingly easy and doesn't hurt bad. The toothpick pops into the first layer of infected flesh beyond the dead tooth-nub. Out flows pus-blood. As I investigate further, I find three distinct pockets surrounding the bastard piece of tooth. I must maneuver them within my face so they are able to drain directly down the hollow root canal and onto my tongue where I spit into the sink, or, if it's really pussy, dab with tissue. I get all three of the huge pockets with the gross stuff. Way to go! I say. Feeling my face, expecting significant reduction in swelling, I slowly discern that the first pus pockets were but apertifs. The gunk goes up into my cheek too. Ok. So now I actually get up on the sink by the mirror and decide that the first part worked, let's just finish it off. It's not as easy. First, you must maneuver the toothpick up or beside the canal, beyond your gum and into the stretchy membrane that keeps your mouth separate from your face. When you find a tender spot, like up on the fleshy part of cheek that rises when you grin, you must poke hard to puncture that cyst. To remove the gunk thoroughly it helps to lodge the toothpick, with the pokey, feathery side into the rotten bone canal and massage your cheek down over it, producing some pressure. When it works best, you can quickly remove the toothpick and release a small glut of puss-blood out of the cheek pocket. This must be repeated in a variety of angles. As I learned this I discovered the pus-blood sometimes goes places other than the desired opening. It migrates up to the bridge of your nose, or at least it feels like it. That's funny, there's pressure way up on my cheekbone, almost to my temple, what the heck? That's when I realize the entire fucking right half of my face has become a clump of toxic cysts that

will possibly migrate to my eyes, or fucking brain if I don't get them out. I start to work faster. The basin is filled already with a quarter roll of toiletpaper soaked and spotted with different shades of saliva, bright blood streaks, dark nasty blood, and of course some yellow pussy stuff. I have bent about toothpicks on both sides, am reaching for more. Mom arrives home with the aloe for my sunburn - oh yeah, THAT's what I wanted to treat when I entered the bathroom. I've been in there so long I had forgotten, oh, say, 45 minutes. I am really into it at this point. There's no. freakin. way. I'm going to go through this much, quit, and have the godforsaken satan tooth close up again with it's toxic sludge festering beneath my rosy cheeks. Mom sees the blood and me thrusting a plastic spike all the way up under the cheek adjacent to my nose, then contorting my flesh so as to guide all the toxin toward the minute opening of bone that can release it to be spit. Actually, when you get a new pocket it's more like a steady stream of bloody, pussy drool running from the left side of your lips as you savagely massage the right side, head tilted to keep the flow going downward. If your head is up it tends to go past the opening and into your gums, which swell, and it then has to be squeezed back up into your face so you can get it out the tiny, tiny release valve. Eventually the contents of your face are out, or are pushed very nearly to the mouth of the dead tooth. You think you're done. Nope. After that 'last' bit there are still 2 deeper pockets, harder to puncture and thicker with puss, that must be lanced in order to ensure your FACE will not begin to rot. One pocket is a hard nodule deep under the skin beside your nose. Poorly thought out squeezing here may create puss beneath the skin of your lower eye, and you figure you don't want that. So, go ahead, shove that baby up and in with the pointy end of the stick to you get a nice hole and, there we go, whole LOTTA blood, whole lotta bright red blood and pus globs. One Boss cyst down, one to go. Reach almost back to your temple and pull the flesh along your cheek bone, and there it is. You have to pierce the cheek flesh at an angle almost parralel to your teeth, pratically knocking some other nerve roots that have somehow survived, and get it way back under the gums to your wisdom teeth region. Then, simply use all the force your fingers can muster to rally the last, squishy, weirdly malleable fluid-goo to your gums, then up to the cheek again (now as well-worn a path like the Spice Trail of Marco Polo) and finally stick the canal, yank the pick, and get that sticky junk out of there. By now, mom has brought 3 warm glasses of salt water. This has helped the process along. A whole roll of toilet paper is used and would be heaping in the sink if mom hadn't plucked it from the sink in between visits to the other room and lamentations that, perhaps, you shouldn't poke so hard! There's blood splatter everywhere from the particularly productive squirts. Your face is sunburned and blood streaked. Finally, after searching out any lingering foul fluids, your saline spit it coming out clear. Your cheek, though plenty swollen from the steady kneading, is at least smaller by 5 times what it was before. What it was before... when it was apparently completely filled with bile, bacteria, and probably some spider larvae or something. It's then you get lightheaded. The rush to remove the grossness kept you going, but now you feel queasy, outside yourself. But there's one last step, and it is a more pleasant satisfaction than the feeling of yielding cyst juice. You get to go downstairs and show off your handiwork to the dentist, who has been eating ice cream in the living room watching House. He approves, and you are reassured that your instincts were correct - you really DID need to half fillet your face, because the other options were worse and probably included necrosis and your face emitting the putrid almond scent of gangrene. After an ice pack, you'll be damned! Only the rash of stretched sunburn. Your gums feel floppy and your cheek feels like a thick, empty sock, but you actually look close to normal. And ready for your date tomorrow. And that, my friend, is how you express (that is the word) your own

pestulent visage. You're welcome. The End rating: 6 (17 votes) Submitted by tweety 1962 at 2008-05-20 14:55:47 cream of tarter works good and fast. just put on toothbrush.and brush away. rating: 6 (4 votes) Submitted by Greg at 2008-07-21 14:46:24 To eliminate pain and maintain teeth without the need for root cancel, try these steps. 1. Rinse for 5 minutes with a solution of sea salt (regular salt will work) and luke warm water. Repeat 3 times per day. 2. Pack hole in tooth with a mixture of sea salt and baking soda for pain relief. 3. Alternate brushing teeth (4 times per day) with baking soda and tea tree oil. 4. Do not intake any refined sugars or refined grains. Change diet to focus on raw vegetables and whole grains. 5. Find a dairy that sells raw unpasturized milk. Swill it on your mouth so your teeth can absord the vitamins in the milk. 6. (I have not tried this but a friend of mine swears by this method) Take a small amount of baking soda and parch it over high heat. Allow the baking soda to cool and then pack infected tooth with the parched baking soda. Keep packing tooth until pain is relieved. rating: 6 (4 votes) Submitted at 2009-02-08 06:32:50 I was told by a dentist that the 'red cross' stuff that you can use for tooth pain 'does' kill the pain...but it also will totally 'kill' the nerve in your tooth. Your tooth doesn't hurt any more because the root of the tooth is dead because of it. rating: 6 (4 votes) Submitted by pablo friary at 2009-11-23 19:55:16 i am from united kingdom (Edinburgh City) Scotland i am sitting here at 1o'clock in the morning with a cup of tea and whisky,i hate the dentist but pain ain't worth it.It's best we just goto the place and get it fixed i'd do anything to get to sleep so here's me drinking whisky :P but 2moro am going to get my tooth fixed.better than sitting with pain and no sleep. rating: 6 (4 votes) Submitted at 2010-02-02 20:47:41 CHEW ICE - I have tried other things but this is the most widely available thing out there AND When taking over the counter medications which you really probably need to do as well

- get both Tylenol and Advil. If you can buy Tylenol 1's behind the counter then get those and get extra strength Advil (the gel caps seem to work faster but anything will do) If you can get T2's or T3's you still need to combine them with advil because Advil will reduce the swelling..which causes pain.. and the Tylenol will help with the pain - read the directions of course and take the recommended dose of course.. Some people cant take these medications so just be aware. So my home remedy is ice + Tylenol + Advil + lots if swearing rating: 6 (2 votes) Submitted by Debbie at 2010-12-29 21:04:51 God bless Dr Zimpel and his spagyric medicine and god bless my friend who has faith and belief in the power of essential oils from plants who concocted a solution for me to gargle with IT WORKS. A broken molar and an abcess that runs half way round my lower jaw have had me wanting to reach for the pliers for 4 days and nights. im taking 1000mg of 2 type of antibiotics 4 times a day, i will be having withdrawl symptoms from the Nurofen plus i have taken in a futile attempt to ease the pain. i have been to 3 dentists who have all said they cant extract due to the infection being so severe (no x-ray though?)Never again will i ridicule my friend and her belief in herbal remidies, she has saved me from myself and the tool box and at last i can eat and sleep in comfort. Look up the good Dr Zimpel and hopefuly you too will find relief. rating: 6 (4 votes) Submitted by Nina S. at 2011-01-13 17:50:33 I have no recommendation for pain, other than loads and loads of Dr. Sheffield's oral gel! It's unbearable, and I did go to a dentist to get a script for pain - but they only give about 3-5 days worth I think. As far as the infection, I have had antibiotics, so I think it may have helped the initial signs of infection. Being 6 years later - here are the only things I make sure I use: 1. Antiseptic mouthwash! Do NOT buy any mouthwasth! Make sure it says ANTISEPTIC. Use it daily, or twice a day - but try to not go a day without it. 2. Oil of Oregano - fights the infection; anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-parasitic and anti-oxidant; You can drink the drops in water or juice, or take it straight (Be careful, this stuff BURNS - do not get it on your lips, eyes, skin - wash immediately) I don't use it daily, but it won't hurt (to my knowledge) I haven't built up a tolerance for it - and it helps with flus, colds, etc <3 ...so the results of not going back to the dentist for what is now 6 years - the nerve has died (yay). Now it's just a matter of that tooth (that was chipped already) breaking down/cracking/etc. If you have the money to get an extraction (around $200 bucks), you may want to. 0.0 I'm just way too cheap to do so, and am waiting to see what happens lol rating: 6 (4 votes) Submitted by Tooth Ache at 2011-05-23 19:58:02 I have found that you can take out a lot of pain using the Temp-a-dent or Dentemp.

They're sold at any drug store. Basically what it does is it works as a temporary filling and if you get it in there correctly it'll keep everything out and kill the pain. I've also found that the new 'long lasting formula' from Orajel works great for teeth that cant be filled and it stays on there for hours. rating: 6 (4 votes) Submitted by randy at 2010-04-06 02:18:45 ok i gotta say this it is 2am and my gum is hurting so i though i would look up remedies now i read alot of remedies but i find this really work take a galic clove and smash it and put on ur gum it works rating: 6 (15 votes) Submitted at 2005-11-21 11:47:10 Moisten a teabag in hot water. Place the teabag on the area or tooth that is abcessed. Then rub some vicks ointment on the outside of your face where the pain is. rating: 6 (52 votes) Submitted at 2010-05-25 02:45:39 I've been in horrible pain for 5 hours. I have apses teeth both upper and lower left side of my mouth. i've never experienced a pain this bad in my life.. i wanted to kill myself lol seriously guys it has been a really bad night for me.. i took vicodin, i took naproxen, i used warm salt water nothing worked and i cried nonstop for over an hour. while i was reading everyone's comments i wanted to try the dry tea bag remedy.. it stopped the pain in the upper area where my wisdom tooth is absessed.. unfortunately it didnt take the pain from the lower part but at least i stopped crying it's a lot less pain now.. try the dry tea bag!!! maybe/hopefully it will work for you.. good luck :) rating: 6 (7 votes) Submitted at 2011-03-21 11:53:52 Ok, so like quite a few of you, I'm in a bad situation. No dental insurance, and had an abscess pop up out of nowhere. If possible, I think this one started because of a sinus infection. Anyway, it took three weeks before it even started to pain me and cause face swelling, but it took a weekend for me to make a significant dent in taking care of it, while searching for insurance. Here's the method I used to help with mine, and I'll thank the naysayers in advance to keep their opinions to themselves because this is what worked for me. You'll need a few things for starters: 1. Ibuprofen 2. Tea bags (I'd say about two or three, plain black ones work.) 3. Water. Lots of it. Ok, so for starters, take ibuprofen right away. And I mean ibuprofen, not aspirin; you absolutely cannot substitute aspirin for it, or I couldn't. It will do wonders for the pain itself, as well as making headway with the swelling. So, yes. Take a couple, with a lot of water. That will be beneficial later on. If your abscess hasn't come to a head yet, this is where the first of the tea bags will come in. Take a dry one, fold it in half, and put it in your mouth, pressing it against the abscess. Yes, it will be disgusting, and it will hurt, but if you took my advice with the

ibuprofen and wait half an hour or so before doing it, it'll be bearable. Leave the tea bag in for half an hour, and keep a napkin or something with you, because you'll start drooling eventually, and you don't want to stain your clothes with tea drool. For me, that brought the abscess to a head rather fast. Here, you'll need to pop the abscess. I took a safety pin, unbent it, sterilized it with hydrogen peroxide and then ran it over a flame quickly, before wiping it and letting it cool down. Then, I just went ahead and popped the abscess. The ibuprofen will once again minimize the pain from that. Take another teabag and place it in your mouth, against the abscess again. This will put pressure on it to keep it draining, as well as absorb everything coming out. Trust me when I say the taste of the tea bag is much better than the taste of the drainage. You should start seeing a noticeable difference in facial swelling right away then. For me however, it didn't go down that much, and using ice to reduce the swelling did absolutely nothing. So, if you have another tea bag, or prefer coffee, I'd suggest drinking something caffeinated. Not soda though, and I seriously recommend against using sugar or creamer in your coffee or tea. The caffeine did an amazing job in bringing down the swelling for me. Finally, water, and lots of it. I've been forcing myself to drink tons of it, and I've noticed that's also helping with the swelling, as well as the ibuprofen. I hope this helps anyone who's suffering. As for me, I'm looking into dental plans at the moment, because I know this is only a quick fix, but a quick one is better than none at all. rating: 6 (31 votes) Submitted by Alyssa Portillo at 2010-11-10 22:08:08 I infused some white rum with whole cloves (get one of those little airplane sized bottles put whole cloves in it then put it in the freezer until the rum turns brown) Then crush up a pain killer, make a paste with the rum and pain killer then put it on your tooth with a q-tip and left it there. my pain was gone almost instantly rating: 6 (5 votes) Submitted by Eve at 2011-06-06 03:18:58 Having tooth pain is like the worst thing ever. I tried putting ice chips on the gum of the aching tooth. It will kinda numb the pain for a few minutes. Repeat as needed. Hope this helps in any way. rating: 6 (5 votes) Submitted by cody c at 2010-04-27 21:49:43 i have been in pain for a couple days now. have been to the dentist and started antibiotics. the only thing i have found that helps out completely is clove oil. it tastes like crap but does wonders for getting rid of the pain. thanks to those who reccomended it. hope all get better and cant wait to get this tooth pulled. rating: 6 (13 votes) Submitted at 2010-05-28 03:16:15

my tooth started hurting around 7pm its now 2am and it was so bad i was in tears first i took about 3 tylenol b/c the pain was so bad, then i rinsed with warm salt water. about 4 or 5 months ago my pharmacist told me about clove oil for my daughter she had a bad toothace as well. so i thought ok im going to try it. i got a q-tip, dipped it in the clove oil, stuck it to my tooth, held it there for about 2 minutes, once i removed it the pain was almost completley gone. atleast now i can go to sleep. whatever you do, dont let the oil touch your tongue, cheek or lips b/c it will burn!!!!!!! also it doesnt hurt to ask god to help ease the pain. i did and now im going to bed! rating: 6 (13 votes) Submitted at 2010-12-11 12:39:47 Eat some raw garlic....i have been pain free for 2 days now....the one advil pm i took 2 days ago could not possibly be keeping the pain down... red gumline and swelling definitely subsiding...caution raw garlic will burn your mouth so put it in sugar or honey first...and thanks so much to my childhood dentist you sadist. I tried salt water, peroxide, orajel, et cetera but garlic really has done the trick.. rating: 6 (11 votes) Submitted by debbie at 2011-01-09 11:00:00 First off motrin/aspirin in a tooth crushed is bad!!it will eat tooth even worse . second aspirin doesent work that way it does not stop pain by putting it on something it works by blocking pain receptors. And I have been in screaming agony with a toothache off and on for 6 months and finally found this out. First I take 10 mill of percocet 5 times a day for 6 yrs now for a disease and it does zippo for toothache pain I take 800 ibuprofen 2x a day. I also have prescription novocaine for the mouth and this works for some kinds of tooth pain but nerve pain oh no it burns so bad and made it worse.Warm salt water works for a bit as well as the ibuprofen for throbbing. Last night after screaming in pillow for an hour I tried extra strength ora gel and my god the heavens opened up!!Took 10 mil of valium and off to sleep I went I have been told by a dentist also to try honey with cinnamon powder make a paste and it will relieve pain. I have tried it and it works. It draws out any infection . And since i can no longer use sugar its wonderful in tea and coffee so i have my sweet back. But like i said oragel worked as did ibuprofen. I caution you do not use some of the remedies mentioned here as they are harmful.Especially aspirin in tooth.Vanilla also works very well as whiskey does because of the alcohol in it.Trust me I know toothache pain well and oh yes also in the hospitals now they give you tea bags for toothache pain it draws out the infection.Peppermint is also a very good pain killer it has numbing qualities.Peppermint tea is also amazing for nausea and stomach issues I use it 3 or 4 times a day.But for my intense pain in teeth, and mine is all nerve pain that shoots straight up into head ex strength ora gel gave me immediate long term relief!! Good luck peeps I know how agonizing tooth pain is....and antibiotics are a must for an abcess I had several and i steralized a needle poked it and drained it....doc told me what to do here since i had no insurance, make sure you do not swollow infection!! so sterile needle squeeze it out then use 3% peroxide to swish around mouth to kill any infection , repeat peroxide 2 times daily till it is better. This is the same thing a dentist does just please make sure ev thing is sterile including hands!antibiotics work with most but its over prescribed and peroxide is an amazing bacteria killer. Just be sterile it will work!! rating: 6 (11 votes) Submitted by Jen at 2008-01-21 05:50:28

First, it is 5:30 am (Mon) I have been on a camping trip all weekend (3-day holiday wkend) When I noticed that my jaw and gumline were swelling (Fri morn), I did the salt rinse 3-4 times per day and at night, drank a few beers to alleviate. Let me say I woke up every morning in murderous pain.(about 4:30ish) Now I am home with a teabag after rinsing with peroxide all day. As I do have insurance, I intend to remedy this come Tuesday, but the teabag, along with an ice pack is super comforting. THANK YOU and best of luck to all. PS. Sorry to have some on here that are just plain rude. Seems to hurt more than the toothache. rating: 6 (6 votes) Submitted by pain no more at 2009-03-02 21:26:55 I had a tooth ache and my whole mouth hurt. I could not sleep from the pain. I went to this web site and bought the red cross. It was disgusting . it took away the pain on the tooth, but the rest of my mouth still hurt. Then a big pocket of puss formed on my inner cheek(I beleive from the red cross) Then I tried the cougth syrup, It kncked out the pain, and put me to sleep. It was the night time syrup with 100mg. of acetimeticine rating: 6 (3 votes) Submitted by Ecstatic Believer at 2010-06-18 10:45:11 IT REALLY WORKS! I read on this site about taking 500mg of fishmox, which is amoxicillin... to get rid of the infection, and a separate remedy for soakig tea bags in hot water and then holding on the affected area. I have no insurance and have been trying to find a dentist who will let me make payments to them GOOD LUCK with that...my face, ear and jaw were on fire with pain. Nothing is worse than pain that resides in your head! ANY way... THANK YOU A BILLION to the two people who told us about it, because i tried both things together and for the first time in a week, have some relief! A LOT of relief, in fact, after just a few hours after the tea bag treatment, it's amazing. It helped within 15 minutes of putting the tea bags on the area. I used one bag on each side of the affected tooth. IT IS FANTASTIC and really works.. I also took 2 excedrin for pain, since I had taken the limit of aleve and it did NOTHING to help with pain. Try this everyone...if it doesnt' work for you, at least you tried.. it sure worked for me! rating: 6 (18 votes) Submitted by Trim at 2011-06-28 22:59:43 Both far rear bottom molars completely broken to the gumline for about 3 months now. As of 3 days ago I've begun to feel pulsing sharp pain in the right bottum molar which is unbearable. I left work early today because it was just too much pain to think about what I was doing. On the way home I picked up some ibuprofin (200mg) and popped 2 in my car, 30 mins later at home I took 2 more. Within about an hour after that the constant pain was 90% gone, that's a relief for I know I can atleast try to crash it off in bed. Although it's still extremely sensitive to touch. I've tried clove oil, olive oil, vanilla extract, hydrogen peroxide, warm salt water, and have tried chomping down on tea bags...yet none of these seem to help the pain when I bite down normally or try to bite anything at all on that side of my mouth. So I'll be able to sleep, but looks like I'm eating soup until I can figure out how to come up with the finances for a perma fix. I think we can all agree, tooth pain is absolutely awful. I've had a number of severe injuries(some life threatening) and nothing is so sharp and direct than a pissed off tooth. I may have to make some sacrifices to pay for this issue. But this to shall pass, and one day I will look back and sigh in relief. Hang in there, god bless, and smile if it doesn't hurt to do so.

rating: 6 (15 votes) Submitted by darla39 at 2011-08-12 06:16:08 I have had toothache for 3 days, I found this site and its great. I woke up in a lot of pain at 4am and thought I would try the teabag as a lot of people have said it works. It worked!!! My pain is almost all gone, I left it on for 15 minutes, a lot of blood was drawn out. I then rinsed with salt water and took Ibuprofen, managed to get some decent sleep for the first time in 3 nights. When I woke this morning my toothache has gone, thanks you guys for posting the remedies :) rating: 6 (13 votes) Submitted by SDB at 2010-09-07 22:43:18 Okay, so I've had this abcess since Friday of last week - today is Tuesday. It was at it's worst on Sunday. My face was so swollen at the abcess site. AS SOON as I got home on Sunday, I started rinsing with peroxide and warm water and although it stung A LOT at first (which I figured was a good thing!), once I rinsed twice the pain was much better - I almost didn't feel it. After reading this site I took a Hydroco/APAP (leftover Rx)and a Tylenol 500mg and within 5 minutes, the pain is COMPLETELY GONE! I'm so amazed! I am going to try the pet med suggestion as well since it is still an antibotic which is the only thing that'll make the infection go away. Thank you so much for those who posted before me and good luck to those who come after. I'll post again to let you know if the pet antibotics actually worked. Wish me luck! rating: 6 (7 votes) Submitted by Mandi at 2010-12-12 02:17:28 Thanks to our 'lovely' government officials that decided that we no longer need dental insurance even though an abcessed tooth can kill you(and they still pay for breast reductions)I am stuck with my screwed up teeth that get infected at least twice every three months. I found this site and now I don't feel alone that in itself helps. A tea bag helps but I also use just plain baking soda and you wouldn't believe the relief I got. Everyone is different so each person needs to find the remedy that works for them. I hope that this helps at least one person out there. I have had so many infections I lost count and am hoping our government comes around before it kills me. Thank you:) rating: 6 (22 votes) Submitted at 2011-01-22 00:11:34 Everybody and anybody who recommended tea bags. THANK YOU so much! I've been in such agonizing pain for a few days now. Can't get to DR or Dentist til next week and haven't been able to sleep. After reading on here I figured I'd try the easiest and cheapest suggestion and bought some tea bags. brewed a cup and drained the bag slightly wadded it up and chomped down on it. The warmth was amazing to soothe and the natural medicinal use of tea really helped relieve a lot of the pressure. I knew to use tea for eye problems but would've never thought for the pain relief of a bad tooth! If you find yourself on here reading how to relief the pain try it i paid less than a dollar fifty for store brand black tea and it was amazing! and again thank you to all who suggested this!! rating: 6 (8 votes)

Submitted by seb at 2011-06-11 10:54:42 I have an abscessed tooth and cant afford dentist right now. I avoid acidic foods and am careful what I eat. I have trouble falling asleep often. I have to raise my head enough to relieve pressure on the tooth but it works. Mouth wash actually works. For some reason after I rinse the pain slowly goes away for about 15-20 minutes, sometimes just enough to fall asleep. Numb the webbed area between index and thumb with ice, the nerves there affect the face and mouth which helps relieve pain. Oragel makes it worse because its too strong but the mouth sore brand kinda works. Exercise...sounds stupid but works. So when I cant sleep I go for a run, it tires me and working out releases endorphins. rating: 6 (4 votes) Submitted by R Wamble at 2011-08-12 05:49:30 It was 2 o'clock in the morning on a weeknight and I had a throbbing toothache. I thought laying down would help and it did but everytime I moved the pain returned. I saw the black tea remedy but because black tea is naturally caffeined I can only drink that during the day. So I decided to drink hot Chamomile tea, its caffeine free. I had 2 cups. It took away the pain instantly and helped me sleep. rating: 6 (4 votes) Submitted by Crocker at 2011-08-22 12:16:34 Tooth pain can be the worst pain ever, especially if associated with an abcessed tooth.I have 3 right next to each other and was awake in SEVERE pain till 430 this morning. then i tried taking some garlic powder that had been exposed to moisture so it hardened. i just broke off a piece and stuffed it in the tooth and wala sleep!!! rating: 6 (4 votes) Submitted at 2006-02-02 16:58:38 Sounds odd, but try taking a little cotten ( as much as need to pack the cavity comfortably, but not with too much pressure, then hold it with tweezers, and cover it in orajel. the using the tweezers, pack the cotton into the cavity. my dentists wife passed away, and i have been waiting for 6 months to get into a dentist(scince she fell ill) and nothing helped, tylenol3, vicoden, nothing. but one night i tried this, and was SOOOOOOOOOOO relieved rating: 6 (17 votes) Submitted by JADA at 2006-04-07 10:28:15 THE OLD REMEDY WORKS FOR ME AND THAT IS SALT WATER. 2 TABLES OF SALT TO 8 OZ. OF WATER. rating: 6 (34 votes) Submitted by Gary Fieldman at 2010-08-16 05:21:56 ***READ THIS*** Alright, if many of you are like me (Which after reading most of the pages in this section, you are lol)...Then 9 out of 10 of these home pain relievers don't work for you. Also, if you're like me, you usually get an abscess tooth pain on only one side of your mouth. UNFORTUNATELY, for the first time, I've been experiencing pain on both sides of my mouth at the same time, considering I have an abscess on both the top left and right sides of my mouth. Finding a dentist or clinic to work with uninsured patients

is hard, and frankly, if you're like me...When the tooth doesn't hurt, scheduling an appointment is in the back of your mind. YET, when the pain arrives, it is all you can think about. Trust me...I have tried every remedy known to man, with no relief might I add. That's because sometimes, when the pain is this intense, your average over-the-counter medicines, oils and mouth washes aren't strong enough to kill this kind of pain. Many might say I'm insane for this, BUT, I've found relief each and every time by simply doing the following... 1) Dig through your medicine cabinet for some sort of pain relieving controlled substance (I prefer Oxycodone i.e. Percocet, Endocet, Oxycontin, etc.). Also, Hydrocodone (Lortab, Vicodin, etc., work well too. These are typically the stronger Rx pain killers. Tramadol, Tylenol #3 and things of that nature will not work in this case. 2) Although this will usually taste TERRIBLE, crush the pill (or multiple pills depending on your tolerance) into a fine powder, mix in luke warm water in a glass and stir very well. (PS. Putting too much water will defeat the purpose, so try to mix an even amount of the pill and water, possibly using a Dixie cup or mouthwash bottle cap. Also, if using Hydrocodone or Percocet (any narcotic also containing Acetaminophen), simply leave it that way. If using Oxycontin, first soak the pill in water or suck on it for about 30 sec. and then dry off the pill to remove the coloring/time release coating. In this case, also add a crushed over-the-counter drug like Tylenol or Ibuprofen to the mix. This is because the Oxycontin brand does NOT contain any sort of medicine other than Oxycodone. 3)Once complete, get a cotton ball and soak it in this solution you've stirred up. I suggest tearing the cotton ball in half first simply because a whole one is too large to fit and mold into a spot where one single tooth used to be. 4)When the cotton swab is soaked and you've put it somewhat in place in your mouth, bite down gently to form it in and around the area that your tooth used to be or is partially missing. This will cure the pain within minutes. Again, it tastes terrible, but we all know that we are willing to try anything when our pain is this bad. I am no expert, but after talking to a doctor and a good pharmacist friend, I've been told that doing this procedure is just like swallowing the pill(s) normally. The only difference is, you are releasing the narcotic, and if you choose the OTC pain medicine, directly into your gum and blood stream. It's a fact that a tooth infection can spread to your brain rapidly. Well, that's exactly what these drugs do. It's just a different and faster way of getting them up to your brain's receptors to calm and tell your tooth nerves that the pain is gone. Now, although this is an effective way of relieving tooth and gum pain, I do NOT suggest doing this on a regular basis. Narcotic pain killers can be highly and quickly addictive. So doing this remedy should only be a short term cure until you can find proper medical help. AND...if you DON'T have any sort of narcotics in your possession that were prescribed to you previously, do not obtain them from anyone other than a certified physician. I am not a professional and this information is strictly intended to help other people cure tooth pain who are stuck awake at home in the early hours of the morning. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at so_uniq@yahoo.com ...hope I can help some

of you. rating: 6 (6 votes) Submitted by Kaye at 2008-04-21 01:21:08 Hi fellow sufferers, I would just like to add this bit of wisdom. During your time o' agony stop taking in all forms of sugar. My research tells me that 18 tsp. of sugar will shut the immune system down for 24 hrs. An average can of non-diet pop is about ten teaspoons. Sugar is in nearly everything, i.e. ketchup, peanut butter, bread, coffee creamer etc. Read all labels. I would not even risk honey and such. You need your immune system able to help you so don't shoot yourself in the foot or the abscess for that matter. Hope this helps you. :) rating: 6 (25 votes) Submitted at 2008-01-30 21:43:22 If you are going to use the hyrogen porixide be careful not to swallow any it will kill the bacteria in you digestive track and you will have to eat yogurt and cheese for 5 weeks i had to do this not the best of diets. rating: 6 (7 votes) Submitted by A.R. at 2009-05-25 20:50:35 A WORD TO THE WISE Everyone who is using direct heat, on your abcessed tooth, should be careful; This can be very dangerous. I did the same thing, with an infected tooth, and regretted it dearly!!!! I later found out that heat draws an infection, which can be dangerous if the infection has no way to exit the gums. My face and jaw was so swollen that I could not open my mouth; and my lymp glands were so swollen that I could not swallow. It is best to leave a cold room and sit in a place that is room temperature. Or you can warm you hands and place them over the side of the face that aches, this way you will get the relief of warmth without drawing the infection into you jaw muscles. On another note, a few drops of tea tree oil, inside the cavity, will stop the pain immediately. However, do not swallow because of the risk of poison. It should hold you until you reach the dentist. God's blessings to you all rating: 6 (10 votes) Submitted by Justin at 2010-12-04 13:44:25 I just recently found this site this morning, and i was reading some of the posts about extreme tooth pain. i read about the vanilla, and clove, and lime, and all this other stuff. and someone said rubbing alcohol. well, i dont know about you guys, but i have a bottle of 190 proof grain alcohol (everclear) layin around, and i just swished that for about 30 seconds, and it seemed to dull the pain pretty substantially. it was bad, man. like horrible. I had to leave work 3 days in a row cause i couldnt take it. dont have health, or dental, or $2345098723 to spend at the dentists office. gotta figure something out. home remedies only take you so far. rating: 6 (11 votes)

Submitted at 2010-07-17 20:04:11 Well, I developed an abscess on my tooth, and like many of you, I don't have insurance. However, mine started out as the entire jawline swelling and becoming very painful, but no definable abscess itself. Sprinkling baking soda along the inside of my mouth over the jaw swelling helped to keep the pain down, and the abscess came in, with little pain, which leaves me wondering if it's even an abscess after all, because there isn't a foul taste or smell when I drain it. Anyway, the best way I've discovered to drain it is to slightly tear the abscess, not just pop it. Stick the pin or needle in, and drag it a little bit; it makes the hole bigger and allows more fluid to drain out. Putting a tea bag over the abscess helps to dull the pain and draw out the pus. rating: 6 (12 votes) Submitted by Kristi at 2007-02-27 02:42:08 Colloidal silver is a wonderful natural antibiotic. Swish it around your mouth for as long as you can stand it-up to 10 minutes if possible. Also take it internally-directions are on bottle. Another powerful and natural antibiotic is Grapefruit Seed Extract made by the company Nutribiotic. Put a few drops in some water and swish for a few minutes. It is very bitter, but it helps rid the infection. I also have been using the Hydrogen Peroxide Mouthwash. Do not take a sip off a regular ol' bottle of peroxide, buy the actual mouthwash. All this stuff can be bought at the health food store. Clove oil, which they make for teething babies has helped with my pain and throbbing. I have also increased my vitamin C to about 4,000 mg a day. Drink as much water as you can. I personally don't recommend any ice because in my case, I would drop to the floor in pain. Good Luck!! rating: 6 (25 votes) Submitted by lindaR_ at 2010-06-09 10:07:07 garlic is a very potent all natural antibiotic . do not cook the garlic though because that will destroy the antibiotic (allium) . better to take garlic supplements that way you know exactly how many mgs you are consuming . do not take more than 1000 mgs a day . potency of garlic supplements range from 100 mgs to 500 mgs each , take daily for five days ( at least) not to exceed 1000 mgs / day . the antibiotic properties in garlic is well known . gargle frequently with peroxide also soak a q tip in peroxide and apply to dry tooth , at only 60 cents a bottle its a must have peroxide is a great bacteria fighter. rating: 6 (13 votes) Submitted by Brandon at 2011-04-22 10:26:07 I've found draining to control it for the most part. When it swells up and starts draining on it's own or is softened up, pop it and drain out the excess with your finger or whatever you choose to squeeze on the infected area. I have a bad tooth on the bottom right and it infects the outside part of my gum line causing visible swelling, it's a bit embarrassing. When I experience inflammation in this area I drain and clean a lot and usually in a few day it'll go down and away for quite some time. Seems that exercise or heavy activity irritates it, I don't know why it happens this way. Also if it's clean enough you can use some temporary filler (temperin) to keep it from being exposes which is very painful! I don't experience too much pain, but I worry it'll get bad before I can afford to get it pulled or filled. The tea bag remedy will take the pain away and it'll help drain it. I use a dry green tea bag, seems to draw the infection out.

rating: 6 (13 votes) Submitted by KbZo at 2011-04-22 04:03:20 Take a towel and fold it up Then soak one side of the Towel with alchol(peroxide may Work). Next take the towel And place it on the jaw, give It about 10 minutes and you Will feel it kind getting Hot which is what you want Then it will start getting Numb and the pain will Subside for a min of 30 minutes rating: 6 (18 votes) Submitted by William Lagadyn at 2008-01-18 14:30:45 When a person has an abcessed tooth they cannot be given novocaine to numb the pain because the novocaine will be ineffective. However there is a natural solution for destroying the bacteria that is infecting the tooth. Using a Q-tip apply some Oil of Oregano around the gum of the infected tooth 2 or 3 times a day until the swelling has gone down and the bacteria has been destroyed rating: 6 (19 votes) Submitted by sylvie menier at 2010-03-29 22:20:47 I had a very bad-painfull .. 1. Cloves : no result 2. Salt water : no result 3. Tylenol : no result 4. Advil-ibuprofen : no result 5. Codein : no result 6. Oragel : no result 7. Vicodin : result :)) 8. Ice directly on the tooth : result :)) My pain was very severe. I was in pain two days and at some point I wanna kill myself lolll its was crazy. The emergencies room gave me vicodin pills. I took 2. I feel better. No pain. I know its the chimic way...but I this point I had no choice. And good luck Aloha rating: 6 (35 votes)

Submitted by rhonda h at 2008-10-08 08:33:09 Had been up all night long with a severe toothache tried everything. Nothing helped at all. Clove oil wouldnt even ease the pain.I tried alot of the things on this sight.Even the nasty onion. I tried it all. I noticed alot of the things mentioned alcohol. I was so depreesed that i tried rubbing alcohol. I put a capful on my tooth the pain was gone instantly. You can only keep it in for a second because it burns like crazy. But it was worth it. Im serious. The pain i had for days was gone. rating: 6 (1 votes) Submitted at 2009-02-01 02:28:36 My god i am in pain, i've torn the ligaments in my knee, broken my arm, dislocated my shoulder...nothing compares to a toothache, nothing! I cannot for the life of me find this Red Cross stuff and Hurricane gel people are mentioning, i hope to find it, but so far i've tried the BC powder mixed it with salt and baking soda and it has provided fair relief, not 100% but i feel sane again. The oregano thin however...is just annoying to clean up, don't recommend it. rating: 6 (5 votes) Submitted by stephanie at 2009-02-04 02:08:45 i have been in severe pain and no denist will touch me until infection gone. my poor husband desperate to get me out of pain brought me almond extract, i tried it and it worked. i have been eating vicodin for three days and imagine something i never use in my spice cabinet works..thank you so much rating: 6 (4 votes) Submitted by Suzanne at 2009-02-12 17:56:43 My molar next to my wisdom tooth is almost gone, about 2 years ago it broke in half and the filling dropped out. The cavity is very deep and goes to the roots, but the roots are good and never really caused me any pain as long as I kept using a flouride rinse, and ate nothing w/ cane sugar in it(honey, beet sugar, and 100% fruit juice never caused me any pain), until I tweaked my tooth chewing on grape nuts cerial. I have a huge abcess now. I've been taking Motrin 200 mg every 2 hours, and the Dentist gave me antibiotics and tylenol 3, but for some reason (I am not sure why) he did not drain the abcess. Even with the antibiotics and painkillers the pain was excruciating! I cannot imagine what those of you w/o the pain killers are experiencing! Thanks to the ideas I found here, I've been using the dry tea bag (organic green tea), Swedish Bitters on a bit of cotton stuffed into the cavity and an ice pack on my cheek. Took about 1/2 hour to start working but my pain is finally under control. rating: 6 (4 votes) Submitted at 2009-02-14 11:53:29 Sinus infection----buy crushed garlic (in a jar) and a eye dropper---fill dropper 1/2 full of liqud---tilt head back--press the dropper and allow the liquid to go into the sinis cavity--same for the other nasal cavity--(CAUTION PRIOR TO DOING---THIS WILL CAUSE A LARGE AMOUNT OF BURNING) do twice a day for several days only--I have been affected with severe sinus infections for the past 15ys and this is the only thing that works for me--skip the antibiotics and doctor visits. No worry about affecting your bodies natural flora and it works!!! rating: 6 (9 votes)

Submitted by Angie at 2009-04-27 23:16:35 Last week I finally had enough pain in my back molar that I called the dentist and begged for an appointment to pull the tooth. He told me he couldn't pull it because it was infected so I would have to be put on antibiotics. I went to the ER and got oral antibiotics and pain relievers and went home. 2 days later the abscess was so bad it spread to my lymph nodes and invaded my trachea. I was rushed to the er and had to have emergency oral surgery to releive the pressure off my throat so I could breath again. I have never been so afraid of dying in my life and I just want all of you to know that while home remedies are some of the best out there don't play games with your health. If you are in pain you may need to see a doctor. Use your better judgment when it comes to your safety. The whole time I was being tubed and drugged and cut open I kept thinking my headstone would read....'here lies angie, she died from a toothache.' rating: 6 (7 votes) Submitted by Suffering in PAIN! at 2009-12-05 02:13:16 OK.. My dentist prescribed me Amoxicillin and 7.5mg Vicodin..Until now I thought Vicodin would cure any pain!!! NO way!! Then called him back told him still in pain, then he told me to take 4 IB Profen at a time with the Vicodin. As long as you don't go over 3,200 MG of IBProfen its ok to take more then 2 at a time..If you go over the 3,200MG daily it can eat away your stomach lining and cause more problems. So take 4 of the IBprofen at a time I do that every 4-5 hours to make sure the pain does not come back before next dose kicks in, Then I tried the Vanilla extract that helps a lil bit but the best is any type of 'caine' Benzocaine, Lidociane, anything you can get with the work 'caine' because that will NUMB you good! Just use a q tip and apply all around and on tooth! I so feel better then I did. I had a tooth that was broken attempted to be fixed, however we are a week later and its obvious NOT fixed..Nor fixable. My tooth has since turned gray in color that means its DEAD! So why do I have pain yet beyond me!!??? I HATE tooth pain more then anything and I'm terrified of the dentist but happy I found a good one that is nice! I'm excited for the weekend to be over to get this tooth wiggled out! What a relief that will be!! Does tooth pain ever go away if you NEVER get teeth fixed? I wonder? My mother neglected to take care of my teeth as a child and I sure wish I knew better as I do know now buts its almost too late, Teeth NEVER heal, so now she left me with this mess..I only have 23 teeth..everyone should have 32.. rating: 6 (3 votes) Submitted at 2009-12-27 09:00:10 Woke up this am with an abcetion.Just had all my teeth capped 5 year's ago to the tune of 13.000.00 to avoid this kind of stuff.I knew salt was good did'nt know about the tea bag.So i'm sitting here with a tea bag on it.Have all the vicodine I need cause of a broken back 10 yrs ago but hate taking that crap cause i cant crap when I take itLOLHow people can take that stuff as a recreation is beyond me.I digress.I don't want to take an antibiotic as they kill everything in your natural imune system and with the flu going around that's the last thing I want to do.I'll let you know if tea bag work's other wise I will be in my surgery room if not.Screw the dentist they charge way to much.And the thing is I flossed last night and brought it on by that. rating: 6 (3 votes) Submitted at 2010-01-02 00:15:56 I was realllly hurting on Tuesday nite while trying to go to bed. So after tossing and

turning for a good 30 mins or more I finally Googled 'tooth pain' and found this site. Pretty much the only one I had the supplies for was the mouth wash one. So I gargled for as long as I could stand and was able to fall asleep. So now my best friend is a big bottle of Equate mouth wash! I bought a travel size of Scope and refill it daily. Whenever I have some pain I gargle and I'm pain free for atleast an hour give or take. I didn't want to get sooo use to taking 600mg of ibu alll the time so I am soo glad to have found the mouth wash idea! rating: 6 (4 votes) Submitted by Kismet at 2010-01-02 10:24:31 Thanks to everyone on here. I have read through all the posts and picked out various things and after two weeks of an excrutiating abcess under a root canal tooth, this is my first day of relief without Ibuprofen and the swelling has gone down. It takes quite a bit of time, attention and ingredients to do, but so far, seems to be worth it. Not only am I pain free today, but my sinuses have cleared too. 1. Chopped up three heads of garlic and steeped them in vodka. Every hour, I put half a tsp on the gum area. (After 24 hrs, I strained and bottled the garlic tincture) 2. Cleaned my teeth with baking soda. 3. Used a Water-pik with heavily sea salted warm water and a tsp of food grade hydrogen peroxide. 4. Dipped a toothbrush in a combination of sea salt, baking soda, powdered alfalfa and turmeric and packed the gum/tooth area with it. Repeated the above steps every hour or two. I also occasionally rubbed a drop of essential oil of peppermint on it. Before bed, I repeated the above and then applied a dry teabag over the powder mix. I would never have imagined the teabag would work so well! Thanks everyone. rating: 6 (3 votes) Submitted by Tiffany H at 2010-01-03 15:05:56 Okay so Im deathly afraid of the dentist for two reasons the pain and the cost! So I have read every suggestion on this site and from previous experience with an abscess that made the left side of my face swell so i looked like a bull frog, i have chosen to do a combination of swishing with warm salt water, tea bags and heat compress! I remember last year when i had the abscess I applied a sock filled with rice and warmed it in the micro, the heat was an instant relief and sure enough in the middle of the night my abscess popped. I woke up to a nasty taste and smell :( ! I am more concerned now bout the pain and swelling so Im trying these remedies and crossing my fingers! Also I have a amoxycilin on hand thanks to my room mate who had a root canal this year! Thank you all so much for your suggestions! Natural remedies hjave great truth think about native americans and other cultures! Nature provides a way to heal! God Bless!

rating: 6 (9 votes) Submitted by Maggy at 2010-02-09 18:16:53 Im pregnant and since my hormones are all wack. Im in pain 24-7 not to mention the unborn baby takes calcium from your teeth and bone when you are low. What works for me is the sore throat spray any kind the main one i use is Chloraseptic. It numbs my teeth and fast acting making the pain go away. rating: 6 (5 votes) Submitted at 2010-03-29 21:27:18 Pure peppermint extract works wonders on relieving tooth pain, if you can get past the absolutely disgusting taste. Just pour a capful, and try to pour it directly over the tooth that hurts, and swish it for as long as you can, then spit it out. Chances are you'll find yourself drooling for a bit, and with a horrible taste in your mouth, but it really works for taking away immediate pain. rating: 6 (6 votes) Submitted at 2010-08-03 03:10:01 Thank god for cloveoil! My tooth got removed a week ago and ive been in dier pain for 7 days straight... cant sleep cant eat! its been horrible and i googled remedies and found this site. drove 2 min to cvs and spent 6.91 and have had little to no pain since! i feel like a new person after this stuff. it is truly a gift to this earth lol ahhh rating: 6 (8 votes) Submitted by Charline at 2010-09-13 21:34:19 OK I bet you have heard a lot of wacky remades so heres my but i tell you proceed it caution Step 1 rub vicks on chic Step 2 swish and drink 80% proof alcohol Step 3 Mouth wash on q-tip * weakens pain * Step 4 then set a towel or napkin fold in your mouth thats what worked for me so i hope it helps you rating: 6 (3 votes) Submitted at 2010-11-22 01:25:59 Hi all! I can sympathize with anyone dealing with tooth infections and the pain. I have a tooth I have had a filling, the tooth cracked the next day, two root canals, and a crown over the past 15 years. Even after two root canals I still have a tiny bit of nerve left due to the tip of one root taking a 90 degree turn before the end. As a result, I still feel pain in this tooth just like before the root canals. Its miserable, because it gets infected a lot. And infections can build up resistance to anitbiotics over time. A few years back, when the infections were less often, I was without dental insurance and in dire need of getting the infection gone. I was desperate. My tooth throbbed, my ear hurt, and I had headaches that would turn into migraines. Like I said, I was desperate, I remembered mom always saying to use warm salty water to gargle when I had a sore throat because the salt helps heal but it also draws out any infection. So I decided I needed salt on that tooth. I took a small glass and a goodly amount of salt and added hot water to dissolve the salt. You will have to play with it to get the right strength for you. The salt does tend to be harsh on the gums and tongue. BUT drop 3 or 4 cotton balls to soak in the salt

water while it cools. When the mixture is to room temperature, take the cotton balls one at a time and squeeze a bit of the water out, the fit them around the infected tooth both on the cheek side and the tongue side. If you fit them right you will also have covered the bottom of the tooth too. The mixture in the cotton balls will seep out, just spit it out. I have done that all day before, or just worn them a few hours at a time. Every time I change them out, the tooth feels a bit better. But if you leave the cotton balls in long enough, you may see discoloration on the cotton balls where they were in contact with the tooth. I always figured that's the infection getting drawn out. A few days of that, and my tooth is loads better, granted my gum and tongue are a bit worse off, but its worth it to get the infection gone. Hope this helps someone! rating: 6 (5 votes) Submitted at 2010-12-20 20:46:04 killer toothache? ammoxicillan. fish mox. hot bag of dry uncooked rice. rating: 6 (7 votes) Submitted by shay at 2011-01-25 23:02:21 Ok....so I've tried salt water, garlic, even volume...but nothing seems to keep the pain away....it might simmer down....but I still have the feeling of going to the dentist immediately......I cry.....sometimes even feel angry.......today I went to a local liquor store just for a pain reliever......and found RED CROSS Toothache.....best thing ever....well besides a root canal.....its about 8 o' clock.....I tried it at 3......still no signs of a pain creep.......to everyone...please try this......better than any home remedy........its the next best thing to seeing the dentist......I promise it'll make u think u don't even need to go.......but we all kno the best thing is to go in.......which I am doing tomorrow......but seriously it'll hold u until u feel like going......because we all know we don't want to be under dentistry tools......lol.....RED CROSS Toothache......it has components of a brown bottle containing the liquid.......a box of cotton pellets.....tweezers.......u will love it.........by the way I've been dealing with this for 2years........and its the best thing ever rating: 6 (8 votes) Submitted by Memphis,TN at 2011-03-07 03:21:13 Omg.... I dont know where to start. I've tried evrything!!!!! The only thing that works a while is brushing my teeth evry 10minutes. Gargle salt water and use a whole bottle of red cross stuff that burns like hell around the cracks of my mouth.. And the last option was prayer.. And yea.... It didnt work either.. Good luck to all my ppl with out health care and no money... rating: 6 (10 votes) Submitted by tmap at 2011-06-25 04:59:16 Ive been having terrible toothaches for about 5 years and have just made a discovery i wish i had found before. Take warm salt water and rinse very well then take a shot of rum and hold it on the infected tooth as long as you can then swish it around. I just went from 8 on the pain scale to allmost nothing. Now i can get some much needed rest. Hope this works for you as well. rating: 6 (4 votes) Submitted at 2011-08-08 11:41:07 I have a REAL fix for toothache that uses nothing but a finger, strange but true, place

your thumb tip off your right hand firmly into the piece of skin that is between your left thumb ad first finger and press untill you feel discomfort hold the position for several minutes, this works because what you are pressing is a pressure point that relives all sorts of pain, dont ask me for the technical reason as to why this works, I havnt got a clue but it DOES work.....what have you got to lose..... rating: 6 (17 votes) Submitted by sabrina at 2011-08-12 01:58:58 I have really bad tooth aches all the time. I used to have it on one side of my mouth and i used antibotics i got from my doctor about something and i never used them so i took them and the pain went away but now the pain is back and on my other side of my mouth. I used pain killer and warm washcloth and orajel but nothing seemed to work. I tried vanilla extract and garlic and then brush my teeth and it helps alot !!! TRY IT, also the garlic may burn and make your nose burn and eyes water cause that what happened to me, but now im fine . rating: 6 (5 votes) Submitted by Cynthia at 2011-07-18 01:02:23 Hi- I had a bottom molar with and old root canal abcess. I had just replaced the crown a month ago. The old crown was about 7 years old and had broken so I think this was a result of trauma. Vicodin was not touching the pain. I woke up at 2 am and was crying like a little girl from the pain and pressure. I didn't see an abcess, but I sure felt pain. After visiting this sight, I took two Ibuprofin 800's and two Ex Strength Tylenol. Then I warmed enough water to soak a tea bag then placed it next to the tooth at issue. Then I filled a bag of ice and placed it on my cheek. I finally fell back to sleep and when I woke up, there was an abcess. I threw on some surgical gloves, rubbed the gums with ora-gel and when they were numb, I pierced the abcess with a sterile syringe. Pus then blood came out and by the end of the day I was able to touch the tooth without feeling like my head was going to blow it's top off. I continued using a tea bag, taking the pill combo, using ice and ora-jel and draining the abcess when there was build up. I felt about 50% better after excising the abcess. I see the dentist tomorrow at noon, thank God! I have never experienced pain like this and will do whatever it takes to prevent a recurrence! Hope this helps someone. Good Luck! rating: 5 (16 votes) Submitted by Qawi Nanji at 2011-03-12 09:11:34 I have an abcess in my gums. This is the best solution I have use to date. Purchase Black Tea(extract) hopefully organic, and make tea. Add no sugar or cream. Mix in 1/2 teaspoon of Salt. Let tea cool down to hot, but not luke warm. Maybe just a few degrees above luke warm. Make a large amount of tea, around 1 1/2 to 2 cups. When you put the tea into your mouth, turn your head on the side of the infection and gargle. Gargle and rinse maybe 6 to 10 times in an hour. 1 to 3 minute incriments of gargling. This reduced the swelling of my abcess significantly. You may need to take a pain reliever 20 minutes prior to attempting this because your are essentially washing out the abcess manually. rating: 5 (14 votes) Submitted by Candy Freeman at 2010-07-06 06:56:22 Well i don't have the ache my boyfriend does. He is in a lot of pain i have suggested lots of remedies but lets face it the denist always the best remedy. Lemon extract or orange

not vanilla! Swish and spit try not to swallow it cuz it's real nasty. Another thing that works is listorine mothwash original is the best. Never use warm or hot water tempid or cold is better as to not spread the infection. Nothing tried is too crazy only the untried good luck and keep smiling rating: 5 (13 votes) Submitted by Kell at 2010-01-06 13:01:45 I know this will sound horrible, considering I know the pain that abscesses can cause all too well. DO NOT USE oral anesthetics like orajel or anbesol to treat your pain. They can actually cause swelling if you don't follow the directions and only apply it like the tube says; considering they both say only four times a day and we all need liberal amounts, it isn't useful if you follow the directions and because of this fact, it is simply not useful to someone that needs repeated relief from constant pain. The best course of action is to use motrin or extra strength pain killers like ibuprofen or naproxen. Icing the area will help with reducing the swelling and brining the abscess to a head so that you can lance it. This is much like popping a pimple, and chances are you won't even feel the needle, I did not. Sterilize the needle in boiling water or alcohol, or if you don't have either of these, resort to using a lighter to sterilize it. Once you puncture the abscess, squeeze as much of the discharge out of the abscess as you can, and rinse with peroxide and water, mixed in equal parts. Once the bubbles from the peroxide subside, brush your teeth with toothpaste and rinse with a mouthwash like listerine. This might sting like hell but it cleans your teeth and gums from the puss and bacteria so the infection doesn't spread. Next, take a whole clove and put it between your cheek and gums so that it rests over the abscess. Suck or simply leave it there for about 2 to 5 minutes to reduce the pain. It may burn a little, but if the sensation begins to be too unbearable, take the clove out. Follow this with a teabag, wrapped in paper towel and heated with warm water. I know that most individuals say to use a dry teabag, but the hot water actually helps to activate some of the antioxidants contained in the tea leaves. Use the teabag as needed to draw out the puss, and to reduce pain. Alternating cold drinks and hot drinks like tea or drinks spiced with clove or mint is a good idea as well. To keep the area sterilized, you can resort to applying a liquor like vodka to the abscess, but I would reccomend simply washing your mouth out with warm salt water several times a day. If you see a bit of dark color on your gums after pressing on the abscess, don't be frightened. This usually occurs because of the pressure you have put on it, and because the abscess is now draining. Continue to monitor the abscessed area because it will continue to drain after it has been lanced. Continue to rinse with peroxide, brush your teeth, and rinse with an antiseptic mouthwash like listerine until the abscess opening closes and begins to heal. I also reccomend drinking plenty of water, taking a liquid echineacia and goldenseal supplement and a daily vitamin. Try to boost your immune system in anyway you can. I have heard the remedies including Tea Tree Oil work well, but I haven't tried them myself. The Oregano and Sesame oil remedies are also useful and I know from personal experience that they work well. Sesame oil is also useful in helping open the sinus cavity when you are congested during colds or sinus infections. However, since sesame oil does this so well, be careful not to use it until the opening in the abscess has closed, otherwise the oil could draw the infection up into your sinus cavity and cause a lot of damage. One other unpleasant thing for most of us addicted to caffine and white sugar is that we have to avoid these very substances in order to get well. White processed sugar spreads infection and can even feed cancer, and it also shuts down your immune system. Considering you are dealing with an infection, the last thing you want is to shut down your immune system! A doctor or a

dentist is a great idea, but if you have phobias, limited money, or no insurance it is by taking these kinds of precautions that you will heal yourself and stop the infection. It is quite possible that the infection might reappear on a certain basis if you do not maintain proper oral care like brushing, flawsing, and using an antiseptic mouthwash. Even using peroxide as a mouthwash on an every-other-day basis in your oral care routine is beneficial because it destroys bacteria that your toothbrush may have missed. For those with constant pain due to loose caps, crowns, ect. Using white willow bark (perchased at a local healthfood store or even a local alternative religion shop) and mugwart, mixed with minced garlic your can get in the grocery store and made into a paste, will aid in killing pain and infection if you use it at least once every week. Using an organic sleep aid that contains valerian would also help you guys to get some sleep. It also aids in pain relief. Valerian is very subtle and will get you to sleep in a fashion that mimics how you would normally fall asleep because it works with your body naturally. Guys, avoid sugar, caffine, and acidic foods and drink during care and after the abscess heals, and take your supplements so your immune system works properly. Using teabags to draw out the infection is a good idea, potato and garlic poltices are useful too. Check google search for more herbal solutions for pain, but cool water, ice, and painkillers are the only other things I would suggest besides a mint extract. Good luck and hope you feel better! rating: 5 (22 votes) Submitted at 2007-07-28 21:23:03 I was afflicted with an abcessed tooth and was about ready to commit myself due to intense searing pain, I could barely speak or see straight from the pain... I tried alot of the remedies posted here, the baking soda, vinegar, salt water, hydrogen peroxide, vicodin's, ibuprofen, but what took the pain away was Jack Daniels Whiskey! I put a shot in my mouth and let it sit there for a few minutes and swooshed it around, then I took a cotton ball soaked in the JD and let it sit on the affected tooth and it took the pain away within 5-10 minutes. rating: 5 (8 votes) Submitted at 2010-08-14 18:14:04 Go to walmart and get a goldfish with small bowl. Oh my god, he might have an infection. Promptly go online and order some Pharmaceutical grade amoxicillin(aquamox), ciprofloxacin(aqua-floxin), cephalexin(fish flex), erythromycin(fish mycin). Now that your fish's antibiotics are on the way, hot salt water wash, brush with sensodyne, hydrogen peroxide wash, warm water wash. High dose vitamin-C (Ester-C) and your choice of anti-inflammatory. Keep it as drained as possible. Repeat as necessary to manage the problem. If the problem has seemed to go away, continue treatment for an additional week to ensure the infection is COMPLETELY GONE not just reduced swelling so there is no pain. If it goes away and comes back, it will be meaner, more aggressive, and more resilient. Alcohol should be avoided completely for the duration of treatment as it impairs the body's ability to fight infection and causes an increase in blood-pressure(more pain until you drink yourself unconscious and the blood pressure will now stay high because you are in pain). rating: 5 (16 votes) Submitted at 2011-06-23 22:51:15 For early onset: Floss teeth. Rub effected area with cottonball and hydrogen peroxide topical solution for at least one minute.

Create a salt solution rinse with 1/4 tsp table salt dissolved in 1oz hot water. Swish salt rinse between effected teeth for 1 minute minimum. Brush normally. Apply a black tea bag on abscess with moderate pressure. Let tea bag sit for at least 20 min to reduce swelling and sooth gums. Do not rinse or brush. Use hydrogen peroxide, salt rinse, and tea bag at least every 3-4 hours. Brush after consuming anything besides water. Should clear up in 2-3 days. Ibuprofen can be used for pain and to reduce swelling. If it doesnt, the infection may be too advanced and should be treated by a dentist and antibiotics. rating: 5 (15 votes) Submitted by Dave at 2009-01-23 09:28:18 Well I tried a few of the suggestions on here with no avail.. i took alot of painkillers which helped but today when I woke up my face was unrecognisable with the swelling and I could feel the abscess between my cheek and my upper gum so I took an old Mach 3 razor blade to bits and sliced the blistering abscess - I have never tasted or smelled anything so bad in my life but wow it felt good when I did it - it was under alot of pressure and u can imagine the mess but that gave me enough pain relief to get up to the docs and and get antibiotics until my dentsist appointment in 3 days! rating: 5 (7 votes) Submitted by mindy at 2010-09-08 17:38:22 after reading page after page on here, and seeing the repeats of certin things we decided to try warm tea bag and pure vanilla extract, this worked great on my manly man boyfriend whom handles pain very well we in tears from pain. the tea bag to sooth the pain and swelling and now he is putting the vanilla on the affected area a few times a day. good luck everyone. rating: 5 (7 votes) Submitted by jelybean_2010 at 2011-06-25 18:13:05 I have tried a few of these and not many help. Ora Gel was pointless as well as Anbesol. They taste awful and they numbed just about everything but my pain. Neither did toothpaste or the mouthwash. The whole garlic and onion thing?? Too much work, I need relief and I needed it now. I have been in unbearable pain for two days and I know for a fact I have high pain tolerance! So if I am complaining you know it hurts. ANYWAYS. I have exceeded my limit on painkillers (tylenol, and aleeve)If I take anymore, I will prolly overdose or go into Acute Renal Failure. (neither are good) so I am gonna wait at least another six hours to take more. But the one thing that gave me instant relief was Rum/Whiskey. DONT SWALLOW it especially if you have taken as many pain pills as I have but sweet mother of bob it worked. Swish it around in your mouth and then hold it on the side that hurts and BAM relief. No im not an alcoholic or a pillpopper but something had to be done and GOD BLESS who ever invented liqour...you sir are my hero. I can finally function again until I go to the dentist. rating: 5 (13 votes) Submitted by cokey at 2011-05-25 13:19:15 I noticed an abscess starting the other day.I have had one before probably 8 years ago. Both times i've use the same remedy and ITS WORKED EACH TIME.

I feel your pain and know what your going through. Last night was night #2 and the pressure was unbearable. The next morning i woke up at 630 and went to the local cvs -green tea bags -baking soda -peroxide -giner -advil take the advil first and put the dry tea bag right on the abscess. it will shrink it considerably in 15 minutes and form a head(white weak spot) use a little peroxide and clean a pin/needle.. pop the head of the abcsess and push out the puss. --INSTANTLY RELIEVING THE PAIN-next wet a cotton swab or something similar,(new advil bottle will have one inside) add peroxide and a half teaspoon of baking soda. and place it directly on the abscess. 10 or so minutes later rinse you mouth out with a mixture of table salt/grounded ginger(acts as an antibiotic((don't believe me look it up))/and warm water about 2or3 times a day and it won't even feel like you had one. it will be completely deflated and NO PAIN! i literally did this hours ago. Best of luck to you all. rating: 5 (25 votes) Submitted at 2007-12-26 13:37:15 The Red Cross emergency toothaid kit realy works well. I had a old filling come out and didnt get it fixed at the dentist.It got extremely infected over the holiday weekend.So infected I went to the emergency room and got pain killers. The red cross kit works beter then the bottle of pills the Dr gave me. rating: 5 (6 votes) Submitted by shaun at 2010-12-15 10:21:55 I was in pain for days, I have a huge hole and did not know what to do, at the time i had a mouth owsore, I was putting bonjella onto it, i then found the pain was easing so i diceded to put it in my hole and around my tooth, this worked very well and took the pain away, :) rating: 5 (6 votes) Submitted by GREG fLOYD at 2011-08-02 11:46:11 Vodka Vodka Vodka, I had a pain that lasted for days. crieds from the pain. I swished vodka on the tooth and 3 days later NO PAIN at all. the tooth is dead for now.. becareful as this will burn some. but the longer you can do it the more it will ease the pain to the point you may not have any.. hope this helps all. rating: 5 (6 votes) Submitted at 2011-05-02 00:27:26 My fiance was experieincing a painful tooth ache. We were driving home from a weekend trip and he couldn.t stand the pain. He took so much pain medication and nothing helped. We tried choliseptic and that didnt help niehter did the oajel and that

just made him MAD. When we got home I went to the store and picked up peperment tea bags, clove oil and ibuprophen. He took the medicen and then I dampended the tea bag with warm water and put a few drops of the clove oil on it. He put in on the tooth for about twenty minutes and whala it as like magic. The pain was gone.Oh after he took the tea bag out I put several drops of the oil on a cotter swab and made him put it on the infected area and NO pain. He said all the other stuff was not helping and now he can eat. Thank you for all of the advice>>>>it worked rating: 5 (16 votes) Submitted at 2009-05-25 20:55:38 Thanks Susan for posting the information about purchasing antibiotics at the pet supply store. I sure didn't want to take pet medication but I was at my wit's end! I wound up purchasing 'Marcyn' which is tetracyline hydrochloride. My sister is an RN, so I looked it up in her drug book and sure enough there it was! However, I would only advise doing this as a last resort; some brands of the antibiotics were not safe for human consumption. If you don't know what you're doing, please continue to follow the natural home remedies. It's much better than POISONING YOURSELF TO DEATH! God's blessings to you all! rating: 5 (5 votes) Submitted by Amanda at 2009-05-28 04:10:36 Thank u everyone! I may sleep a few hrs tonight. First I swished eith warm salt water then tequila then some grey goose and the horrible pain in my teeth is greatly reduced! rating: 5 (5 votes) Submitted by Christine at 2010-12-05 20:32:03 Hey Everyone... I Have Been Having Horrifc Pain Since Last Sunday Night. I Just Like Ashley Have been Having Major teeth problems since I Had my son in 2000. I also have not done meth but my teeth lake dr's think im an addict. So I Have been in insufferable pain for like a week. I wanted to rip my carotid artery right out of my neck. I went to the er twice for a nerve block sunday 2am and 630 am. went to dentist monday morn... paid cash (again i have no dental insurance). they did an xray, charged me $125 and said they wouldnt remove my teeth til dec9th. great right. so i have been eating vicodin es like candy along with clindimycin 300 4xday. you would think after 3 days pain would subside well no. I have been vomitting from the pain meds and not getting much relief not to mention no sleep and a cold on top of it lol. so friday night sleepless again i came online and found this site. read posts for hours. was going saturday to buy a new car and knew id be fighting with some tard over prices etc so i decided to try the tea bag deal. Unbelievable! i kept it in for 15 min and no pain since! all the hardcore meds i was on and all week of pain and a simple teabag took it away! I will never forget this and i feel for everyone on here its a nightmare i wanted to die. i am still going to have teeth removed but i hope the next person up late with pain tried this. i also went out and bought a bottle of jd but i havent needed to try the alcohol nerve killing thing lol. good lock to all... and hope u stay pain free! rating: 5 (5 votes)

Submitted by zaed at 2010-12-21 19:07:41 Oil of Oregano (Oreganum Vulgare)- a perfect track record for handling multiple abscesses in my case. I had an emergency situation where I couldn't get in to a dentist and had an extremely painful abscess. It was swollen to the point of rupturing, so it was very painful. I had earlier picked up a bottle of the oil (don't get it confused with extract!). I knew of the benefits of the stuff for other ailments, so out of desperation, I tried it. The bottle will likely warn you to cut the stuff by one drop to twenty or a tablespoon, etc., before applying it to anything. It's that potent. I, however, did not. Took a cotton swab and tore off most of the cotton on one end. Added one drop of oregano oil to the prepared end and gently swabbed the area. Doing so, I got some on my lips and tongue and I did experience a significant burning sensation, so consider yourself warned. Interestingly, it doesn't burn your gums themselves. But the pain was nothing compared to my abscess. Three applications and 24 hours later, the abscess was completely HEALED. Not just feeling better. GONE. I have since used this therapy multiple times on this recurring abscess. What?!? You said it was GONE! Well, it was. But I haven't had the tooth fixed yet. So once every few months or so, I can feel it begin to come back. I do the same thing and voila, it's better. Actually, the abscesses ONLY come back if I stop my maintenance routine. I cut the the Oil of Oregano by 1/5th with organic olive oil. After brushing in the morning and evening, I take a second soft bristled toothbrush and add 2-3 drops of this solution and gently work it into my gum line, where the nasties like to hang out. It's only when I get off this routine that I ever have any issues. My gums look healthier too, after doing this for a while. This remedy has saved me lots of pain, time and money. Which reminds me ... the oil itself isn't cheap. Expect to pay around $30USD for a few ounces. But you use so little it lasts quite a long time. I've been using it for three years and I'm on my third bottle. Hope this helps. I feel your pain. rating: 5 (15 votes) Submitted at 2011-03-09 05:19:10 As it's 2 a.m. and I prefer not to wake anyone up, my usual tactic of brushing and rinsing thoroughly is out of the question. However, I'm finding that taking a tea bag and just pressing it up against the abscess (which is still forming) is workingly marginally. It hurts a bit, but that's just the pressure of the tea bag against the sensitive flesh. So, I'm doing that and sitting here with a napkin wiping up drool, hoping the pain will recede enough for me to sleep until I can get up to brush without waking everyone, hopefully use pin to drain in, and I'm going to take the steps to finally going to a dentist. rating: 5 (13 votes) Submitted by Nate at 2010-01-23 02:27:10 So this morning I woke up with major swelling on my upper left jaw - first bicuspid and sever tooth pain. Like many of you I am currently without insurance and so was rightly concerned, luckily I found this site - though rather later than I would have liked.

Being a chef I am fairly familiar with the many porperties of garlic and so chose this as my first option. I thinly sliced a clove of garlic and placed a piece between my gumline and check at the infected tooth. I replaced the slice after about 20 minutes and held the second in place for the same amount of time. I noticed pain relief within the first five inutes, and by the time I had removed the second slice the garlic had drawn the infection to a head. This was easily pierced and drained for instant relief. I then rinsed with warm salt water, and brushed my teeth. I have a feeling that I didn;t drain all the puss from the infection so will be applying garlic again tonight before I go to bed. Thanks to everyone that suggested it, I am now pain free and ready for a good nights sleep. rating: 5 (8 votes) Submitted at 2010-03-05 01:28:30 Over the years I have dealt with some severe tooth pain..nerve pain, a broken tooth, braces, exposed nerves, dry socket..to name a few. I am posting this, because I currently have an exposed nerve- and my husband made the mix for me..just when I was about to go grab a pair of pliers from the garage... This remedy is one that has worked time and time again- for the severe conditions (when you can't get to the dentist right away) *Please note- you may want to check the ingredients, or check with your doctor/pharmacy first.. The 'concoction' My husband made up: Ingredients are normally household itemsIbuprofen for swelling Flexeril (cyclobenzaprine) for numbing effect a little Children's Liquid Ibuprofen or Tylenol (IBU works the best for this) water *if you don't have the flexeril, use Orajel, Orabase, or Ambesol instead Take one whole ibuprofen, and 1/2 flexeril and crush them into powder- we have a pill cutter/crusher but if you don't have one, place them in a zip-lock bag and hit with hammer... Now pour them into a small container- shot glass, appetizer dip dish, empty pill bottle, etc Add a few drops of the liquid ibuprofen or Tylenol- just enough to make a 'paste' (the water is only to thin it down if you would rather swish and spit- do not swallow!!) Now use a Q-Tip or your finger and apply to the sore spot- spit when you have saliva build up. Again DO NOT swallow! I say this, because the Flexiril, while having a great

numbing effect on your mouth, is a muscle relaxant and you may not want the effects of this.. the Ibuprofen is hard on your stomach, being crushed into powder..it is not going to kill you to swallow it, just probably won't make you feel very good.. You may have to do this again in about 1-2 hours (every 30min if really severe) So SAVE it.. but it will get you through the night, until you can see a doctor.. The effect for me, is similar to a nerve block, without your cheeks and nose being numb as well.. *you also have to make sure to get it down in your tooth on the nerve, if your tooth is broken or cracked..around the gum line will not help that.. This remedy has saved me from madness a few times, and although I always 'balk' at it when my husband brings it up, by the time I am done, I am very, very Grateful!! *Another thing that helps me, is a heat pack..if you do not have one, have someone make you a quick little pack, by taking a clean tube sock and filling it with rice, wheat berries or flax seed. Wrap a rubber band around the top (no metal on it!!) and zap it in the microwave for about 45-60 seconds on high... *If you don't feel comfortable using the concoction above and orajel is just not working..take just CHILDREN'S LIQUID IBUPROFEN and swish about a teaspoonful in your mouth until it stops the 'burning' sensation.. spit or swallow- if you have to repeat often, just spit out every time.. I hope this helps someone as much as it helped me!!! ;) rating: 5 (12 votes) Submitted by SkatemanGeneva at 2011-06-01 10:53:16 I read most of the site, and searched for tumeric and cashew, finding neither. I use tumeric, copper solution (glass vials available in france), raw garlic, and lots of RAW cashew nuts. Cashews'have a natural antibiotic that reputedly kills all gram positive bacteria. Several times I have done a 24 hour RAW Cashew only diet. Usually it works, though I have recently switched back to lots of raw garlic, as it covers better the gram negative bacteria. The Copper solution and a ALOE VERA - CRUSHED ASPIRIN - VitaminE - Tumeric treatment for gingivitis. I found a link that said it cured some one back to normal from serious bone exposure gingivitis, with full regrowth of gums. KOOL SITE THANKS ALL rating: 5 (11 votes) Submitted by makala hernandez at 2011-07-17 18:01:15 well after my pain in tooth ack this si wat works gargel with listerine for 2 min take an excedera or tylenal extra strength get a hot rag place it in your mouth and place it on your tooth and lightly bite down then lay down with a blanket or a pillow over your face then go to sleep and when u wake up the pain should be gone

rating: 5 (7 votes) Submitted by Jeff Gordon at 2011-05-28 19:30:36 #1-CURE NOT REMEDY THIS IS NO JOKE!!! I have read a lot of the remedies,but I didn't read much about cures. I'm only talking about curing the infection and the pain associated with it. The sooner you treat the problem the sooner the pain will subside. Directions:take 3-4 1000mg. garlic pills, or garlic oil jell tabs, the oil seems to work a little better. If you catch it early enough take 3-tabs equaling 3000mgs.three times a day for a total of 9,000mgs. per day. But if the infection is advanced start by taking 4tabs=4000mg. then reduce to 3-tabs three times a day for a daily total of 10,000mgs.of garlic oil or pills.The infection will be gone in 1-3 days generally.In any case simply repeat until infection is gone. You should notice a significant difference in 2-3 days,if not get to a doctor as soon as possible. Jeff Gordon rating: 5 (10 votes) Submitted at 2008-09-07 22:40:32 I have a huge hole in my teeth I stayed up crying all night until I called my grandmother first Put the baking powder directly in the hole or on the tooth then bite down on the cotton this one helps a lot when trying to sleep all night(I GUARANTEE IT) rating: 5 (3 votes) Submitted by Leah at 2010-04-23 20:58:39 OK so i was on here last night looking for a answer to my tooth pain....i have an abscessed tooth i was in severe pain!! i tried puting toothpaste on my tooth and surrounding gum helped for about a couple of minutes...it only dulled the pain a little bit,tried the peanut butter and saltine cracker paste nothing,tried taking nite quil i took the nite quil 3 times during the night to try and sleep only on the 3 try when i was so tired that it worked...but it only made me tired didn't really help with the pain...my bf told me to try swishing peroxide in my mouth then using a tea bag,tea bag helped dull the pain peroxide didnt....so when i woke up this afternoon(from the 3rd dose of nite quill at 9 am this morning after calling my doc for antibiotics) i looked up online how to get rid of abscessed tooth pain....i realized i was doing something wrong. the teabag method i was trying was wrong i was only leaving it in for 15 i wasnt giving it enough time to draw out he poison..so i folowed the directions (well almost) i took a teabag wet it with some warm water and put it between my cheek and my tooth(the one that was killing me) let it sit there 4 to 8 hrs(i let it sit there for about 3 hrs changing the teabag when i wanted too) when the pain dulled enough to stand i took 4 ibuprofen but then kept doing the teabag thing until the pain was gone.....and for me it worked wanders i took a nap with no pain...i just woke up and it hurts a little bit im gonna do it again in a few minutes so i can sleep tonight rating: 5 (11 votes) Submitted by Maeg at 2011-04-01 04:31:10 up at all hours of the night with my distraught fiance, i went through like five pages on here, the house was practically empty, we tried the salt water,nothing. Then we put vinilla extract on a cotton ball and he held it on the tooth it soothed the pain i dont know for how long he ran to bed hoping to fall asleep before the pain returned.. Thank you everyone.. good luck. rating: 5 (13 votes)

Submitted by Emma at 2011-04-22 00:12:41 Abcess on root of tooth - First took 2 ibuprofen. Then soaked a peppermint teabag in a small amount of hot water and a few drops of pure vanilla extract. Squeezed out excess water and held teabag on infected area for about 30 mins. Pain was gone in about 10 mins and stayed away for a few hours. Hope this helps someone. rating: 5 (13 votes) Submitted at 2009-04-09 06:10:43 I had wisdom teeth growing.. tried every remedy known to man. My boyfriend bought me a pack of Doan's Back Pain pills from walmart ($5) and aleve. Doan's contain magnesium so be mindful taking them if you are already taking magnesium or potassium. The first night take two Doan's tablets and two aleve and go to bed (the Doan's will definitely knock you out!) From then on take one Doan's and two aleve for pain. I am a registered nurse, never believed this would work.. I even took them for pain after having four wisdom teeth removed. Another nurse at work tried the rememdy and was amazed because it worked for her also!! rating: 5 (5 votes) Submitted by Praying for a Cure at 2010-06-07 21:33:37 2 Motrins in 1 hr and nothing...Okay.....I have finally gotten some kind of relief Orajel has an antiseptic 'MOUTH SORE RINSE' ($8)works wonders. After 2 rinses of 1 min each my abscess popped.... I then used CEPACOL Dual Relief sore throat (Cherry-$5). I do realize this is only a temporary cure and suggest to all to see a dentist, county or otherwise, for antibiotics. rating: 5 (10 votes) Submitted at 2006-12-17 22:26:36 first of all medical is a must! avscessed teeth can lead to spinal problems (as in my case) loss of facial bone structure, inflammation of the heart and a score of other problems. i've tried the teabag thing...it does help to draw it out...but the infection still lingers IT WILL COME BACK!! if you're jut looking for pain relieve until medical attention can be recieved then maximum strangth orajel, clove oil, ice cube, whiskey, or a baby aspirin applied to the area do provide som relief. don't use anything stronger than a baby aspirin it will eat away at your gums. as will the clove oil so be careful and don't swallow! i have absolutely no money or insurance. i depend on the free clinic and with the influx of unisured people lately it is very hard to be seen. i finally went to a regular doctor who gave me free samples of levaquin ( a very strong antibiotic) which other wise would have cost me 150 dollars for ten pills and also because my last antibiotic erythromycin didn't kill the infection ( i'm allergic to amoxicillin). but be careful with which home remedy you choose! please try to find a free clinic in your area if money is an issue! rating: 5 (12 votes) Submitted by Riane C. at 2010-06-03 18:33:24 Hi everyone. I have an abscessed tooth, and I was browsing the net trying desperately to find something to take the pain away. My dentist gave me Vicodin, but that just makes me goofy! I've heard plenty of things; coffee beans, tea bags, garlic, onion, and more. Just like all of you, I'm sure, I don't want to try anything that will harm my teeth. I sucked on a coffee bean, and that helped a little bit. I didn't have any garlic cloves, so I

rubbed garlic powder on my gums. It irritated it ( As expected =P ) but it helped.. While it was on, at least. Red wine vinegar helped me a lot. But the thing that works best for me is drinking ICE COLD water, holding it my mouth for a few seconds before swallowing. It numbs me for about a minute and a half if I don't speak. Not much help, sorry! I wish you all good luck!! rating: 5 (12 votes) Submitted at 2005-11-14 02:41:16 Place a steeped, drained tea bag as hot as you can stand it directly on the tooth. The tea leaves will draw out the abcess and relieve the pain. rating: 5 (127 votes) Submitted by gena at 2005-12-03 16:48:00 cut a potato in half and place it were it hurts and it takes the swelling out and it stop it from hurting rating: 5 (21 votes) Submitted by -M at 2010-01-08 23:37:20 Thanks for all the wonderful suggestions, folks. They really helped. I used a tea bag (tried green tea, then peppermint, which tasted better) with a drop of tea tree oil and wrapped it around a pinch of sea salt, placing it over the infected area as a poultice, then followed it with minced garlic in vodka as a mouthwash kind of deal, focusing on the abscessed tooth and surrounding gum. I held each one in my mouth as long as I could stand it. Did this a few times a day, two days in a row. It made that side of my mouth go all tingly and numb and TOTally killed my sense of taste for a couple days, but the swelling was completely gone by day three. I know I really need to get to the dentist, but finances don't allow it and, for the now, at least, this has taken care of the pain and half-a-chipmunk face. Good luck, fellow sufferers! rating: 5 (7 votes) Submitted at 2010-05-15 06:51:35 Garlic ... im so amazed that it actually worked chopped whole clove in half pressed it against my tooth so the juice came out of it and bam.. instant releif! TYvm rating: 5 (14 votes) Submitted by CX at 2010-06-19 11:57:09 I have a toothache that occurs every several month or so. Like many of the other entries, I too don't have insurance or that money to cover getting a root canal. Even so, with the pain, I wouldn't make it to the dentist if I had to wait until they fit me in. I tried the cold water and the vanilla abstract. It work only temporarily. I then took every kind of pain killer in the cabinet (not at the same time). Didn't work. After not sleeping that night I went to Walgreen's and grabbed some Goody's Headache Powder, in the blue box. It works better than everything else. One works, but sometimes I take 2. Still might try the Amoxicillan, because I'm sure there is an infection. rating: 5 (14 votes) Submitted by Ravi at 2010-07-20 17:31:32 It started on Sunday afternoon (as usual on weekend). My left side of face started

swelling and around at night it looks like I have walnut in my mouth. It was not so much pain but it was disturbing so much. I managed to spend my night on pain killers. I took two Tylenol PM it was not a good sleep but its better than nothing. Next day morning I could not realize who is in the mirror :) First thing I done is to take appointment with dentist. They gave me after 5 days :( So I went to general clinic and they prescribe me Amoxicillin 875 mg antibiotics and Acetaminophen-Cod #3 as a pain killer. Today I was filling like in hell, I called the dentist and schedule urgent appointment. Let's hope they can save my tooth. Thank you for all this suggestions here. I tried to watch movies to divert my mind from pain and it really helps. Just watch any of your favorite subject movies. Mine is War and Horror. Good luck to all who are in pain. rating: 5 (11 votes) Submitted at 2006-03-23 21:21:04 near instant relief: This works better and faster than anything else I've tried. I found that taking a baby asprin and placing it into the dry socket (or hole in my tooth) and then just letting it dissolve works wonders. Or if there's no hole just let it dissolve as close to the pain as possible (or bite down on it and hold while it dissolves. They taste pretty good too! I have several really bad teeth right now (and no $ or insurance quite yet) and sometimes it takes several baby asprins, but most times just one! And when my pain hits nowadays it about brings me to my knees. rating: 5 (20 votes) Submitted by Rick at 2008-08-16 12:06:16 Items that you ultimately need / and should have to take care of an abscessed tooth... - Penicillin - Vicodin / Advil as a supplement - Possible Extraction - Money What to do if you have no insurance and no dentist! Now I understand that many of us these days just don't have the economical means to afford insurance, or maintain a doctor/dentist. But at some point, you must be prepared for that unexpected expense that will arise, such as an abscessed tooth. Fever and sickness are soon to follow as your body tries to fight off the infection of an abscessed tooth in the form of pus, and other related complications.

If the teas, aspirin, garlic tablets, and other possible home remedies don't work, then what do you do? - If you don't have to, please try and stay away from the emergency room. It will be at least $500 just to walk through the door, the wait time can be anywhere from 4+ hours, and ultimately they will simply refer you to a dentist on the following day? The hospital may simply provide a pain killer subscription, but no penicillin and no extraction. - Try not to walk into any dentist office, let alone one of the more popular dentist chains, because although they have a payment plan at a reduced price, you are looking at $700 or more, that they will need up front, in order to do their work. Any remainder expenses are usually broken up into three or four installments, and not on a monthly basis as one would think.

There is a solution that I have experienced for myself, and although it required some emergency money, it was extremely affordable and convenient. Now I live in the great state of Colorado, so we are fortunate to have such places as dental911.com These places are open during emergency hours such as 5pm - 9pm on weekdays, and all day on Saturdays and Sundays. From the time that I walked in (no appointment necessary), until the time I walked out with penicillin in hand, some gum shots of novocain (took x-rays as well), and a prescription for vicodin, it took just about one hour. It cost me an initial $125 up front, with the promise that if things didn't get better in a day, then simply return to the dentist, and they would take more x-rays and go from there absolutely free! The dentist assured me that although they could have operated right then and there, it would be better if I waited until the swelling and infection subsided, so it would not be as painful if/and when an extraction would be necessary. Not all abscessed teeth require an abstraction. Mine did however, and after three days of fighting the infection, I returned to the dentist and for an additional $140, my tooth was removed, and all is well. I encourage anybody out there who may have an abscessed tooth, to look into this type of affordable alternative, as you pursue a path to relief of pain and discomfort associated with an abscessed tooth. rating: 5 (8 votes) Submitted by Patrick at 2009-05-14 23:19:33 I have had an infected lower back molar for a couple weeks--the filling came out a couple years ago and I have never addressed it. I finally went to the dentist for an opinion and he told me the tooth was savable but needed a root canal and a crown for the mere cost of $3000, and would require a referral to another 'dentist' hmmm.. he prescribed me with some amoxicillin and some vicodin. The amoxicillin started working and the unbelievable pain was subsiding the first night. The vicodin does absolutely nothting for me. I literally tried EVERYTHING under the sun to try and get the pain to go away, lots of the things listed in this forum, thank you very much, but nothing worked.. taking 5-6000 mg of ibuprofen a day was helping, but I didn't want to kill my self over this. My best solution that worked for me was to take the advil liquid gel caps-starting with 400 mg and I rinsed as long as I could with listerine. The pain has subsided like no other treatment I have tried over the past couple weeks. How did I find

out about this? I consulted a REAL professional at the walgreens! I approached a man with his teeth all broken off and missing and asked him! He told me of this remedy. Who else would know better? I am sitting here eating corn chips at this very moment and 1 hour ago I was almost completely debilitated! Hope this helps, it sure worked for me. rating: 5 (6 votes) Submitted at 2009-07-20 04:42:34 I've had a broken lower molar for years but have rarely had any trouble out of it. A couple days ago I woke up in horrible pain. My typical solution was to basically suck the infection out. It hurts but it's always been successful. By making sure you sort of pressurize your mouth and get all the saliva out of your mouth and suck on your infected tooth, it pulls the infection out. If it happens, you'll definitely feel it. It will scare you when it 'pops' and the side of your face may throb for a minute but when the throbbing stops, so does ALL the pain. You're mouth will taste disgusting from the infection and you'll be able to smell something that may smell like dog or cow manure coming from your mouth that lasts for just a few seconds. When my pain started, I sucked on my tooth all day and nothing ever happened so I tried alternate methods. The tea bags may of helped but they also made my tooth throb even more. Ibuprofen helped. All ambesol and orajel does is numb everything but the tooth pain - in my mouth anyway. All day I went through 4 tea bags and swished warm water and sea salt around in my mouth. I woke up at 6:30 in the morning from the pain. I tried sucking on my tooth and the first try it worked. I went to the bathroom and stood at the sink spitting blood and puss for about 5 minutes. I felt better after the throbbing stopped. I tried poking my gum with a needle and it only made my gum bleed so I trashed that idea. Vanilla extract on a q-tip applied directly to the broken tooth. That made the top half of my tooth feel better but not the main pain. The next day I had some left over pain and spent all day compulsively sucking on my tooth. Every time I do it, I taste more infection coming out. Whatever method you choose, good luck. rating: 5 (8 votes) Submitted by Michael Bailey at 2009-08-30 02:14:43 I have had really bad tooth pain for two days, and with no sleep and having to take care of my daughter, I was desprate. I tried everything, vinigar and salt water, vanilla extract, Ibuprophens and tylonal pm. Then I saw a remedy about garlic, so I took the garlic out of the fridge and took a clove and started chewing it near the spot of the pain, and after the burn, and strong tast of garlic was gone, so was the pain. No joke use garlic it works. rating: 5 (4 votes) Submitted at 2010-07-21 23:01:05 I had a root canal done on an abcessed front tooth rwice. The pain came back in three days so severely I could't stand it. I had oil of oregano P73 and used the dropper that comes with it and coated the tooth liberally (front, back, & both sides) and held in my mouth around the painful tooth for a few minutes, and in less than five minutes the pain was gone. You can swallow the oil of oregano if you want because it is a natural antibiotic,antibacterial & antifungal herb. It works great for an upset stomach too! Hope this helps!!! rating: 5 (16 votes)

Submitted by Allie at 2010-08-15 00:31:42 I have super bad tooth pain. I tried a lot of things on this site! & I thank everyone for posting them. Then I felt stupid for thinking of this...but when babies are teething ( 5 years exp. as a nanny) a cold wet rag to chew on is the best... that plus vanilla has helped my tooth! rating: 5 (6 votes) Submitted at 2011-05-10 10:58:38 i have had really bad teeth for a long time. my problem is hereditary. my teeth are so bad they r broken alot of them down to my gums and i dont have insurance or money to get them pulled. my only hope when i get a toothache is if it causes a puss bubble to form beside the tooth. then i just stab it with a sharp knife and use a qtip to apply pressure to get the infection out. after that i feel wonderful because i gave the infection somewhere to go besides pushing up on my tooth causing me pain. i hope this helps. it may b painfull to stab the bubble but it helps alot rating: 5 (17 votes) Submitted at 2010-02-28 10:29:29 I'm a 3rd year proper student, taking up Dentistry...the only way you can remove the abcess is through drainage and not by using a tea bag,,tea bag can help in bleeding purposes. Self Medication is defenitely not advisable,.because the sharp thing that you would use to prick the affected area is not properly sterilize.,it would only cause more problem like infection or irritation.,nowadays., we use autoclave and no longer boiling.. the only way., to treat the periapical abscess,.is by root canal treatment or extraction .,, rating: 5 (15 votes) Submitted by Kelly at 2005-10-23 12:32:30 For abcessed tooth - Put a small amout of hydrogen peroxide in mouth in the area of the tooth - swish around for about 5 minutes, spit it out, and rinse with warm salt water. It may have to be done several times until the abcess begins to drain. If you have to repeat it, wait an hour or so before doing it. I also take Echinacea and Goldenseal and garlic capsules and take Ibuprofen if needed for pain. Ssome pain can be relieved temporarily with a hot cloth applied to the face in the area of the offending tooth. rating: 5 (36 votes) Submitted at 2010-02-24 03:32:48 the teabags and tcp is a miracle. thank you so much for this. went to bed with a teabag soaked in tcp jammed into my mouth. woke up in the morning, pain gone. brilliant rating: 5 (7 votes) Submitted at 2010-09-11 17:29:19 My mom has 3 abscess on the left side of her mouth and she in so much pain she cries at times but i tried many things TEMPORARY though ill share i little bit..... #1 crused pain relief and DAB! on sore #2 mix 2 crushed asprin(or whatever pain relief u can find)ginger,sea salt vinella extract,ginger and hot water AND ONLY LITTLE OF EACH!! and put in small bowl DAB on and then gargle with salt water! #3 eat tums and

midol helps! #4 hot tea bag any kind doent matter!just apply and there u go!! #5 chew on hot rag #6 put ice or hot pack on it NOT IN YOUR MOUTH!! but thay do work but its temporary oh and sleep head up okay it helps in the morning!! rating: 5 (7 votes) Submitted by Tom at 2010-05-03 08:08:23 For Constipation, I recommend Runny scambled eggs made with olive oil and melted butter and also, drink warm water mixed with two tablespoons of ground flax seeds. This has many bennefits. It is very healthy and will not add to any candida problems if you are taking antibiotics. This has helped me very much and I hope you too. All the best. rating: 5 (5 votes) Submitted at 2010-05-26 16:43:51 LIQUID ORAJEL!! It's harder to find, but WOW I'm INSTANTLY NUMB! Soak a Qtip for a few seconds and drip it into the tooth and around the gums. rating: 5 (5 votes) Submitted at 2010-07-23 22:02:01 Try Peroxyl by Colgate is an oral antiseptic cleanser hold and swish for a couple, three minutes and repeat. Is amazing took away the horrible pain quick. Follow it up with a couple ibuprofen. Hope it works for you rating: 5 (5 votes) Submitted by Vinny at 2011-05-31 04:09:20 I just read through this entire thread and went out to a 24 hour CVS and bought: Lipton Ice Tea bags, Sesodyne tooth paste, and 'Red Cross Toothache'. I was in so much pain I had considered going to the ER but then realized how expensive that may be. When I got back into my car after purchasing these things, I immediately put a tea bag in my mouth between my tooth and gum and also over the tooth and gently bit down. This helped only a little bit during the drive back home. When I did get home, I tried the 'Red Cross Toothache' and it the pain is entirely gone. It feels a little like novacaine but different. I'm not sure how long it will last but considering I feel nothing at the moment, it was well worth the 4am drive. The box says to avoid other tissue when you apply it to the tooth. BE CAREFUL. i got some on my skin and it burns a little. Nothing major - just thought you all should know. bed time for me! rating: 5 (10 votes) Submitted by jason at 2011-03-28 21:14:18 My tooth has been hurting me off and on since getting a filling 6 weeks ago then on Friday afternoon I had to leave work because the pain was unbearable. Oxycotin did nothing t3 did nothing Chronic-(kush) did nothing went on this site the tea bag and salt with baking powder pack work amazing thanks rating: 5 (13 votes) Submitted by KIMBERLY at 2010-06-13 07:13:29 Hello everyone I have had a toothache for the last several days. I have tried all of the listed remedies vanilla extract,listerine rinse,orajel,red cross, salt and pepper paste, peroxide, vics vapor rub,motrin 800mg and even midol . I really didn't get any relief.Anyway, I have no insurance and no job I was in so much pain I used my rent

money to see the dentist(walk-in) $90.00 for an exam and was told I have an abscess I have to take an antibiotic for atleast two days then he will pull my tooth which is going to cost me $205.00 believe me I know it's hard out here and everyone cant afford the cost (I can't even pay my rent now) but an abscess is a very bad infection not one to play with you really don't want the poison to get into your blood stream and travel. Now that I have the antibiotic in my system I apply pressure to my jaw when I lay down that seems to help a little. rating: 5 (8 votes) Submitted at 2010-10-09 08:36:56 i have been suffering from abcessed teeth for years now...when insurancee was useable for the dentist then...i just went and they fixed it...but know that my insurance no longer covers dental...my mother in law suggested that i use a q-tip and swab clove oil on the tooth, gum, and where ever the pain is (do not swallow)...this will burn your tongue, and lips if u get any on these 2 places...even though the taste is horrific...the tooth and infected area are numb (just like what the dentist uses before they pull a tooth)...i swear by this remedy...i rather take natural substances than one i'm worried about abusing...this will only take the pain away...but not the infection... rating: 5 (8 votes) Submitted by Tooth Ferry at 2011-05-05 23:56:39 Like others have mentioned previously, it can be a number of things that is causing your tooth to ache. However, infection and bacteria is the most common reasons that causes a tooth to ache, and continue to ache! While there are many remedies that will temporarily relieve the pain, or lessen it's intensity, it is important to seek medical attention as soon as you possibly can. Infection, or bacteria that causes 90% of tooth aches can cause serious infections to enter your blood stream and travel throughout your entire body. Try taking some warm water and mixing it with apple cider vinegar, and a table spoon of salt, and swish it in your mouth vigorously concentrating on the are of your teeth that is in pain. Vinegar is a great product that can kill a lot of infection and bacteria instantly, relieving the intensity of the pain very quickly. Do this several times until you began to fill some relief. Remember that as well as this can work, it is only temporary until you can see a Dentist who can fix the underlying problem properly. Advil and ibuprofen work better than tylenol and asprin because they are anti flammatory which helps with the inflamation that could also be causing some of the pain as well! rating: 5 (16 votes) Submitted by Mecha G at 2010-09-24 19:20:24 I had a bad tooth abscess for about 3 years, pain and draining pus every day! I had to do something fast, I'm sure it was killing me. The doctor gave me amoxicillin and after 10 days it seemed to go down. 4 days later it came back... I went and got colloidal silver and oil of oregano and I feel that saved me! Now I put garlic extract liquid on the gum were it was everyday now just so it wont ever come back.

3 weeks now, so far so good no pain. rating: 5 (11 votes) Submitted by Momof3 at 2010-10-17 08:36:30 Break a benadryl (or generic) CAPLET open onto a spoon, get it wet with either a little bit of water or saliva to make a paste. Use a q-tip or toothpick to put on the soar tooth. It taste nasty, but it numbed my first tooth ache for 6 months, now I am getting it pulled cause it hurts to much and looks gross. rating: 5 (11 votes) Submitted at 2011-06-24 01:28:56 First, thank you all for you insight and experiences. I tried just about every remedy offered throughout the post. My top right molar way at the back is about half rotted. The pain spread throughout the right side of my upper and lower jaw. I tried to pull it pirate style (yes it was pushing my sanity) and immediately regretted the decision. I had some success with the ibuprofen, the tea bag, the warm and cold, toothache gel, and baking soda. The baking soda and tooth gel rank number two. Number one suggestion was Bacardi 151 improvised with stuffed cotton ball and a squirter to absorb and hold it in place. Got a couple pops out of it and remain to see if it's the nerve. I will probably give up eventually and go to the dentist but not right now :). So a strong solution of baking soda rinsed and swished as long as you can stand it followed by the Bacardi cotton ball offers complete relief for now. Thank you all again. rating: 5 (11 votes) Submitted at 2008-11-14 23:50:06 I was suffering from pain in my wisdom tooth and overnight my gums around the wisdom tooth got sollen. In the morning I could barely see my wisdom tooth because there was so much swelling plus the area felt numb. I did the folliwng which is an age old remedy: 1. I put about 5 whole cloves both sides of the mouth (this stings for a bit but instantly reduces the pain) 2. I put a pack of ice on my cheek where the tooth was paining and felt the pain reduce 3. After the swelling had come down significantly with the above and I could finally see my wisdom tooth, I put a green-tea bag in betwen my teeth and my gums for half hour. The pain and swelling really reduced within an hour. My advice would be - just be patient and follow a home remedy religously for an hour - it will work !! rating: 5 (3 votes) Submitted by Didi at 2008-12-09 14:01:04 The teabag method actually works!! I used peppermint teabags (peppermint is a great natural pain killer). I then remembered an elixir called Maria Treben's 'Swedish Bitters'. You can get this from the Health Food Store. Just saturate cotton wool/small amount of kitchen towel with it and place it on the abcess. I finally had a good nights sleep. I've only applied it once today (at 09:00) and it's now 19:00 and I'm able to cope. The selling comes down and it deals with the pain too as well as cleaning the wound.

Tastes like c**p but worth the minor discomfort. I can finally go back to work tomorrow! rating: 5 (6 votes) Submitted by CC at 2009-01-20 23:19:48 First I wanted to Thank everyone who left some wonderful info here. This site has really helped. when I woke up this morning the left side of my face was swollen because of an infection with an abscessed tooth (I'll be calling the dental clinic tomorrow, but it takes forever to get in)... This is what I did and it really worked... 1) Advil 800 (help with the pain in swelling) 2)rinsed with some hydrogen peroxide, then with listerine (helps clean the infection also with the pain) 3) dry tea bag (green tea) on the infected arean 4) I put a heat pack on my face (easy way to make one at home put some (uncooked) rice in a sock and tie it off warm in the microwave 1-2min then place it where ever you hurt) after about 20 min with the tea bag i took it out the abscess wasn't ready to drain yet. 5) I took some fresh garlic, crushed up a clove and placed it directly on the infected area (Warning: it will burn like there is no tomorrow but it really really works) after about 5min i was able to drain the abscess (it might take a little longer for different people) I felt relief right away, it was still sore but so so much better. After i finished draining the abscess rinsed my mouth out with water then. 6) brushed my teeth with peroxide and backing soda 7) Rinsed my mouth out with listerine 8) I took some Vitamin C 1000mg I feel nearly 100% better!!!!! Also to help draw out any more infection I put a new tea bag on the infected area, and laid down with the heating pad for bout 45min..... I hope this helps.. Good luck to everyone..... rating: 5 (9 votes) Submitted by Amber at 2009-04-06 22:31:00 Reading this site actually helped me, but in the past this is what I have done: Take some sort of IB Profin or Tylenol Brush teeth Rinse mouth with a salt + water solution

(Or rinse with listerine) This is usually only a temporary fix for me, but I cant get my dental work done right now because I'm pregnant. (I need oral surgery because the infected tooth is in my sinus cavity and that sucks) If this is able to help anyone out, I am glad I could help! :) rating: 5 (3 votes) Submitted by Teri at 2009-06-05 16:38:44 The pain I have is mostly in the jaw ear and neck area. My husband said a pharmacist told him to use sudafed. It made sense that it would help dry up sinuses and relieve some of the pressure so I tried it and it did help. Be careful though if you have other health issues like high blood pressure, heart disease, etc. rating: 5 (3 votes) Submitted at 2009-09-22 00:04:45 No pain in the tooth before they did 'preventive' care and filled some small decay. 6 months, a file down, medicated filling and permanent filling later and I'm look at a root canal. I took four ibuprofen just now with no results. So I got some garlic powder mixed it with water to paste like consistency and laid it on top of the tooth. Instant relief. Nasty taste but it doesn't even begin to compare to the pain. Pack some rolled up pieces of paper towel around it and it is like the lingering taste of garlic bread. rating: 5 (3 votes) Submitted at 2011-05-18 20:01:15 aspirin, crush it, put in on your tooth. the only short relief i've felt in hours of throbbing, sobbing pain. rating: 5 (6 votes) Submitted by Just a man at 2006-05-10 08:32:20 In a blender preferrably or shaken up if a blender is not available. Take a pint of vodka and a heaping tablespoon of minced garlic. (not garlic paste) but mushy garlic and mix together. It's best if it's left for a few days in the refrigerator but for immediate relief, at least an hour. Then either use your finger or a Q-tip and dip into the liquid. Place directly on the abcessed tooth, dry socket or just painful area to include the gum. This method told to me by a medecine man is used by tweekers alot because their teeth are rotting from the drugs. Sounds wierd but this method worked wonders for me on my dry socket and it was almost instantaneous. Ok well I hope it works for you rating: 5 (16 votes) Submitted by sleepless in Chicago at 2010-05-19 18:26:46 Alcohol in any form, wine, mouthwash, Nyquil, etc - who knew this old wives tale worked so well especially with nerve pain. It seems to anesthetize the area on contact. Next must go to dentist you can actually die from an abcessed tooth at very least have infected tooth pulled before it spreads to the rest of your teeth. See following excerpt... Untreated tooth abscess is very dangerous. If abscessed tooth left untreated, the tooth infection can spread and you can lose your tooth or have other health problems. Left untreated, tooth abscess may compromise the immune system and in some cases may

become life-threatening. A tooth abscess complication includes tooth loss, jaw bone damage, neighboring tooth damage or loss, sinus problems, brain abscess, heart damage, hospitalization, coma, and even death. Some more tooth abscess complications that have been very much explained already: Facial Disfigurement as it eats away the facial bones; teeth falling out as the tooth abscess destroys the jaw holding the tooth; the picture is pretty gruesome. rating: 5 (10 votes) Submitted by Chelsea at 2011-01-11 23:32:39 My problem: I had a molar that was beginning to abscess. When I went to the dentist, the freezing did not take to my tooth, so he was only able to put a temp filling, until I get the root canal. It is now 3 days until my actual dentist appointment and the pain has come back with a vengeance. I have not been able to eat all day, or close my mouth fully. I was BARELY able to spit after brushing my teeth, I was almost to the point of tears trying. The pain was so bad, I could feel it through the whole side of my face and my ear was killing me. Up until an hour ago, I actually felt that I would just die. I have a heart condition, so any medications such as ibuprofen, midol etc, were out of the question. I read every single page in here (all 32 of them!). What I TRIED: - Onion - Tea Bag - Vicks Vapo - Vanilla Extract - Warm salt water

What WORKED 100%: I sliced a garlic clove and held a piece of it in my mouth for about 20 minutes, between my cheek and the tooth. I switched pieces and held a new one there for about 5 minutes. Just a note - it is not the loveliest taste, and it may feel like its burning a little. But NOTHING as bad as what you are going through. This is TOTALLY worth it. Just keep holding it there, after a few minutes the taste etc will not bother you. At this point I have had virtually zero pain for one hour now. Even if this is not a full fix until Friday - It has taken the pain away long enough for me to be able to grab a bite to eat and will be able to fall asleep. PLEASE TRY THIS if you are in a large amount of pain. Please do NOT try to break the abscess yourself. This is absolutely the WORST advice someone could possibly ever give. Without proper antibiotics to kill the germs (after the abscess has broken) the bacteria will go into your blood stream. This is POISON and can lead to way bigger problems down the road. I am so sorry for the people who are in so much pain right now :( I understand and I am right there with you! I wanted to just take my head right off! And I am so sorry for the Americans who do not have dental insurance. I cannot even imagine! I am in

Canada, and although it is not 100% free for the dentist, the bill definitely will not put someone into bankruptcy. I am very thankful for this site, or I would have never even thought to try Garlic - Thank you SO much. Just please be very cautious about some of the remedies that are mixing prescriptions on top of NyQuil etc. rating: 5 (17 votes) Submitted by Mels miracle cure at 2011-04-26 01:11:44 If you dont have the money to get medical attention, this is a micacle cure. Hit up your local natural food store. To het instant relief from the pain, clove oil will be a miracle or relief. NO pain the instant you apply it. Afterr using it a day or so it will kill the nerve. Second to help fight the infection get Echinacea and goldenseal drop. It seems to work the same as an antibiotic!!!!!! rating: 5 (11 votes) Submitted by pdc at 2011-04-11 04:59:17 baby orajel works wonders rating: 5 (15 votes) Submitted by beertraveler42 at 2007-07-23 21:20:34 I was looking for a home remedy for a tooth abscess and came a cross this site. I read and figured why not give them a try. Here was my solution: Combine 1/2 baking soda and 1/2 salt moisten a cotton ball or a small wad 0f TP or Paper towel mouisten and roll in the dry mixture put between tooth and gum. I repeated this a few times as the taste is a bit unbearable. In between my packing my mouth I swished around peroxide and also sucked on a t-bag. Mind you i started this at 1pm and by 7pm a head had formed on the abscess and i streilized a sewing needle and pricked the head and the abscess in now draining. I feel wonderful. Not sure if it was one or all three of the remedies I tried but they work. Tonight when i go to bed I am going to suck on baking soda and salt to make sure i get the majority of the infection out. Hope this helps. rating: 5 (16 votes) Submitted at 2011-01-17 04:09:38 I have the worst tooth ache EVER!!! I tried all the OTC tooth ache stuff on the market. Ambesol, Orajel, Clove oil, Chloraseptic, brushing and nothing worked. I was fed up. Googled tooth ache pain and tried the vanilla extract. IT WORKED!!!!!! I can't believe something as simple as vanilla extract would work but it did. I have been out of pain for 30 minutes and it does not seem to be coming back. Thanks for the advice. rating: 5 (13 votes) Submitted by Rin at 2010-12-14 01:10:21 I have a broken tooth, and was in severe pain not even an hour ago... i tried ibuprofen, fioricet that I have for a recent head injury, orajel, salt water, vanilla extract and bread. What FINALLY relieved the pain was placing a dry teabag on the area, biting down

and putting a hot towel on my face. Seems to have worked! No pain right now, but if it does start up again I will get a teabag! rating: 5 (9 votes) Submitted at 2011-06-29 18:45:33 A few weeks ago I had very,very ache pain = hole in my teeth+abscess= my whole cheek was as big as a balloon, I could not sleep and had tears in my eyes, Medications didn't work to release me from my pain and the infection (Big balloon)abscess!So I went to the dentist and asked him to be not gentile with my abscess!(Normally they wait for the medications to reduce the abscess, ha ha ! on my request He took a perforated needle(tube) and slammed into my abscess with a vacuum-er attached to it!! No more infections for me!!I penetrate the infection!! Painfully but very effective rating: 5 (9 votes) Submitted at 2009-02-08 20:28:35 Tea Tree Oil. I never heard of it until I had encountered it here. Folks say to use it for a bad toothache. I looked and found it in my local Wal*Mart store (Pennsylvania, USA) The brand name is 'Spring Valley'. It cost me $ 7.66 USD for 2 fluid ounces. Here is some of the WARNING quoted from the back of the bottle: ' .... Avoid contact with eyes, nose, mouth, inner ear, or other tender areas. Do not use on children or animals.' 'For external use only. Do not ingest...' It is a natural antiseptic. rating: 5 (5 votes) Submitted at 2009-03-16 23:09:39 Over the weekend I developed gum swelling and pain around my last molar, usually a sign of infection..ugh. I took a sterile pad (that dentists use after pulling teeth) and soaked it in vodka. Folded it to fit in my mouth and left it for a half hour on top of the tooth/gum. This will draw out the infection and ease the pain :) Only do this every couple of hours for a half hour and should take the infection away until you see a dentist. rating: 5 (5 votes) Submitted by Fabian at 2010-08-05 20:34:39 Ok this is no joke .... If you are in pain, follow me. I have always had problems with my teeth since I was little. I want you to know, what I did worked for me. First and foremost, there is a company that sells a product called 'Hurricaine'. It is about 10 times better than Oragel. I bought about 5 jars; they are $15 a jar. I found them on Amazon. They have many flavors but cherry is my favorite. Ok, lets say you don't have the time to wait for shipping and all that you want is relief now. I

have killed the nerve on about 10 different teeth on 10 occasions, no lie. Kill the nerve and the pain will end. GO TO YOUR LIQUOR STORE AND BUY Bacardi 151; IF DONE RIGHT IT WILL KILL THE NERVE. A) SORE TOOTH ON THE BOTTOM OF YOUR MOUTH: You can do one of two things. 1) Fill a cup with some Bacardi 151 and hold it on the problem tooth (OR SEE PART B regarding the eye dropper). Count as long as you can stand (DONT DRINK ANY! IT WILL BURN YOUR THROAT AND CHEST BADLY!). Now spit and repeat (this will dry your mouth and burn your tongue the first time). However, don't drink any fluids (i.e. water, soda, etc.)! Just hold your head over a sink and wait. You will drool a lot. As soon as you can, do it again. You will notice it's not that bad the second time around versus the first. Try again--if done right, you will feel a small pop or hear a slight fizz and the pain is gone. Once this happens, you will notice the pain is gone for good after the 151 wears off. This can also be done just to aleviate pain as well, but it won't last a very long time.

B) SORE TOOTH ON TOP OF YOUR MOUTH: GO TO YOUR LIQUOR STORE AND BUY Bacardi 151. This can be done if the tooth is on the top or bottom; however we are focusing on the top of your mouth. Go buy an eye dropper. Lay on your couch or floor with a pillow for neck support. You have to try to position your head upside down as though you were dripping onto the bottom tooth. Open mouth and start dripping onto problem tooth. DON'T JUST DRIP ONE OR TWO DROPS. CONTINUE TO DRIP, allowing a continuous flow of drops to hit in the exposed area. Think of it as a rainfall--steady

drops of rain no less than 1 second apart. After the dropper is empty, SPIT AND REFILL. Continue until you kill the nerve. I HOPE THIS HELPS YOU ALL. THERE IS NOTHING WORSE THAN A BAD TOOTH ACHE THAT JUST WON'T SHUT UP. When you can SEEK DENTAL HELP, DO SO. THIS IS NOT A FIX FOR THE PROBLEM, JUST THE PAIN. rating: 5 (10 votes) Submitted by Leila at 2010-12-22 11:05:28 Ok, I'm pregnant so I couldn't do many of the things that were suggested. Thank God for this site tho b/c my tooth was pretty much killing me! Who knew vineger, vanilla extract, and a lime would work wonders?! I'm so thankful that I had all those ingredients in my pantry/fridge last night. First I did a light rinse with the vineger, then I used a Q-tip dipped in the vanilla and dapped it on the tooth that was going to be the death of me, then finally I sliced a lime and placed it on the painful area and the pain subsided IMMEDIATELY!!! I promise! God is so good! Thank u sweet baby Jesus! I was praying and crying all night prior to this site! Lol. rating: 5 (15 votes) Submitted by kia at 2011-01-10 00:41:34 omggg , this is the most relief i felt since this toothache kickd in !i used every remedy that everybody has posted.. & they all worked. these things worked better than percription painkillers & tylenol. kinda hard to believe they didnt do any relief at all .. & these i [ay no attention to did. first i rinsed my mouth with mouthwash , made greentea poured salt in the cup w. the bag & squeezd the bag on the effected area , tossed the tea bag. then put vanilla extract & vinegar mixed in with the tea and rinsed my mouth with that. then put toothpaste in the hurting part ,, rinsed again .. then packed the area with bread ! now im pain free .. i hope this can help somebody that is sufferingg ! rating: 5 (5 votes) Submitted by Winnie at 2011-07-27 04:14:52 ALEVE! :) It worked for me. Take two tablets and after 10-15 minutes the pain should be gone. And put a warm cloth on the side where your tooth hurts to prevent further pain! rating: 5 (5 votes) Submitted at 2007-04-30 19:49:48 What does your dentist give you for the infection?(most tooth aches are infections) Penicillin the next best thing is natures penicillin Garlic. It works for the pain but might make you smell like garlic. Take 1,000-4,000 MG Thats what works for me. Doesnt always work on the spot might take a couple of hours Depending how bad the pain is or goto a Helth food store and ask what they recommend.

rating: 5 (6 votes) Submitted by Patti at 2010-01-23 21:09:49 If your toothache is from an infection instead of eating garlic or putting it in the tooth, go to a vitamin store and get garlic pills. It is a natural antibiotic and will take away the infection and the pain. I start by taking 8 the first day to bombard it. It won't be instant pain relief but while doing these remedies take garlic pills to get rid of the infection..it works all the time! About two days and the infection is gone. rating: 5 (6 votes) Submitted at 2010-10-13 04:00:22 I have had many dental problems. With and without insurance. And like most of you, I am scared to go to the dentist. Right now I am fighting a toothache at 3:54am after waking up at 3:00am in severe pain. This is what works for me. Medicated: 2 advil and 2 tylenol, sometimes taking a third advil This helps with the pain, though it never completely goes away. And I wouldnt suggest it, its a lot of medication and if I have a toothache for several days I will get an upset stomach from the medication. Naturally: My favorite thing that work for me (in no order) Rice bag for heat Abstract (doesnt matter what flavor, the more alcohol the better thats the purpose of the abstract) Brushing/Flossing/Mouthwashing Taking a warm shower and letting the warm water run over your tooth. Taking your mind off the pain Garlic capsules (they are a natural anti-biotic) Warm liquids such as tea and coffee or even room temp water. When I have a toothache like now, usually I take some asprin, rub abstract (I use almond), heat up a rice bag and sit tight till I feel some relief. It hasnt come yet... rating: 5 (6 votes) Submitted by Keelley at 2011-01-23 10:44:54 Oh My god, I have been in agony for 2 days, last night i had no sleep and today i have been crying all day from the pain. This is my 3rd absessed tooth in five years. I have already had two root canals which although we are told they are painless they are excrutiating. I have been to the doctors and was given strong painkiller and

antibiotics.... nothing worked. Came on this site and whoala!!! I haver just tried 3 things swilling with warm salt water. swilling with antiseptic mouth wash and garlic cloves, the swilling did relieve pain but as soon as i placed garlic cloves on was amazing after 10 minutes the painful throbbing had gone and i was in no pain. I am still going dentist tomorrow knowing from my previous absesses that the pain will return if i dont get it sorted. But thank you to this site!! rating: 5 (7 votes) Submitted by Kyle at 2011-02-09 05:19:21 Here is my situation, bad genetics run in my family for not so great teeth. I brush twice a day religously. Yet, my molars break off piece by piece. I have no insurance to help mitigate expenses. Anyway, it does get to the point where the tooth will rot away till a nerve is exposed, gross I know. But it is to prove I know the intensity of tooth pain, til it makes you wanna bunch up into a ball on a bed or couch and bust out balling. Then I break down and go have it pulled at a 100 bux a tooth. Anyway, this one measure has helped me out for the last 3 years or so. Its a combination of Water and 'Orajel Antiseptic Mouth Sore Rinse 16 fl oz bottle', white in color and cost around 8-9 bux, and Wal Mart does carry it. I swish my mouth vigorously with cold water a couple three times and stop periodically to hold pressure against affected tooth. Then poor a little bit of the Orajel mouth rinse into the cap, about to the 2nd or 3rd thread and swish vigorously for about 2-3 minutes, every so often pause with pressure on affected tooth and let it sit and foam and swish around some more. Then spit, keep a cup near by to continue spitting, some how the spitting repeatedly helps me. I've found personally that acetaminphen or excedrin helps me greatly vs ibuprofen or aleve. I usally will pop 4-5 of acetaminphen at once or 3 excedrin, as I am a big guy, 6' 4' bout 300 lbs just for the record. With the Orajel mouth rinse it may take up 4-5 rinse cycles to kick in but it really does work for me. Fortunately, I've been prescribed for vicodin due to low back troubles. But the vicodin doesn't always help. I hope this helps out someone, as this remedy has helped more than once, especially when I needed to go to sleep. rating: 5 (14 votes) Submitted at 2010-12-03 11:06:02 Take 2 suphedrine pe for sinus headache. You can get these at Walmart, and they help with pain and pressure. Take 2 Ibuprofen Wash mouth out with Vodka. Hold it in there as long as you can. It numbs the area, reduces pain. And its fast! rating: 5 (8 votes) Submitted by monica at 2011-01-12 12:58:52 i have tryed every thing from cinnimin to sulfer. i had 2 impacted wisdom teeth, 2 that were growing upside down (growing in root first) and an abscested tooth that had an abscest on it about the side of two pencil eracers. well i couldnt close my mouth the whole way or eat correctly. i dumbed the pain with a little high quality homemade alachol (dont recamend) till i got the insurence to get the wisdom tooth taken out. the pain later on from the abscest went away but came back 10 fold later. by the time i finally caved my skinny little face was about the size of a softball or bigger. balling and screaming for days i tryed it all. my insurence lapsed with out notification. i called my

mom who loaned me the 150 to have it taken care of. the dentist wanted to know if i wanted a root canal ($900) or to remove the tooth($150). i said which is the best option while i was balling. he said if i went with the root canal it would subside the pain but id be back in less then 3 years to have the tooth removed. i was in that much pain that i said yank it. he shot me up with 7 full needles of novacane. i still felt the pain. i cryed and cryed. i could feel him twisting and pulling at the tooth. then nothing. no pain. i felt like a million bucks besides the fact that i had a mouth filled with blood and a missing tooth. the swelling of my mouth came down within the hour. i would rather go though a painful pregnancy again then what i expirenced with my tooth. i always flossed, brushed and did mouthwash. i will affect any clean or dirty mouth. in my expirence there is no natural cure for an abscesed tooth. just bite the dust and pay for a tooth removal. your not going to be eating for a while anyway. utilitie companys will understand, so will morgage companys and even landlords. if they dont you have full justification and will win any law suit. just make sure you let them know ahead of time. also get a drs. note. its imparative you do so to win your case. as well as save the tooth for evidence believe it or not. i hope this is more valuable to you. side note grab an empty 2liter bottle and fill it with hot not boiling water and place it on the side that hurts if you have to drive or walk. it will make it a little (very little) barable to get there. rating: 5 (8 votes) Submitted by dave_h at 2011-03-25 17:08:03 I hope all you folks using the home abcess remedies as something to tide you over for a brief time just until you get to the dentist. I carried around a pair of bad wisdom teeth for a bit, and let me tell you there is no answer better than appropriate medical help. Turned out I had abcesses with both of them, and in the few days before I went to the dentist, nothing worked to alleviate the pain. rating: 5 (8 votes) Submitted at 2007-08-08 18:36:58 Garlic, Garlic, Garlic- I have an abscessed tooth and the pain just kept getting worse. I tried swishing with salt water, OTC mouth pain medicines, pain relievers, Advil, Aleve, Tylenol, etc. BUT, within a minute after chewing a small piece of a garlic clove directly with my affected tooth, the pain is gone and the itching is gone. I'm waiting to see how long it lasts, but so far it's been an hour and no pain!! rating: 5 (18 votes) Submitted at 2010-09-02 02:07:29 my tooth was in terrible pain the whole night with the lack of sleep i was getting from crying in agonizing pain. i found that if you hold a piece of chewing tobacco on the gum it numbs it enough to get to the store for a stronger suggestion. Hope it helps rating: 5 (9 votes) Submitted by W.C. at 2011-05-20 23:26:51 I have had severe tooth pain for months waiting to get into an apt with the dentist. Here is a list of things that worked the best for me. First of all the more you can relax, the less pain you will have. Second, pop an excedrin migraine or equate headache relief which is the genaric brand, followed by 400 mg of ibprophen, add an alive, and make sure you take with something carbonated. Third, gentley brush your teeth with a non whitening

toothpaste. Fourth rinse mouth with a mix of peroxide and water, which I warn you tastes gross, but helps. Finally pop into a nice relaxing bath or shower. Within 20 to thirty mins you will be pain free for about 6 to eight hours. rating: 5 (10 votes) Submitted by mac at 2011-05-22 19:34:22 I had a severe abcessed tooth and my home remedy was a gauz saturated with honey, and a ice pack on the affected cheek. The honey draws the moisture and the bacteria out of the tooth and the ice pack reduces the swelling. Swelling gums will cause other teeth aroung the affected abcess tooth to join in on the pain party, hence double trouble. Honey gauz pad and ice was more effective than the two 800 mg of ibuprofen. rating: 5 (11 votes) Submitted by Honestyz*Mommie*Tae at 2011-07-02 04:19:10 I had a filling in my back tooth tht fell out & is making that whole side of my mouth hurt. I since my mouth really good maybe 3 times with salt water warm salt water. Make sure I get any food stuck in that hole out. Tonite the pains worse then usual. I rinsed a good 3xs for lke 30 seconds each or so. Thn I put a little garlic powder on were it hurtz took a midol & filled the hole with a temporary feeling which I bought from cvs im sure you can find at Walmart as well or any local drug store. The feeling helps a lot last for hours & itz a tiny bottle about $4. But itz north it cz a tooth ach in my experience has to be the most horrible pain I can think of. I hope that helps someone. Goodluck. rating: 5 (11 votes) Submitted by Mon at 2010-06-04 03:34:28 Ok, I have a toothache is mainly my wisdom tooth -- no insurance can't have it taken out right now. It hurts so much at night. I have tried the vanilla extract, rinsing mouth with salt/Pepper, ice, tea bag, brushing teeth, etc. Nothing works here's what does: I kid you not, I had really bad pain that would keep me up until 3am. I read this on a site written by dentist overseas. Ready for the simple solution? Throat lozenges! That's right throat lozenges like Chloraseptic. The trick was to put the Strepsil next to the gum area of the tooth with the abscess, so that the antibacterial effect is as close to the infection as one can get it. With this tooth abscess home remedy, it is important to keep the lozenge in position for several hours, without sucking it. Another requirement of this home remedy for tooth abscess is to relocate the lozenge to the other side of the tooth abscess about every half hour. So, it's between the lip and gum for half the time and for the other half, the lozenge is between the tongue and the gum. BELIEVE ME IT WORKS! I noticed no more pain with in 2 lozenges. It's cheap and it WORKS! TRY IT!! rating: 5 (12 votes)

Submitted by AP at 2010-04-05 10:57:12 I had a tooth filling or shall i say gutted out then filled, but i dont think dentist did a good job because its about 5 maybe 6 months later & my tooth is killing me. Well simply as this seems, I just kept drinking water everytime I got a sensation of pain coming & I made it thru the day with ease, now everytime I stop the card I had to use the bathroom but at lease there was no pain. rating: 5 (15 votes) Submitted by marinepoolie0 at 2011-03-05 22:22:58 i Have had me left k-9 and the premolar behind it pulled. now my right premolar and the molar behind it and the bottem back molar have been killing me. i have been staying up because i simply cant sleep. i tried tylenol, later tried a hydro, tried orajel, teabags,salt water, hot rag. finally I tried the peanut butter. they said to spread it on your gums. i did and had some extra on a spoon so i just ate it. this helped immediately rating: 5 (17 votes) Submitted by Sister Luke at 2011-07-11 18:28:09 In my experience, the best home remedy bar none is carbamide peroxide, used as directed, don't over do. Don't use regular peroxide, it is not the same at all! It can be hard to find, if the first drugstore doesn't have it keep trying, it comes in a 'squirt bottle' kind of like nasal spray. It doesn't work instantly, but you will get real improvement by the third or fourth use, so keep it up. It has kept me going with a two teeth half gone for three years, until now that is! I use it every day. Never put anything hot, like a hot water bottle or heating pad on your face with a toothache as it will make the swelling MUCH worse!!! Swish warm salt water in your mouth, but no heat on your face! I learned this one the hard way and ended up looking like Droopy Dog, or so I was told. If you have lost a filling, clean the cavity well and fill with temporary filling you can get at the drugstore, that will do a lot for the pain. Be careful with the numbing ointments and alcohol too, as many people (me included) get rebound reactions, the pain gets much worse after their use, so I stay away from them. You want the nerve to calm down, those things can really get the nerve excited and that is not what you want! Take two Advil, nothing else even comes close for me, so far as pain relievers go. I have a serious dental phobia but I come by it honestly. When I was a kid I had a dentist who only gave me Novocain when my mom took me (she never did) and would jab me with the drill if I moved in the chair when he hit a nerve! My Mother did not believe me, she thought he was such a nice old man! To add insult to injury I have ankylosis (sp?) which made my back teeth almost impossible to pull. Once I went into shock and they had to take me to the hospital! Don't you just love going to the dentist? Right now I am nursing a huge abscess, and am doing self hypnosis on the ipod twice a day to hopefully get me to the dentist on Friday, praise God the free clinic gave me an appointment. The self hypnosis worked like a charm for my fear of public speaking, so I am praying it will at least help me make it into the chair! rating: 5 (17 votes) Submitted at 2007-02-12 09:03:51 For immediate pain relief apply clove powder or oil of clove directly to the affected tooth. Obtain sore-throat spray containing phenol and spray locally around the tooth gum area & allow to soak in, this will help relieve the infection. Or,rinse with a mixture of a little salt and hydrogen peroxide (a pinch NaCl to Tbsp H2O2 is enough),this also

relieves the infection-sometimes for a long time. Not permanent, but good temporary put-off. See a dentist before the root bed deteriorates and the tooth needs extraction. rating: 5 (6 votes) Submitted by Skye Milo at 2007-03-08 07:23:40 If you are unfortunate enough - like myself - to have an abcessed cracked molar (or tooth) but are unable to go to the dentist to have it taken care of, here's what I found to be very helpfull. You need: - 1 small water glass - 1 pair of pointy tweezers - cotton balls - salt - Tea Tree oil Boil (!!) some water and fill half of the glass. Pour some of the water over the tip of the tweezers to sterilize. Add 1 tsp of salt. Stir until salt is disolved. Add cold water (preferably from store bought water since this is likely to be less germ infested) so it's still hot but drinkable and 1 to 2 drops of Tea Tree oil. Rinse your mouth - making sure to rinse specifically around the abcessed molar/tooth and spit out. Repeat this several times and also gurgle in order to kill of any germs in the back of your throat and mouth. Do NOT swallow!!! Leave some water in the glass. Add some of the boiled water to heat up the salt/Tea Tree solution. Take a small amount of cotton and roll into ball, then place it between the tip of the tweezers. Dip the cotton in the solution and pack your molar/tooth so the cotton comes in contact with the infected area. Use several small packings until your molar/tooth is filled. If the abcess is on the outside of your molar/tooth (on the gumline) pack the side of your mouth so the cotton stays in place. Leave the packing anywhere from 1 to 3 hours and then remove it. Repeath the whole procedure several times a day, making sure to rinse your mouth inbetween to get rid of any infected material that drains from the abcess. And trust me, it WILL drain! Make sure you DO brush your teeth at least twice a day to keep everything clean. Place 1 drop of Tea Tree oil on your toothbrush in addition to the toothpaste. You can do this as well if the abcess has disappeared to lower the risk of any teeth becoming infected again. Rinsing with water and 1-3 drops of tea Tree oil aslo works very preventative. rating: 5 (14 votes) Submitted by Mimi at 2007-12-20 09:38:55 Many things can help with an abcess as you wait to go to the dentist.It IS important to get to the dentist as tooth infections can go into the jawbone and/or facial tissue and even impact/infect other parts of the body. One, drink organic vinegar in water ( 2 TBS in large-ish glass of water) it is an antibacterial and overall health tonic. We drink it daily.

Make a mouthwash of warm water and organic cider vinegar. Swhish and hold in mouth. Salt water works, too. I have used a green tea tea bag on the abcessed gum tissue. it does bring the poison forward---you then look like you have a blood blister.I hold the tea bag ont the spot by wedging it in between lup and gums. Tea tree oil works very well as an antibacterial and so does oregano oil. Both burn, in my experience the oregano oil burns quite a lot but again, it is anti microbial and very good to prevent and/or treat infections.Oregano oil can be taken in water in small amounts. Colloidial silver is also a very effective mouth rinse and can be taken internally and does not taste bad at all. All these things can be obtained at a health food store. rating: 5 (1 votes) Submitted by an4rew at 2007-07-17 22:25:09 Rinse tooth with baking soda then crush one paracetamol tablet and pack the cavity. rating: 5 (1 votes) Submitted by lori at 2008-08-20 19:49:14 for an absessed tooth, my grandmother used to do this, take a rasin run it under hot water till it plumps up, then put pepper on the rasin, and aply the rasin to the absessed tooth, it will draw the absessed out of the tooth rating: 5 (1 votes) Submitted at 2008-11-24 23:42:55 chlorhexidine solution!!!!! for those of you fortunate enough to get to the dentist, ask him for some and keep it on hand. mine came with a refill and a shelf life of a year. knocked my pain out instantly. rating: 5 (3 votes) Submitted by pat at 2008-12-14 21:46:09 This worked great for me,mix baking soda,sea salt,peroxide,add a drop of tea tree oil, drop of goldenseal,then soak it on a cotton ball ,place it on the gums close to the affect tooth, keep it there for a hour or so. then you can rinse your mouth with sea salt water. then take vitiam c 1000mg & garlic 1000mg ,this is to kill the infection internally. the swelling around my tooth was down in about two hrs. pain relief was almost immediate. I will continue this routine for a day or so , till the infection & pain are gone. good luck to all! rating: 5 (8 votes) Submitted by Heidi at 2009-01-15 12:36:33 I have really bad teeth and have used every suggestion that may have been suggested to me. I found that placing a tea bag (I wet it first) as close as you can to bothersome tooth will indeed decrease your pain. I put the tea bag in and then a hot rag on the outside of my cheek and normally I fall asleep and by the time I wake up (whatever the duration may be) I feel a lot better. Tea bags may not be good for your teeth as coffee isn't but I hope this helps someone because a tooth pain is AWFUL. rating: 5 (1 votes)

Submitted by Robert at 2009-04-02 17:45:36 I herd that back in civil war days when soilders got shot and they had no antibiotics or anitibiotics was n't working and a soilder was infected and about to loose a leg or arm,they smeard honey on the wound and saved the leg or arm.Bacteriea can not live in honey...I had mold spores get in my eyes while working under a house,my eyes started watering,burned like fire and swold shut,I rubbed honey in them,straight on the eyeballs,waited a few minutes and repeated,after 2nd treatment I was watching tv with no pain in the eyes...I now have an abscess tooth,been hurting for 4-5 daynow,can't even get descent sleep,tried all kinds of home remedies.I used my finger and rubbed honey on it 2-3 times and at first it hurt a few seconds,then the pain stopped.I already knew that honey kills bacteria,I had 6 bee hives but,had to sell them,after years of getting stung and no problems I suddenly turned allergic to bee stings and had to sell them but,I still know about and use honey,one of God's true miricales!..Try it!!!Rub honey on your tooth and gums a couple of times and see if it don't stop. rating: 5 (5 votes) Submitted by ladona at 2009-04-04 18:40:21 i am suffering from 3 broken teeth . and for some reason pain pills do not work all the time . i have also been using ore- gel .i have found if you wet a cloth in ex streamly hot water and apply to the face. where tooth pain is .repeat when rag gets cold . keep doing so 3 or 4 times it will help with the pain. i think because when the cold hits it ,it makes the pain worse . rating: 5 (3 votes) Submitted at 2009-06-23 05:18:35 i have had infected tooth since new years,i used white vinager,swish around bad tooth,(3-4times or more)as many times as you can stand.spit out each time.when you cant stand the tast,put lots peanut butter{cake it on). i used about 1 cup of vinager,finger loaded with peanut butter. i did this just before 4am,it is 6:15am.made me feel better.good luck, rating: 5 (1 votes) Submitted at 2009-07-08 16:48:34 I was desperate for relief, like most everyone on this post I have no INS. and no money and our ER will not deal with draining abscesses. I tried the pin solution and after several pokes I did get it to bleed a bit but that is all and it did not lessen the swelling. I am on antibiotics ( thanks for the vet supply info)and will weight to see if after a few days the swelling goes down. I did follow instructions but guess I didn't hit the right spot. If someone can please explain how to find it I am listening. rating: 5 (4 votes) Submitted at 2009-10-06 12:22:33 This may sound crazy but I know that it works especially on abcessed teeth. Get a tea bag wet and put in on the gums surrounding the tooth that is giving you trouble, kinda like how you do with a thing of snuff, it taste awful, but you do get a relief from the pain. Also, a pinch of wintergreen or mint skoal helps to relieve the pain of a regular toothache but not for very long. rating: 5 (1 votes) Submitted by Marilyn at 2009-11-02 14:34:58

hi, I had a wisdom tooth extracted today. I had the pain for almost a month, but could not narrow it down to that tooth until a couple days ago. I used MMS (Miracle Mineral Supplement), which was discovered by Jim Humble, to manage the pain. I had it on hand, as I was on the maintenance drops for health. Then I saw that it can alleviate tooth pain, and it really did! It's very inexpensive. I advise anyone with any mouth pain to research this for themselves, and keep in their medicine cabinet. Good Luck! rating: 5 (4 votes) Submitted by Bev at 2009-11-30 10:27:28 In my search for Vanilla Extract as suggested I found only Immitation Vanilla but I did have Almond Extract.. So I thought well what the heck and OMG... I put my finger to the mouth of the bottle and wet it with the Almond Extract.. Rubbed that on the tooth and instantly I felt relief. rating: 5 (2 votes) Submitted at 2009-11-29 22:44:59 I've been writhing in pain for the last couple of days with tooth pain. I've grown immune to benzocane in fact it almost seems to make it worse. I have been using Listerine antiseptic today for break through pain. This works GREAT!! I swish about half a mouthfull all over the affected area and get almost instant relief. but there is a downside... the pain comes back about every half hour for most of the day but has subsided this evening. Also taking acetomeniphen 1500mg about every 2-3 hours. Doesnt really seem to help all that much. but for INSTANT RELIEF I used the Listerine Antiseptic (the nasty tasteing stuff) feels like my mouth is on fire but it kills the pain fast!! just make sure its not cold when I put it on affected area. If its potentialy too cold i hold it in my mouth before swishing it.... hope this helps best of luck rating: 5 (1 votes) Submitted by Toothless at 2010-01-07 09:33:07 Hadnt been to the dentist for about 10 years up until today. They're too scary and too expensive! However, after reading all 17 pages of these remedies, it scared me into taking a trip down to the dentist today! Glad i did it! She confirmed that i did indeed have an abscess. Prescribed some antibiotics... Supposed to take these things 3 times a day but so far, i've just taken 1 and the pain has gone! Gonna finish the pack though. Gotta get rid of my chipmunk cheek! So... For years, i've been having chronic toothaches. They usually end up causing earache, headache and sometimes my eye socket would hurt and my neck. Only ever on the side of the faulty tooth. I always found ibufrofen and a long hot shower would do the trick. Then after that stopped working, i found that crushing a garlic clove with salt and sticking that into the cavity would ease the pain for a little while. But you end up with garlic breath for a few days as its sometimes a bit difficult to get all the garlic out the hole. You're eating strawberry cheesecake and suddenly you get this strong taste of garlic invading your mouth as it randomly falls out of a cavity. Not pleasant! Teabags made me throw-up. Tried that method 3 times. Never again! Something about a 'raw' teabag in the mouth...

Saltwater rinses are only good for mild pain relief. Clove oil tastes absolutely rotten and doesnt really help in any way. Strong white rum is pretty good for numbing toothaches. Tastes good too! Regular table salt rubbed directly onto the affected gum area is probably the best option. It numbs the pain long enough for you to get to sleep. So i found ways to cure the pain temporarily, but not to kill the infection. I would say its always best to go to the dentist straight away. As i left it so long, i now have to have 5 teeth extracted and 2 fillings... Anyone got any good (cheap) soup recipes? rating: 5 (7 votes) Submitted by chunky at 2010-01-28 19:50:45 as i write this im in major pain. ive tried everything but but alot only works for a little while. my remedy:i took ibuprofen with a really cold glass of water and the water numbs the pain momenterilybut after drinking it about 4 to 5 glasses the pain and pressure go away. you have to drink it in small amounts like little sips rating: 5 (4 votes) Submitted by heather at 2010-03-30 01:37:38 I have been having a severe pain in my whole mouth for several months and tried the vanilla and the tylenol and the ibuprofen and the listerine and the orajel. Not all at once but one at a time. The severe pain orajel helped for a while and now it doesnt do much for long. I tried the vanilla and it helped a little, I also tried the peroxide to no avail. I just tried the listerine and it hasnt helped. the tylenol and ibuprofen dont last long. I think I`m going to head to the store for some cloves. Hope it works because now my ears are pulsing because of the pain. rating: 5 (8 votes) Submitted by dave at 2010-04-16 00:19:55 I have horrible teeth due to medication I was on for a while and the two things that help meare severe pain Orajel and Nuprin throat spray. Good luck trust me when I say I feel your pain.... rating: 5 (5 votes) Submitted by Abscessfreefornow at 2010-10-04 02:26:32 I've had problems with my teeth for about three years now and the dentist can be WAY over priced. The solution I've found for abscesses comes two fold. First, you have to get rid of the pain and second, you have to get rid of the bacteria causing the pain. To rid yourself of the pain, 800 mg of Ibuprofen will completely knock out the pain for roughly 3 to 4 hours, but it takes about half an hour to become effective. To relieve the pain while the ibuprofen is kicking in, I find that a thorough rinse with mouth wash followed by salt water and then the application of anbesol works great for the throbbing. To get rid of the bacteria, you will need an antibiotic. I am allergic to penicillin and amoxicillin so I've had to get creative on this one. Raw garlic contains a natural antibiotic but you have to eat a lot of it and it has to be raw. I find that 5 cloves is about the right amount. If you puree them and mix with honey and swallow as fast as you can once a day for a week, the infection should be gone. It takes about 2 days to really start seeing the

results. I know that eating raw garlic VERY hard for some people to do and it makes you stink like you wouldn't believe but it beats a $400.00 doctor visit to get a prescription for meds and it works just as well as amoxicillin. I hope this works for you as well as it does for me and gets you through the worst of the pain until you can get to the dentist to have that tooth pulled. I truly wish Good luck to all of you as I can attest that abscesses are about the worst pain you can go through! rating: 5 (5 votes) Submitted at 2010-10-11 17:57:41 I've literally tried everything but one thing that i found that works for me is a seasoning called lemon and herb by McCormick i used that and my toothache was gone after that. rating: 5 (11 votes) Submitted at 2011-02-12 18:51:58 I have had teeth problems for as far as i can remember. I used to have health Insurance but, getting older pays many prices. I like sweets every now and then, and because of this craving I have been developing abscessed teeth problems for a few months now and I had to figure something out! I'm not a fan of pain killers because I become too dependent, and the long term effects are not worth it. Drinking Chamomile or peppermint tea has always been able to calmed me down in times of stress and frustration. One day I decided to rest the tea bag on my accessed tooth. I did it at least 5 times a day for about three days and before I knew it my abscess was gone and I was eating without any pain. It really works, I would definitely recommend it and its one of the most natural ways to go. And I should also say STAY AWAY FROM TOO MUCH SUGAR! rating: 5 (14 votes) Submitted by holly at 2011-02-27 12:50:47 Ok so I had a severe toothache caused by an exposed nereve due 2 a completly brooke tooth. This remidy has worked 4 1 tooth have not had a chance 2 try it on my new toothache yet but here gose... 1 u need 2 get sum teething tablets they r all natural n impposiable 2 over dose on then u need 2 get sum cinimon toothpicks. Chew on the toothpicks on the affected side 4 about 5 min u may need more then 1 toothpick. The cinimon kills the nerve. Then u take about 10-15 teething tablets n rub ur gums down with sum gud old fashion burbon whiskey jack daniels or jim beam works best. Make a salt sock wich is jst wut it says a sock full of salt heat the salt up on the stove n a sauce pain 4 about 1 min n fill sock instan heating pad also works 4 earaches 2. Hold the salt sock on on ur cheek or use a warm rag make it as hot as u can stand it. I swear by this remidy I have not had a prob with that tooth since I used this method about 3 years ago. Gud luck I hope it helps n btw dentk sux it dosent stay in ur tooth n u can get sum orjel xtra strength qtips at 7-11 they will help 4 a cpl hours till u get get erything ready u need 4 this remedy. rating: 5 (11 votes) Submitted at 2011-04-26 06:05:36 This has worked well for me, in spite of the fact that I was experiencing a huge amount of pain and swelling. Use all of the below:

4 Ibuprofin tablets every 4 hours. Dosage is the equivelant of 2 perscription strength capsules. Use ibuprofin because it helps to relieve pain and it also reduces inflamation. Do not let it wear off, take every 4 hours. 2 childrens chewable tylenol tablets. Place these on the abcess and let them dissolve. The pain reliever is released directly to the site of the pain. You can do this up to 12 times in 4 hours. 3. 4 echinacea and 2 garlic tablets every 2 hours for the first 24 hours (both are 500 mg pills, so this is 2,000 mg's of the echinacea and 1,000 of the garlic). These are both natural antibiotics but you have to take a huge dose for the first day. Once you notice the actual infection starting to decrease cut back to 2 echinacea and 2 garlic every 2 hours. Then to every 4 hours after the third day, if you are still improving. Brush a lot and then rinse with an antiseptic moutwash throughout this treatment. The herbs and pain medicine may upset your stomach so take with some type of food. Yogurt is both helpful in relieving stomach upset and is easy to eat when you are in pain. rating: 5 (20 votes) Submitted at 2011-03-11 23:10:54 i know this is going to sound crazy cause i was up all night trying to figure out how to get my tooth to stop throbbing and so after trying every suggestion in the book it went to mixing stuff and this actually worked take and get your tooth brush wet and just dip it in baking soda then dip in salt after that brush on and around where the tooth is hurting and it will instantly take the pain away. rating: 4 (20 votes) Submitted by Romie at 2010-12-26 23:41:07 I used rubbing alcohol swihed some around in the hole as long as I could and rinsed with warm water believ it or not wow it helped? rating: 4 (19 votes) Submitted by Mike at 2008-02-04 17:36:14 The best remedy is mixing toothpaste and Anbesol on a toothbrush. Brush you teeth and rise it out with water. rating: 4 (12 votes) Submitted by Jasmine at 2010-11-05 20:44:07 ok, So I had a serious infection in my tooth and it was so bad that when I went to the dentist to have it extracted, he couldn't even take it out. He called it a 'hot tooth' meaning the infection was so deep. Long story short a week later, after two courses of amoxocillin, bottle of percocet and still im in horrible pain. Until a friend of mine told me to take one of my ibprofen pills and smash it up and add a little bit of water to make a paste and use a cotton swab to apply it to the hole in my tooth,and after just a little tiny bit of burning the pain went AWAY!! I will swear by the method for the rest of my life. Trust me this works and ive tried everything!! rating: 4 (11 votes)

Submitted by jessica at 2010-07-06 18:51:36 hi well ive had a toothache for about 3 months now but i cant aford denist so yesterday i woke up at about 3am and my tooth was killin i was screamin in pain so i went down staires found my dads dark rum 1st i brush my tooth with ice cold salty water then 2nd just a cap of rum i put it in my mouth n left it in there for 2 mins 3rd washd my mouth with denticlean to get rid of rum taste 4th get a hot water battle and put it under ur pillow in bed just to warm ur pillow up and i slept like a baby all night didnt wake up till 4 pm today was good becoz this tooth kept me up awake all night b4 rating: 4 (9 votes) Submitted by stacy at 2009-03-15 02:51:01 I've had severe toothache pain for almost 3 months. I can't afford a dentist on a single parent income when my bills exceed my income. I have tried the red cross stuff and nothing, this used to work wonders but not now. I've used orajel severe pain and nothing. I'm immune to it since i've used it so much. Ice packs don't work. Maximum strength tylenol don't work even when I take 4 every 6 hours. Ibouprofin don't work even after taking 3 of the 800mg ones. Massaging don't work, neither does the muscle reliever idea. Coke and diet coke don't work. I want to take a knife and pliers and cut it out myself but my boyfriend won't let me. Childbirth hurt less. What can I do now? I wish I could let my rent go to he** to get it pulled out I just want to die. rating: 4 (8 votes) Submitted by shellbell at 2010-12-09 19:15:16 I've tried just about all of these remedies! Nothing the Tylenol and advil..putting a peace of onion has worked for me..can't be leave I actually did it..but mouth pain is so unbearable I'll try anything! It does work..my dentist told me drinking coke cola is the worst soda u can drink..I drank 12 pack less 2 days no more fore me.. rating: 4 (8 votes) Submitted by Sam - South Africa at 2011-07-01 04:43:38 I really reccomend to go to the dentist, i left mine for too long and had to have it drained, plus i have to go back in a week and a half to have root canal. if for some reason you cant get to a dentist go and get antibiotics, cause if the infection goes too far it can affect your brain, which would have probably happened to me if i didnt go to the dentist. (also for those who are petrified of dentist, i am also one, but the only painful part for me was teh injection to numb afterwards i just closed my eyes and before i knew it he was done) rating: 4 (6 votes) Submitted at 2010-03-07 17:49:11 Well ya see the only way i take care of a decayed tooth is simply pull it or have someone pull it for you. works every time rating: 4 (5 votes) Submitted by Teri at 2011-01-31 17:27:46 Like many of you I couldn't afford a dentist. I had 3 teeth that had broken off at the gum line (root canals) and several teeth that at times would hurt so bad, I wished I had a gun to shoot my face off! I was sure that couldn't hurt as bad as my teeth were. I found one solution that always helped.

Pau D'arco. I would drink 3 or 4 cups of strongly made tea a day. As long as I drank that, the pain stayed away and it helped the infections. You can also get it on concentrated drops. Pau D'arco has many benefits but after years of bad teeth, this is the only thing that worked over long term. There is no pain like teeth pain, I so feel for all of you. If you can't afford a dentist, please give this a try. rating: 4 (14 votes) Submitted by Greg Dunphy at 2011-01-25 12:47:16 pepermint spirit food flavoring works in minutes and last for 4 to 5 hours use q-tip to apply but be carefull not to get it on your lip it burns, my pain on a scale of 1 to 10 was 15 and with in minutes of putting pepermint spirit on infected area pain level droppd to about 3 sleep soon took over, it worked. rating: 4 (9 votes) Submitted at 2008-11-08 14:21:05 I broke a tooth on tuesday Nov. 4 2008 and I belive the nerve is exposed.The pain is very severe,almost bring tears to my eyes.The pain started once every 5-6 hours and lasted a few minutes.Later in the week it became non stop.I had important things going on at work and could not take off to go to the Dentist.With my coverage I could not get an appointment until next week.I was using Ora-gel max every 10 minutes out of desperation{dosage is suppose to be once every 4 hours} when I came upon this web site.I read a post about Vanilla extract and gave it a try on a soaked Q-tip and held it on the tooth.The pain was gone in 30 seconds.I don't know at this point how long the pain will subside for, but it works for now.I think it's better then doing Ora-gel.The brand I am using is Spice Classics Pure Vanilla Extract.The broken tooth is 1 in from the wisdom tooth top right. Good luck rating: 4 (4 votes) Submitted by Tim Johnson at 2010-08-29 01:30:18 So I didn't have some of the things that people had on here to make your own paste, so I decided to try and make my own. I took 1 Advil 200mg and crushed it, 1 Motrin PM (to help me sleep) and crushed that, added a pinch of ginger, and a decent amount of sea salt and put it all into a small dish. I then added a few drops of Vanilla extract, and a few drops of mouthwash. I mixed it all together and then added a few drops of REALLY hot water. I took a Q-Tip and gathered some of the paste on it and packed the abcessed area with it, and then rubbed some on the inside and outside gums around the area. It seemed to take effect immediately, I also took about 1000 MG of Advil just prior to this as well as gargling salt water to clean the area. I'm not going to lie this mixture tastes awful, but I just let it sit in my mouth for a min or two and then spit it out. I then took a towel and got it wet and put it in my microwave for 15 seconds and put it on the abcessed side. Hope it works for you, it seems to have worked for me. rating: 4 (4 votes) Submitted by Sandy at 2005-11-03 01:44:52 I had an abcess due to a bad root canal. I couldn't stand the idea of this thing growing bigger and poisoning me while I waited for an appointment. I sterilized a razor with flame and isopropyl alcohol. Put a small incision so as to allow the puss to drain and spit continually until it was right down. I used peroxide on a cotton ball to between teeth and cheek to press on it making sure not

to swallow the peroxide. Check it repeatedly, when you need to spit, and stop when you see no more bubbling or the tissue is turning white. This white tissue will prevent the incision to reclose and provide a natural shunt to allow any further puss to be released. There is no danger in swallowing the puss, perhaps some nauseau (that might be psychological) but at any rate, spitting out frequently would make you feel better. The abcess did not come back for me although I did get a root canal of which had failed and turned out only a partial. Still did not get another abcess. Can't say your's won't come back...Sorry... rating: 4 (42 votes) Submitted by Mikki Blueyes at 2009-01-19 21:57:22 I tried a bunch of these and the tea bag one really worked for me, but the trick is you have to have patience!! It took an hour and a half (and 2 tea bags) before I got ANY relief but it did work. I tried ice and advil and tylenol 1's (with codeine) and I was still in screaming pain. I got some relief by pursing water in my cheek, but I was drinking so much water I was peeing every 10 mins. But the tea bag made the ultimate difference that I could sleep. Thanks to all who recommended it!! rating: 4 (7 votes) Submitted by adw at 2009-08-20 15:11:57 Please, Please Do Not Take Ibuprofen on an Empty Stomach. It leads to ulcers and other serious problems. So please take Ibuprofen with food yourself and I'm advising others to do the same. I'm not a doctor my I am a Medical Administrative Assistant and learned a lot about medicines and medical procedures in my studies and on the job. rating: 4 (7 votes) Submitted by Isis at 2011-01-16 13:30:49 OMG tooth pain is the absolute WORSE pain I've ever felt & Im sure a lot of you agree with me! Im 27 & I HATE the dentist. Bad experiences & the COST simply has kept me away from going [I live in America, need I say more] .. Id go bankrupt. I do plan on manning up & going though pretty soon, we do have urgent care dental facilities here. ANYWAY, I've tried several home remedies for tooth pain. About a week ago, I got my second tooth abscess I've ever had. I've been dealing with this horrible pain, swishing warm salt water after meals helped to soothe the pain, & I ALWAYS keep ibuprofen with me as well. But a couple of days ago, the pain was so tender, i think the abscess was surfacing because the top of my tooth was so unbelievably tender, I couldn't close my mouth all the way. It hurt bad. Im not a huge tea drinker, so I couldnt try tea bags, but being somewhat of a COOk, I did have some fresh garlic cloves. I sliced one, & put it between my tooth & my cheek ..& bit down on another one, & within 15-20 minutes, the pain was GONE!! GONE!! Its still a little tender, but it doesn't throb, So Im alright for now. If it begins to hurt again, Ill slice up another piece of garlic. Another thing I've read on several sites is that Oil of Oregano works too. I've already ordered a bottle from Amazon.com. I know how

tooth pain hurts, & Im there with you. Try the garlic. It doesn't taste great, but it sure helped me. rating: 4 (7 votes) Submitted by Nat at 2011-07-27 12:21:41 Have a bit of rum/whisky and SWISH IT inside your mouth on the side of the mouth thats hurting or in pain it works instantly and feels numb, hope this helps. rating: 4 (7 votes) Submitted by Serenitywhisper at 2008-07-05 08:52:56 Ok this may not be for everyone but it certainly worked for me. I have been having problems with one tooth in particular, a molar, and it has abscessed three times now and well this last time I was in so much pain that I did something I did not think I could bring myself to do. First you can go and get a syringe from a Feed store they come in those plastic packs that people use to give their dogs shots. Take that syringe and feel where it is the softest yet pallable spot and possibly throbbing on the gum line next to the tooth, insert the needle and aspirate. You may have to do it more than once but you'll get rid of the infection and you'll get instant relief like I did. I had my abscess for five straight days of agony and was on Azythromycin and that stuff is awful and I couldn't complete the prescription. Now I'm medicating with Garlicin and Vitamin C. I hope this helps someone. rating: 4 (10 votes) Submitted by Julie at 2008-10-07 03:58:49 I've had mouth and teeth problems basically all of my life because just like my Mom's teeth, they weren't strong in structure. So I had to deal with A LOT of breakage and pain problems. Now that I'm an adult, it's a lot harder to afford going to a doctor or dentist. While it is in someone's best interest to go see their doctor or at least head to the emergency room in severe cases, not all of us can afford to do so. It has been well documented in many of these home remedies. I've been dealing with this infection for a good two years now on and off and like I said before, I cannot afford to go see a dentist or doctor, nor do I have insurance to help me out. There are no dental clinics either. So I have to make due with what I have. My father's girlfriend swears by the home remedy of using a tea bag. Most of the remedies on here suggest it stay dry but she runs it under hot water; as hot as she can stand it and presses it between her cheek and gum line where there's pain and usually it works. I've tried that remedy and I'm happy to say that it is a wonderful temporary relief when you're in a lot of pain. There's brief discomfort and some spitting when saliva starts conjuring up in your mouth but I think that's a decent price to pay as long as your mouth stops hurting. When tea bags aren't within your reach or you're not in the mood to put one in your mouth, alternate with clove oil. Generally, you can pick this up at a pharmacy. We have some in our WalMart store. It's about four dollars for a tiny bottle but believe me, it's worth it's weight in gold. Put a bit on a q-tip ( or use your pinky finger ) and apply to where it hurts and it usually starts working within a few seconds. However, when

applying more, you may want to rinse your mouth out with warm water. Perhaps salt water ( which is another way to help with the pain. ) You don't want to apply too much in one spot on top of another layer or it isn't nearly as effective. I had to go through the torture of massive pain that put me in tears and made me severely nauseated tonight and nobody should have to go through this. Here's to hoping any of these home remedies works for the people who need it! rating: 4 (10 votes) Submitted at 2011-04-02 22:33:53 You need Oral B Superfloss and Tea Tree Oil. You put one or two drops on the floss and start flossing the infected area. Rinse. This works really good and it is also great to prevent an infection. I do it a couple times a day, even if it hurts and bleeds. Do not swallow! rating: 4 (10 votes) Submitted by Tamara at 2008-06-26 23:34:16 I had a toothache and no insurance and the earliest I could get an appointment to the clinic was in one month. I was in tears and couldn't sleep. Here is what works: Oregano Oil is the best with less mess than the flakes. Just put one or two drops on a Qtip and rub it over the infected gum or tooth. Works wonders. I have also been taking Activated Charcoal capsules which draws out the toxins in your body. As well as packing my tooth in an activated charcoal poulstice wrapped in gauze or cheesecloth and sleep with it overnight. I mixed Activated charcoal (break open a few capsules), Oil of Oregano (1-2 drops), liquid bentonite clay-mix together to make a thick paste and scoop into a gauze or piece of cheesecloth and stick it up in the gum where it is infected. Hope this helps many as much as it did me. rating: 4 (6 votes) Submitted by Jan at 2008-08-21 21:21:46 I have tried every remedy listed on here! My desk is covered with onion, garlic, teabags, oragel, ice water, aspirin and peppermint extract. Nothing seemed to be working a bit!! I went back to the peppermint extract due to the high number of positive remarks it got on here. Well, after SEVERAL applications and eventually leaving the q-tip in my mouth, it is working!!! SO DON'T GET DISCOURAGED IF YOU DON'T GET INSTANT RELIEF!! IT MAY TAKE SEVERAL APPLICATIONS OF THE PEPPERMINT EXTRACT!! rating: 4 (3 votes) Submitted by Yvonne (Memphis TN) at 2007-11-01 16:26:08 Well this might sound crazy but it has definatley helped me.... I have been experiencing some EXTREME tooth nerve pain caused by an impacted/infected wisdom tooth to the point where it is making my ear hurt on that side down my neck and into the temporal area of my head on that side... NOT FUN!! so anyways I happen to have some Aurodex otic solution (ear drops) that have benzocaine

in it and I put some in my ear on the side that was hurting (it helps numb the connecting nerves from the ear to the teeth) and brushed my teeth rinsed with some listerine antiseptic and put some Dentek maximum strength Toothache Relief on my tooth surrounding gums and believe me this is the most relief I have gotten in days, I just tried this today and I have been amazed at how much it helped!! I strongly suggest this remedy to anyone who has been as miserable as I have... and of course definately make an appt with your dentist (I will be asap) rating: 4 (11 votes) Submitted at 2010-10-31 05:57:54 So, I have a wisdom tooth on the right side and a molar on the top left side of my mouth thats feeling pretty horrible, they use to be filled lol, but the one thing I really found that helped after many many sleepless nights was taking a single ply of toilet paper and folding it down to the equal of a rolling paper and snugging it around the teeth, its not instant relief but it works, the paper will heat with your body heat and keep cold air that you breathe into you're nose from getting into the hole, if its a consistent problem and you dont just so happen to have the cash laying around and you can handle it you can try getting a mouth piece for sports from a walmart etc. and put it in your mouth, this as well will heat the mouth piece and block any air from getting into or around the tooth, last but not least everyone seems to have their own sort of mouthwash their making, theres a Oral moisterizer called Toms, it comes in a few flavors, I picked peppermint for the sake of clean flavor, the wash consists of Aloe Vera, Chamomile, and Sage, the peppermint flavor in it is pretty intense which left room for me to add my own things to it I.E. Listerine, it seems to numb it down pretty well without my mouth feeling like it was trying to murder me from the inside out, Also, speaking of which Chamomile is also a delicious and inexpensive liquid to try, add a tea spoon of cinnamon (No Sugar) and rinse and you enjoy, you can use mroe but I decided I didnt want to take a chance on too much Cinnamon, this drink is also very helpful for stomach pains, which I also found to be a side effect of my frantic home made remedy spree, hope this helps! rating: 4 (11 votes) Submitted at 2008-06-22 08:29:25 So my toothache started Thursday morning...I took 4 ibuprofen and the pain was gone for most of the day. However, by 10pm that night I was in tears due to the amount of pain. I saw my general practitioner on Friday, she gave me darvocet and Z-pac antibiotic. I added a few ibuprofen to this and the pain went away for a good 30 minutes. I didn'y sleep again on FRiday night so I called my GP and asked what else I could do for the pain. She then prescribed Norco. It helps to some extent but really it just makes me groggy. I've tried icing, heating, clove oil, orajel, I even lanced an abcess white head that formed around my abcessed crown. I've been in a ton of pain. Here's the miracle remedy for me, and it does not take the pain clear away, but it dulls it enough so that it is bearable. Peppermint tea, I steeped it for a minute in a cup of hot water. I used the tea to swish around in my mouth and then put the tea bag in between my gumline and my cheek. The pain went from a 10 to about a 3. I'm going to take some more ibuprofen and try to get a little more sleep. Hope this helps someone else! rating: 4 (8 votes) Submitted at 2010-02-08 04:35:47 Have a wisdom tooth coming in and pushing on a bad molar. Pain is so bad. But I found

something that takes the pain away. I went to walmart and bought Chewable orange flavored Aspirin (81mg) and took 4-6 as directed and chewed them on the same side as the pain was. The aspirin desovles right on it and took the pain away within 5 mins. rating: 4 (5 votes) Submitted by A.S. at 2007-07-21 04:06:48 I read every remedy on the page. I have had many problems with my teeth and have even had shots of demerol and morphine it's been so bad. Well, I can't afford another ER trip so here I am again in pain!!!! Orajel came out with a severe pain gel. It's new. Burns like hell at first but half the tube later feelng better. I still had enough pain I couldn't sleep so I tried pepper and salt water. Didn't seem to help. The new Orajel does it just takes about 15 minues which feels like an eternity, I know, it's 4am and I have to be up for work. Anyhow, I also took abot 3 Lortabs and the Orajel seemed to work better. My next suggestion... take Ambien. Atleast it might help you get some sleep til you can visit a dentist. rating: 4 (7 votes) Submitted by slim at 2011-06-13 18:43:29 Try oxy continin dissolved in water than use cotton swab and put on teeth. Works great remedy rating: 4 (7 votes) Submitted by kerry at 2008-07-01 00:51:02 i couldent eat couldent sleep nothing was working,the detist gave my liquid lydocainto ease the pain till they pulled all my teeth,3 days away from the operation the pain was so bad i thought i would die i read these home remidies and that night i hade the best sleep i dabbed PEANUT BUTTER on my gums and fell asleep with a hot water bottle on the side of my face wow it was amazing rating: 4 (9 votes) Submitted by Michell at 2010-04-06 13:10:28 I just want to say thank you to the person that recommended the 4 ibuprofen and 2 acetaminophen tablets. The pain that had kept me in bed for an entire day literally disappeared!!! I had tried everything and nothing else worked. rating: 4 (9 votes) Submitted by Julian at 2011-02-12 22:33:59 The mint extract really helped numb the pain in my husband's mouth abcess. Thanks for the tip! rating: 4 (9 votes) Submitted at 2009-03-28 16:49:16 first off. red cross toothache liquid is the active ingredient in clove oil refined and put in linseed oil- so just use the clove oil, its cheeper, moist tobaco of any type will draw poison, including tooth abcess, but can destroy the enamel on your teeth too if you catch the abcess as it first starts, 2 alieve,2 advil, 2 excedrin, and 1 benadril AT THE SAME TIME, do not take this for too many days straight as they can have advers effects

rating: 4 (4 votes) Submitted by amy at 2009-05-07 05:28:31 Ok so its after 5am and I'm in complete agony! No way can I afford 2 go 2 the dentist 4 an extraction so here I am after my son was born my teeth r a mess thank God not the ones u can see but still sucks horribly! So I've taken IB 800s and used this red cross solution the directions say apply for 1 min but it takes longer than that but its slowly easing off I just wish I could sleep pain free I have read every remedy here and appreciate you all greatly! This is a wonderful site 4 desperate people! Pray 4 me! rating: 4 (4 votes) Submitted by alice at 2009-05-29 23:58:40 I had a Horrible acident where i rolled 5 times. shook all the teeth in my head. That was a year ago and now all my teeth are bad. I have tried the onion and garlic , the peroxide, the teabag... welll lets say alot. right now I have a garlic oil pill on my tooth and gums. NO PAIN and Swelling sunsiding. I am seeing on oral surgeon to have them removed and get dentures due to this accident... however... I could not afford a dentist either til i foind out it was a medicle issue for me because of the accident. GARLIC in any form helps a great great deal! Onions as well tastes bad I know but works! rating: 4 (2 votes) Submitted at 2009-12-27 15:40:51 Kool I used celstial lemon tea put salt on the bag and put it on the area .Secret is you have to change bag's every 3 or 4 hour's.Swelling is coming down greatly and I did'nt have to take 1 pain pill.I caught it early when I woke up this AM.I thought capping all my teeth would prevent problem's well it doesn't.I'll do anything not to take a vic.Even though I have about 200 stored up from breaking my back 10 years ago.It's a crappy drug and highly adictive.Thank's for this site.Now if we could only all get together and go to wall street and get out the pikes.Thanks again everyone. rating: 4 (2 votes) Submitted by Becky R. at 2010-04-25 14:53:03 One product was my life saver for my horrible pain. Cepachol maximum numbing sore throat & cough lozenges. They are 20% benzocaine and 10% (I think) menthol. The chloraseptic Max lozenges would probably work well also. I was miserable for days and had already used TWO whole tubes of Anbesol(oragel). I thought I had built up a tolerance to the benzocaine in that tooth area because it didn't seem to work anymore. However, I think I just couldn't keep it on the area long enough to let the medicine get down to the roots before it was washed away by saliva. The lonzenges last over an hour each and provide hours and hours of complete pain relief. I would keep one in for 10-15 minutes and take it out. My tooth never hurt bad ever again. Out of the 20 different things I tried the lozenges were the only thing that ever provide hours of relief instead of 10 minutes of relief. Good luck. I feel your pain. rating: 4 (8 votes) Submitted by Diana at 2010-10-09 06:23:54 I am having the worst tooth pain right now because like a lot of you I don't get to the dentist and have bad teeth. Should've taken better care when I was younger. Anyway, just wanted you to know that several of my dentists that I have went to said to NEVER EVER USE HYDROGREN PEROXIDE on a tooth. My Mom told me to do it

and I told my dentist that and he said it may help at first but later, it will be the worst thing you've ever done. I don't remember why, he explained it but all I remembered was DO NOT USE HYDROGREN PEROXIDE ON A BAD TOOTH! rating: 4 (4 votes) Submitted by Steve at 2011-01-25 17:57:15 Here's my story, I had all my upper teeth pulled ten years ago and had a denture put in. A few years later I had a wisdom tooth come in. I lost my job and didn't have insurance anymore so I just lived with is. Yesterday it became abscessed. Today it swelled so bad that I couldn't talk without my denture trying to slip out. I will not go without it in public. I came home and brushed it with my tooth brush until I got it popped. Yes, it hurt, but I was already in pain, so, so what. After I got it to bleed, I squeezed as much out as I could while rinsing with cold water until it was clear, then swished peroxide around. That was about 30 minutes ago, and now I know I'll be able to eat tonight without the pain rating: 4 (14 votes) Submitted by Afraid of the tooth at 2011-01-30 05:13:57 I was in a lot of pain, on a scale of 1 to 10, about a 15. The infection started in my left upper bicuspid, favorite tooth to chew with. Eating popcorn one day, and bit down to hard. Within 1/2 hour, I was ready to rob a bank for smack. I tried every thing, including everything on this site, then I dug up some old (very old. That girlfriend left years ago.) Ginseng, Peppermint, Cinnamon, Echinecea tea. Now it's the first thing I grab when my achy-breaky tooth hollers. rating: 4 (8 votes) Submitted by patrick at 2011-01-24 18:23:54 Sex is a great remedy no lie it works the longer u have sex the longer the toothache say away rating: 4 (25 votes) Submitted by Nonny at 2010-09-16 15:25:44 i agree with drinking water, cut down on smoking, and i take ibuprofen and cystex. the cystex is used for urinary tract infections , its over the counter and has a mild antibiotic in it . it will get you thru til you can get in to the dentist office. hope this helps . rating: 4 (7 votes) Submitted by Maria at 2010-09-29 17:51:45 OMG..thank you for making this site. I have not been able to sleep for the last two weeks because everytime I started to lay down my tooth and ear would start hurting. So last night i read all the remedies and I first propped up my pillows so my head was above my heart . 2. I took an nsaid(anti-inflamatory) 3. put some oragel on it. First night of sleep I had . I also knew it was infected so I bought some Fish Mox - thanks to all of those who posted it . I knew i needed it because I had an ancessed tooth before but didn't know how to get it without going to the doctor. Whats really sad is I have dental insurance but the deductable is so high , I might aswell not have any rating: 4 (7 votes) Submitted by paingone at 2010-10-24 14:20:23 I had an abcessed tooth and a swollen lymph node on my chin due to the severity of the

infection. Im allergic to Amox & Penn, not to mention that $ is so scarce these days. Cant afford a dentist. This is what killed the infection. GSE- Grapefruit seed extract rinse Activated charcoal poultice on tooth/gum Raw garlic/pills - took 5,000 mg a day Castor oil pack on node Vitamin c - 4,000 mg a day Cal/Mag - 6 capsules Alfalfa- 600 mg/ 9 capsules Super echinacea extract- 5 x per day ACV- 2tbs / 3 x a day Omega oil- 1000 mg 4 capsules/ a day Cats claw/with mushroom defense This got rid of my infection in 1 day the pain lasted no more than 5 hrs. I thank God for these amazing natural remedies. Good luck to all u suffering from tooth pain its a killer! rating: 4 (14 votes) Submitted by Danny TX at 2011-08-21 16:19:29 OKAY! I know how bad this tooth pain hurts. I feel like i have to help everyone because honestly i was raging so bad when this crazy throbbing toothpain would not stop for anything. First time i cried since i was younger. I tried every single remedy. most of these will work but only for minor pains or small infected teeth. if u had a massive hole in ur tooth exposed nerve abscessed the whole 9 yards i will be able to help.. Now first things first i cant take pain killers like hydrocodone or Vicodine because they make me sick. But just call you dentist and get him to prescribe u Amoxicillin 500mg 30 capsules. Now i kno uv heard that before. but i promise u. PROMISE U . start taking that. and it will go away. seriously go away. i take about 2 500 mg pills everytime it starts hurting no more than 25 mins that crazy hardcore intense pain will not b so bad and ur like okay i can deal with this. then about 15 more mins u will b in a great mood. trust me ppl. iv tried everything. I would go gay for whoever made Amoxicillion. I know ur pain when ur just running thru the house rushing all the remedies around doing anything and everything. putting disgusting taste in ur mouth just for a good 45 seconds to 2 mins.then pain again. my tooth is horrible. but with amoxicillion it will kill the infection.. and when u go get it pulled it just slides right out. last tooth i got pulled out i didnt take and antibiotics i just wanted it out. and with all the numbing in the world in my tooth and nerve i still felt this crazy pain getting the tooth pulled out.. take Amoxicillion. i want to help u. this will help u. rating: 4 (7 votes) Submitted at 2008-02-15 06:37:39 while my jaw and gum/cheek were swollen i too a sergical hollow point needle mostley used for peircing and inserted a small hole through the gum and swollen part in the mouth and drained manually...though this is not a remedy but only temporary relief of pressure...An oppointment with the dentist to remove the infected tooth or teeth is strongly recommended...yes its painful but nothing a few beers cant help you along your journey... rating: 4 (10 votes)

Submitted by fabio at 2009-01-07 14:37:07 I just want to thank everyone for submitting your remedies. I have been awake for 37 hours straight thanks to my half of a wisdom tooth. I just used cloraseptic salt water gargle followed by lysterine and I am about to pass out pain free. When I wake up I will go buy some other things to try especially if this doesn't last too long. Again thanks everyone rating: 4 (5 votes) Submitted at 2006-02-23 04:49:55 Take a coton ball and wet it, squeeze it out until it's knid of moist, then dip it equal parts bakingsoda and salt. Stuff it between tooth and cheek. Sleep with it overnight. This will draw out the abcess and either it will drain out on its own or it will come to a white head and you can pop it. After it has gone down soak a cotton ball in peroxcide and place it in the same place. rating: 4 (18 votes) Submitted by June at 2010-06-12 16:47:51 I have tried so many things for abscessed tooth pain from vanilla extract, orajel, red cross, whiskey, lime, water/salt, etc. and nothing has worked. BUT I finally found my winning remedy that keeps the pain away for weeks and instantly as soon as it hits my infected tooth. What is it? Believe it or not Chloraseptic Sore Throat Lozenges, Honey-Lemon. I SWEAR it WORKS. All you have to do is put the lozenges near the tooth were it hurts (on the side of the tooth) and keep it there until it melts away on his own. The tricky part of this is you also have to do it on the other side of the tooth -- near the mouth/tongue which can be harder for the lozenges to stay put. However, as long as you do it on one side, the pain goes away. You will start to feel relief right away or when the lozenge dissolves. I recommend you do this through out the day even it doesn't hurt. You will feel relief right away. So, if you cannot see a dentist right away this will give you time (weeks/month). At first it was silly but believe me it works. TRY IT!! rating: 4 (18 votes) Submitted by rhonda at 2006-04-01 09:35:30 Take an icecube put it where toothache is and pain free ,but have to keep melting icecubes in mouth or pain comes back . rating: 4 (24 votes) Submitted by Estilgar at 2011-01-02 16:58:05 I have had several of my wisdom teeth impact on me and never had the money to get them properly taken care of. For immediate temporary relief hot salt water rinse for at least 2 minutes. Once the immediate pain has relieved you get some Orthodontic Wax (Near the Ambeslo/Orajel at the store) and carefully place a small amount over the abcess. By cleaning and then plugging the abcess you should be able to get by for a good portion of the day without knowing anything is wrong. BE CAREFUL not to suck out the wax or loose it with food, I always keep extra wax on me and a small shaker if salt so I can reapply almost anywhere. For chronic pains or to get to sleep at night I use the same technique and also tag team 2

tabs ibuprofen (every 4 hours) and 2 tabs acetaminophen (every 4 hours with 2 hour offset from ibu) as to not 'overtax' my liver on 1 med. rating: 4 (11 votes) Submitted by Kaylena Mantanona at 2009-11-19 01:22:55 So for the past 3-4 years ive had a toothache on my right side, so ive been eating on my left side and that started to hurt. To help, i would just squish around hot water and listerine which has helped for thee past weeks. But now it seems like its not working anymore. Im thibking about tryong the vanilla extract remedy. Hopefully i dont get blisters. =( rating: 4 (3 votes) Submitted by DAVE at 2009-12-15 16:07:59 please excuse my spelling but...I have had 8 abcesses so i speak from expriance , THE ONE AND ONLY CURE TO WORK 100 PERCENT ALL THE TIME IS BAKING SODA AND SALT MIX ON A DAMP BIT OF COTTON WOOL . CHANGE IT EVERY HALF HLOUR WITHIN A FEW HOURS NO ABCESS LEFT AND AFTER SAY HALF AN HOUR THE PAIN GOES . I DID THIS WITH ALL 8 OF THE ABCESSES I HAD AND TRUST ME I TRIED EVERTHING , FOR TEMP PAIN RELEIF USE LISTORINE MOUTH WASH PAIN STOPS FOR 5 MINS OR SO . GOOD LUCK FELLOW ABCESSERS LOL rating: 4 (3 votes) Submitted at 2009-12-19 23:24:13 My 6 year old has been screaming and crying over a toothpain for about 2 hours. I read some of these remedies and tried the one that said to use pure vanilla extract. I put it on a qtip and rubbed directly on the tooth and around it. Within 2 minutes his pain was gone! Thank you! I also gave him motrin and tylenol. rating: 4 (3 votes) Submitted by Terry Hammerstone at 2010-02-06 05:57:48 So I have been experiencing the worst toothache pain you can possibly imagine for about 4 days. I did the salt water thing and it worked for about 20 minutes. I also used listerine advanced and it worked a little longer. I went to walgreens desperate(thank God for 24hr pharmacies.)And found New Orajel Severe Pain Formula. It has no terrible taste and is the only thing that kills the pain for more than an hour at a time. I found it cheaper at walmart the next day for roughly $7.00 but it is a life saver...Try it. I pray anyone reading this quick and complete pain releif. God Bless! rating: 4 (3 votes) Submitted by Clay at 2010-06-15 05:56:56 OK, well iv had this horrid tooth ache for almost 2 weeks. iv been looking throw all the post for over 1-2 hours and reading them took my mind off the pain, well i tryed laying down right after reading them to get some sleep (cause its 5:30 a.m...here) and the pain came back, well i read one that said warm water and salt mixed...so i was like heck this my last resort. so i when and got a glass and when to the bathtub and ran the hot water and then got some and did the salt in it, it seems to work very well, and now i have an appointment with a root canal doctor tomorrow...so i hope the warm water+salt = no pain works for yo.

rating: 4 (6 votes) Submitted at 2010-08-16 05:22:47 After taking 2 ibuprofen, rinsing my mouth with Listerine,vanilla, baking soda,vinegar, applying peanut butter,garlic,onion,Orajel, and drinking tea, and really cold water..nothing helped my tooth...but eatting watermelon for some odd reason has helped me. idk if it will help you but ive been having pain for days now...I think my tooth is cracked, and falling out :( I have never ever been to the dentist but about 5 months ago..I went in for the first time. I had a small cavity....they fixed it, and ever since I have been having trouble with my teeth hurting, and being sensitive! rating: 4 (3 votes) Submitted by Maguire at 2007-09-03 03:08:42 I tried 3 things, slat water swish....warm water plus 1 teas of salt, at least a cupful. I tried vinegar, whihc worked for awhile but burned my gums somewhat. and I tried hand massage, between thumb and index finger. the combo of all these things helped a lot, I didn't have to use ice packs today at all and I can sleep. If course, I still feel sick all over but am going to the dentist after the holiday in hipe he can help. rating: 4 (10 votes) Submitted at 2011-05-11 21:57:38 All I can say is TEA BAG TEA BAG TEA BAG. Good night and god bless. rating: 4 (10 votes) Submitted by Bonn at 2011-05-19 17:57:59 I take after my father with bad teeth. Ive got cavities and most of my teeth have been cracked. Runs in the family. But when one tooth hurts, its my whole mouth hurting. Here is what i've tried. Dent tooth aache gum, it works good, but it doesnt last. Tooth ache gel, doesnt works, just makes the pain worse. Vanella abstract, donesnt work. Loratabs, don't work. So you can imagine how bad my tooth aches are, because NOTHING works, the ONLY thing that works for me, is takin tylonol and putting rice in a sock, yes i know strange, tieing the sock and heating it up in the microwave. Tooth ache is gone in less then ten minutes. So if NOTHING seems to be working for you, try what i do. rating: 4 (17 votes) Submitted by Lewis at 2011-02-10 02:24:14 I've experience toothace before and i'm 17. I'm from the Uk and i'm under 18 so it's free for my dental care. I had one molar taken out last september on the day of my birthday (meant i couldn't drink alcohol that night). But i skipped my appointment for another tooth removal about a week ago by accident. I was lying in bed and was unable to sleep tonight and just like in the past, my gum started swelling into an abcess. I don't have any Ibuprofen left but i'm currently on amoxicllin. I have just started to take it and have to wait a good few hours for my next. I've found that washing your mouth out with salt does help but only for about 15-20

mins, and it doesn't do a lot anyways. The teabag method is great, i recommend it. Soak a teabag in hot water for a few mins then put it on your sore tooth and it takes some of the pain away. Go brush and rinse with mouthwash to make sure evrything's clean. I'd try the whiskey method but i have none left! rating: 4 (11 votes) Submitted at 2010-04-20 17:05:36 I've had an on and off again toothache/abscess over the last year due to a broken wisdom tooth i have that is causing problems with the tooth in front of it. i am trying to wait it out until my dental insurance through my job starts in october because the only dental clinic around here i have found is still very expensive. My tooth started again yesterday so I took some vicodin last night my dad gave me and it helped me sleep, today i took 2 tylenol with an 800 mg ibuprofen which helped get me through work. I just went to cvs and bought garlic pills, even though I am on penicillin (i had a full bottle left from last time i didnt need it...) but i figured if i keep taking the garlic even after my tooth is better it may help. I have tried almost every suggestion on these pages over the last few times i have had problems with my tooth. Most of them did NOTHING for me. And forget orajel...and the clove oil makes me want to puke. I do put the fake filling where my broken tooth is, but i was without it for a few days and I am wondering if maybe thats why my tooth has started. While I was at cvs I picked up the Tom's Natural Whole Care toothpaste that I found on the clearance rack...i think it was 2.50 and I know its usually much more then that. It's made with all natural ingredients and its spearmint flavored. I also found The Natural Dentist Brand mouthwash - its peppermint twist and that is made with a lot of natural ingredients too and it was on sale for 3.99. Both of these products contain things I keep reading about on here - the grapfruit seed extract and the peppermint oil and some others. So I figured I would give them a try. Just brushed my teeth and rinsed with it and it's feeling much better. I did take a half a viocden before as well, but when I got home I was still having pain and as soon as I used this I got relief. rating: 4 (15 votes) Submitted at 2010-03-18 22:43:46 So I have ALWAYS had horrible teeth. I have never had my teeth cleaned by the dentist, I have had crowns before but have always made every excuse in the world to go to the dentist, I HATE it. So anyways, My back tooth broke basically in half a few months ago, the pain was UNBEARABLE. So many sleepless nights and tears shed over this damn tooth. Well I finally managed to pay out of pocket for the extraction. The pain was gone.... Until my OTHER back tooth breaks and this time its WORSE. The broken edge of my tooth is cutting my gums and is causing about a hundred times more pain. Well I cant manage to scrounge another 300-500 bucks for another extraction, so I tried ibuprofen which is whata I used to take for my other toothache but I am like IMMMUNE to it now. OUCH. So I just bought a tube of oragel its now 10:42pm. I cake on about 1/4 of the tube on my tooth. It seemed to be working until I started typing and the pain is starting to come back. Oh dear god what will fix this?! rating: 4 (4 votes) Submitted by Hope this works for you at 2010-07-13 20:24:12 This is just want I did that helped me so I thouth I would share.

1. Rinsed my mouth with hydorgen peroxide twice a day 2) Rince with warm salt water 3) used zinc lozenges(for healing) 4) Cepacol Sore throat lozenges( put in mouth near tooth) 5 NyQuil Cold and Flu -To reduce fever, aches and throbbing of the tooth and inflammation. Also: here is a product I found very helpful Red Cross Toothache w/ natural Eugenol. I hope this helps you. Blessings rating: 4 (4 votes) Submitted by Jennifer at 2011-05-25 09:05:41 I had a very bad abcess and my friend suggested using coconut oil. Heat it up (On a Stove) and swish it around your mouth. It really does work and you can get it at walmart. Do it for about 15 minutes. It pulls out infection and takes the pain away. Try it! I hope everyone feels better. This is worse than labor, I know!! rating: 4 (18 votes) Submitted by Kim at 2010-04-10 21:07:56 I put toothpaste on the tooth that hurts ... it works if the pain is due to a cavity... or rinse with mouthwash rating: 4 (5 votes) Submitted by Charity at 2011-01-21 12:11:59 Ok, i HAD to post because today is the first day i've woken up pain free or slept pretty decent in about a week. Half my mouth is swollen and half my head has been hurting. Started taking ibuprofen and aleve but that stopped working at the beginning. Tried loritab with the other two and that would help for about an hour and the pain would come back. Finally went to the er the other night and the gave my vicodin but that was a joke and didn't help at all. Spent about an hour on this site the other night and thought most of the thing would just make it worse but i was desperate last night to sleep. The pain has been so bad i couldn't even lay down an tried propping myself up on pillows to sleep. After an hour of no relief and not being able to even doze off this is what i tried. I gargled with warm salt water for about a minute, which i added a few drops of vanilla to (mostly because the salt water makes me gag) I have a heat pad thing that you can put in the microwave and i warmed it for about 2mins and put in on my face and neck and it was like magic when the pain seemed to melt away. Don't know exactly what it was but something sure helped and i had to share and hope it helps someone else out there. Tooth pain is the worst pain ever and if you've found this site i hope you can find relief soon. rating: 4 (10 votes) Submitted by Dawn at 2011-04-03 19:28:43 Have been in the most excrutiating pain for a week now, 2 trips to emergency dentist and 2 lots of antibiotics, the last visit put clove oil in the tooth and covered it til infection goes and then it needs ripping out, trouble is now it feels like I have 3 abcesses on 3

different teeth and my nose and eye are tingling and tender, am finding it hard to swallow but when I look in my mouth etc cant see the abcesses to pop them...only relief is taking 4 ibuprofen and 2 paracetamol codiene together. will be ringing dentist up again tomorrow to beg them to remove tooth now Ive seen how dangerous it is if the infection is spreading. rating: 4 (10 votes) Submitted by Ruth at 2011-04-20 08:45:06 I have swelling from what I think is an abscess under a tooth. Several years ago I went to the doctor with a sinus infection (swelling, pain in eustacean tubes, ears, jaw) and he told me to try Mucinex along with the other sinus meds. I looked at him funny because it's supposed to be for chest congestion. I didn't have that. Mucinex seemed to work for me by helping to drain stuff out. I'm using it now for the tooth and have horrible tasting drainage but no pain, just discomfort in tooth, ears, tubes, etc. rating: 4 (17 votes) Submitted by DHost at 2011-03-26 19:23:15 I purchased a tube of Oraljel for mouth sores because it has an anticeptic in it. I took a little piece of paper towel, about an inch-x-inch square,squirt a line in the square, fold it and place it directly on the abscess. Not only does it numb but the antiseptic goes strait to the infection. I left it on for about a half hour and repeated it every hour. Only because I was doing this blind.. Also Unlike an antibiotic that you have to take for a few days. The blood flow that goes to the tooth is so small that its difficult for a good amount of antibiotic to get to the source of the pain. I have a crown and an abscess just popped up,I have been taking antibiotics for 3 day and it was not helping. With a little research I found out about the Oraljel. Well it wasn't exactly Oraljel I was suppose to use but the product that had been suggested was no where to be found. I got the information from a sight called Toothandteeth. Very good sight. Last night I had an awful fat abscess And I did the treatment stated and the abscess is almost gone and my face is no longer swollen...Goodluck. rating: 4 (11 votes) Submitted by Yvey 111 at 2011-04-11 19:33:39 Vanila extract I have been suffering since friday with severe pain on my bottom lower right.It's now monday night late. Due to a tooth snapping in half and the root left in with the remainder of filling bits sticking up i have now developed an absess and deep infection. Dentist are harder to get hold of on the weekend and to find out my dentist is away for two weeks i was left with little comfort. Apart from affording it. I was prepared to get a tweezers and try and dig it out The pain being off the rickter scale feels like I have all my bottom teeth on the right hand side infected. I now have antibotics but reduced to tears with an eardrum and lower face that feels like it's going to blow off I googled in desperation. I find often people who are experiencing the pain have solutions and this site is amazing thank you. The Vanilla extract immediately calm it down for 10minutes to a five rather than 12 early minutes I know. But, I have had 17 Nurofen plus today. I drinking the peppermint tea and then will place a tea bag on. At least hopefully I will get some sleep I love you all for sharing your stories and advice keep up the good work. Dentist should read this to understand alternative pain relief I will let you know how the rest of my night goes but thank you. Yvey extremely grateful.

rating: 4 (14 votes) Submitted at 2008-10-31 14:35:24 I want to thank every one whom has written in with their home remedy's. I have broken 3 of my back teeth over the years. And every once in a while they will become infected. In the past,I have started a series of antibiotics and a whole lot of Advil to deal with the pain. However yesterday I was woken up at 3 Am with severe pain and swelling. Nothing I was using was easing the pain for more than an half an hour. By 3 Pm I was going out of my mind. I read about cutting a small opening for the infection to drain. They tried this on me last time when I ended up at the hospital but to no avail. So at my wit's end, I pulled out my exacto knife set, sterilized the blade, and on my 3rd try, I hit the right spot. I pressed real hard on my cheek and quite a bit of blood and puss came out. Man what a relief. I rinsed my mouth with salt water and decided to try the tea bag. After using my second tea bag, all the pain was gone and was the swelling. I had a good meal an hour later and tried to get some un interupted sleep. When I awoke my face was swelled up again. But I had no pain. I took some more Advil and an ice pack for 30 min. The swelling went back down to an acceptible level and I have been able to make it thru my work day. Again,I want to thank all whom have written in. I had 13 hours of pain this time compaired to 2-3 days in the past. I am really impressed how the tea bag worked. I never would of thought it. rating: 4 (1 votes) Submitted at 2008-11-06 01:24:47 If you're looking for temporary relief until you can see a doctor/dentist and you don't feel like sucking on a tea bag or downing some pills, or even tasting that rancid taste of orajel/anbesol/clove oil, try leaning over a stool or tucking your head down for a bit, breathe through your nose instead of your mouth. Depending on how severe the pain is, it usually clears up within a few seconds to a few minutes and stays away for a little bit. Sometimes it doesn't exactly work but it's good for a brief remedy. rating: 4 (1 votes) Submitted by Brittany D at 2009-03-05 00:08:55 I have read many of the remedies here and I would like to add my 10 cents. I notice that a lot of people are frustrated with their over the counter pain reliever and I am sure that the maximum dose for a 6 hour period of Ib Profien is 800 mg which is generally 4 pills. DO NOT EXCEED. you can also take Tylenol with IB Profien but only take two of those and stagger them: Tylenol no more often tha 4 Hours and IB no more than every 6. Also numbing agents like oragel and over the counter benzocaine needs some time to work. my husband compalined that it didn't do anything but he was not giving it ample time. Leave the medecine on a Q-tip on the affected area for a few minutes, Replace with new ones if necessary but it will help eventually. Try not to swallow it if you plan to use a lot because it can be unhealthy. These tactics got me through two weeks of the worst pain until I could get to an Oral surgeon who would pull my tooth. FOR OREGON RESIDENTS or surrounding areas if you are really desperate, there is an Oral surgeon in Salem who will pull your tooth for $80.00 for the first on e and $60 for succeeding ones (except wisdom teeth). HE does this low cost service for those who cannot afford the cost of dentistry and have no insurance. God bless him. rating: 4 (4 votes)

Submitted at 2009-12-02 03:31:56 I have a tooth i need a root canal on and i have been reading abou tall these remedies and found out that the extract on a q-tip works great especially if it is mint extract because its 90% alcohol with some tiger balm on the outer cheek. rating: 4 (1 votes) Submitted by Nick h at 2010-01-04 23:58:28 I put peanut butter on a piece of cinnamon stick and also looked up and this helped tootcach a little bit rating: 4 (4 votes) Submitted by twray at 2010-05-03 18:40:27 Thanks to the person who selected Nyquil..I only had the kids version but it took the egde off of it (havent been to sleep in 32 hours)thanks and god bless rating: 4 (5 votes) Submitted at 2010-08-31 14:13:48 I've had about 7 abscessed teeth in my life, all have been horrible. Right now I'm experiencing one on the top left side of my face. My tooth broke at the gum so there's really no tooth anymore, just the roots. Anyways, the best thing to do for an abscess is to honestly take your mind of the pain. For this take 4 Aleve every 6 - 12 hours a long with a narcotic pain killer that your dentist will prescribe you (usually Hydrocodone 10/650, take two so you have have 20mg of opiates in your system and enough APAP), then if you hold a medical marijuana card or have cannabis on you, smoke a bowl or ingest a magical cookie. You will be numb for 6-7 hours, enough to get some sleep. Remember, sleeping with an Abscess is hard and if you don't you will being to hallucinate after 24 hours of no sleep. rating: 4 (8 votes) Submitted by John Martin at 2010-09-05 12:00:36 Ladies and gentlemen... Why do you put yourselves through such unnecessary agony? I once had abscessed teeth so bad that I LITERALLY contemplated suicide to rid myself of the pain. And I do not say this as a joke. Nonetheless, the solution to the problem was right in front of me the whole time and it cost ZERO dollars. STEP 1: Know what the infection really is!!! The only reason you are going through all that freakin' pain from HELL is because you have an underlying infection that is built up and putting pressure on the nerves and roots of your teeth. The more pressure, the more pain! The majority of this infection (even though it does not feel like it) is in the roof of your mouth. STEP 2: All you have to do is relieve that pressure with a small peace of ice. DO NOT PLACE THE ICE DIRECTLY ON YOUR TOOTH!!!... it's tempting but trust me, you will only make it worse! Just take a small piece of ice and place it between the top of your tongue and the roof of your mouth. DO NOT press on it. Just let it set there and melt. It only take about a minute. Do this about 5 times. STEP 3: Do you need a step three? If you tried the first two steps... you're already putting your gun away.

STEP 4: Go to a dentist! What? You really needed me to say that? rating: 4 (12 votes) Submitted by Jacks Mom at 2011-01-02 20:19:19 My suggestion: Theraflu Warming Relief Flu and Sore Throat Like everyone else here, I found this site with tears in my eyes from the pain of an infected tooth (wisdom tooth). Not only did my tooth/gum hurt, but the entire side of my face hurt, I was unable to open my mouth fully, my head throbbed, I was nauseous, and had a fever/chills. I tried every remedy that I had the ingredients for and found little to no relief. I began to think there was nothing that would help this pain. In desperation, I took some Theraflu Warming Relief Flu and Sore Throat. I felt instant relief from the tooth pain and shortly thereafter, the throbbing in my head and faced subsided, and I no longer had chills or nausea. It's not a cure-all in that it still hurts when I try to open my mouth wide enough to even get a spoon in, but I'm extremely grateful for the other relief especially the tooth/gum pain. It's obvious that different things work for different people. A warm green tea bag actually made my tooth feel worse. But if you don't find relief elsewhere, you may wish to try Theraflu Warming Relief Flu and Sore Throat. rating: 4 (6 votes) Submitted by Charlie Spleen at 2011-04-14 06:18:55 If you are reading this, my heart goes out to because I'm in incredible pain too. I'm putting in my two cents for anybody in my situation. Young man, no money, cupboards dont have any of the items you most often read about here, being a young bachelor I dont often find a use for vanilla extract clove oil. But what I DO have is tooth paste, and rubbing some on the problem DID being some minor relief. Now I'm still in a fair amount of pain, but 10 minutes ago I was clutching my head, rolling on the floor, trying not cry. I would also like to say that I STRONGLY ADVISE AGAINST THE SALT WATER METHOD. That was one of, if not THE most intense pain I've ever felt. Whoever came up with that has probably shaken a baby or two....good luck, feel better. rating: 4 (6 votes) Submitted by LA at 2011-04-14 23:24:04 Ok...I tried everything...but my pain was caused by an infection under the tooth....stage two before capping my tooth. So finally I tried a couple of remedies - as a all in one cure. Take a tea back...I used peppermint first round and plain old lipton second....I pour oral jel, whiskey and valnilla on the teaback, rolled it up and stuck it between my jaw and teeth. At best it stopped the throbbing...can't wait until the drugstore opens in the morning to pick up the antibiotics that should do the trick....since the bottom line is an infection I am sure. For nowthe tea bag is a miracle worker. rating: 4 (9 votes) Submitted by Wendy at 2011-04-17 01:14:23 I took suggestions from this page and mixed them; I now am pain free!! Take ground cloves and mix them with vanilla extract. Dab on tooth a few times. After that the pain

was gone! To be sure it stays gone I put a teabag on the tooth for about 15 minutes. So far so good! Thanks all! rating: 4 (12 votes) Submitted by james at 2011-06-09 23:18:28 i just had an abcess and the pain was unbearable so the 2nd night of pain i got a pin and ice pack , i then froze the side the abcess was on and burnt the needle till it was glowin red and it popped and the pain went i then put cocunut oil on a cooker and boiled it for 5 mins and washed round mouthto remove any left over bacteria rating: 4 (6 votes) Submitted by tim at 2011-06-12 15:25:20 i just tried childrens tylonal the liquid kind and so far it seems to be helping out of everything ive tried so far this is the best everyting els is just temp relieve ive taken tylonal ibuprofin and nothings helped ive been putting cold watter in my mouth all day and i work in a gas station so the cant really be an option this does seem to help tho just heldit in my mouth for a couple of minutes rating: 4 (6 votes) Submitted by Gary at 2011-07-16 02:21:46 I just had the worst tooth pain i have ever felt and unfortunatly it started 45 min into an international flight of 14hrs. Having traveled international a lot I have a staple supply of OTC meds to fix just about anything... Unfortunatly after 1000mg of motrin and trying to gargle ambasol there was no change.... So i took a 12 hr Alegra D and within 20 min the pain was virtually gone. my mouth was still sore but a hot cup of coffee finished off the pain.... the pain was in a crowned tooth above the gum line so I am assuming a pulp infection made even worse by cabin pressure on the flight...at the 10hr mark the with the Alegra the pain starting coming back, another dose quickly corrected it so I am confident this was the fix....for now rating: 4 (7 votes) Submitted at 2010-07-27 15:34:18 I tried the vanalla with no effect. What I have found though that works is suger free gum. One small stick does it. I chew it up and use the tonge to mold aroung the infected area. With a sucking motion where the checks pull in; allowes for a better molding. This can give 6 to eight hour relieve. (I do not suggest having it in while sleeping.) I remove the gum before doing it again. I feel pain while molding it in, but when it feels like the gum is not even there then it is in good. I let the pain work itself out, about 3 min. If some works loose then just reomold it with the tonge. Please I hate the dentist too, and don't really have the money, but find a way, I know I will. rating: 3 (9 votes) Submitted by Char at 2011-02-23 07:46:03 I am used to PAIN, for I have LUPUS and CHRONIC PAIN from other things. I am on Morphine and let me tell you***IT DID NOTHING FOR THE TOOTH PAIN!! I cracked and broke a upper left back tooth on Friday and had it removed. ALL weekend I was in more pain than when I started! I suffered all weekend, finally went back to dentist today only to find out I had DRY Socket and infection started. Started ANTibiotics, and he packed the tooth with medicine... OUCH got worse until I found this site and pack cloves onto a Pepperment tea bag... I AM PAIN FREE the cloves

numb the area.. now with cold/heat packs I may get some sleep at 8 in the morning. rating: 3 (9 votes) Submitted by crissyc at 2010-11-04 19:00:56 Thank God for Orajel (severe pain formula).. Works wonders!!! Wal Mart sells this product for $7 bucks.. Give your mouth a lil rinse with warm salt water then apply... Been sleeping like a baby!! rating: 3 (8 votes) Submitted by Candy at 2009-01-06 03:07:22 I have been sittin up with my boyfriend for the past week at night...because his tooth has been hurting so bad that he can't sleep...finally i said the heck with this..we're goin to figure out what we can do to get rid of the pain...i need to get some sleep... so this is what we did...first i tried the vanilla...he said ''yeah that helped'' but then he said '' nope the pain is back again'' still no sleep for me...so next i reading page after page on things he could use...i came across the onion...so we tried that..(might i meantion he HATES onions) but he was willing to do anything....he said'' wow that helped...'' yup you guessed it '' no the pain is back'' so then i said well...this woman said gargle with nightquil...after all three of these and me listening to him...tell me none of them worked...guess what..im gettin some sleep tonight cus he has passed out before i even got all this typed...so i would say....use all three in that order...and maybe just maybe...you will get some sleep tonight... best wishes and i hope all your tooth aches...be minor... rating: 3 (7 votes) Submitted at 2010-09-04 23:55:36 Take 3 advils and put a green tea where it hurts... leave it there and it makes the pain go away... my face is swollen and I have holes in my teeth.. And that is the best thing that has worked for me.. The orjel makes it worse if you have an infection!! rating: 3 (6 votes) Submitted by Excrusiotiatingly funny! at 2011-04-24 07:51:46 My heart goes out to everyone in this room, as I lay awake unable to sleep bc of this annoying pain! Top left of my mouth, Wisdom tooth is impacted into a molar and infected to the root. Needless to say, Im hangin in there somehow. Tried Listerine, no go. Tried Salt + Water, NOPE. moved onto the tea bags. Unfortunately, Im a bachelor with absolutely NO USE for peppermint extract, I found some Lipton tea bags and have compressed one into my mouth. I am slamming 500mg Erithromycins every 6 hours, and 3 Bayer's every 4 hours. This pain suks, but Ive had the teabag in for about 10 minutes now, hopefully some relief will come soon rating: 3 (6 votes) Submitted by Ann at 2011-06-13 17:54:30 History of the Abcess first: Under a bridge. starts aching a little about 6 days ago. You always hope it will go away. It never does. By Sunday I'm at work and I know I am doomed. Only have Tylenol. Take i every 6 hours. Then 2 every 4 hours, 500 mg each.

Helps at first, but by Monday afternoon it is not even TOUCHING the pain. Can't see dentist until Tuesday. (Note to self: start petition requiring all aspiring dentists must have suffered at least one abcessed tooth before getting a degree.) Pain is unbearable by 1:30. Find an overlooked tylenol with codein tab and take it. No relief an hour later, so open the notebook and start looking for home remedies. I first tried white tea bag between gun and bridge for 15 minutes. Didn't draw out the abcess. Applied heating pad, mild relief. Still head banging pain. Now even my dogs look worried. Next I tried rinsing mouth with Toms mouth wash..has witch hael and aloe. Surprisingly, area felt marginally better. Found some oil of clove from Hippy store and squirted on the gum. Wow. Instant relief, too bad didn't last. Encouraged, I soaked a green tea bag with vanilla extract and clove oil. I'm not jumping for joy here but one of those things or all are helping a little. I think the clove oil by itself directly on the gum felt the best at least for a few seconds. I know nothing will work permanently except to pull the damn thing...it already had a root canal but I think Someone who never had an abcess missed a root a few years ago!! rating: 3 (5 votes) Submitted by Yvonne at 2006-03-16 00:24:05 Try a tea bag if you put it on you're gum by you're tooth ache it will draw the infection out a in to the tea bag but you have to leave it on all night and it will be gone in the morning. rating: 3 (9 votes) Submitted by ketan at 2011-01-03 22:28:25 Sometimes we don't have any resources to clam the tooth pain, the easy way I found to clam the pain down is by brushing for 5mins at the same spot of pain. It really did start to clam the pain down for 3 hours. Hope that works. rating: 3 (8 votes) Submitted by Carlton at 2010-04-19 22:07:49 I have been dealing with an abcessed tooth for quite a while now. It comes and goes, but one thing that works for the pain for me is swish a shot of high potency (drinking) alcohol around it for as long as you can stand. After it gets numb use a recliner chair if you have one and wrap a towel around a heating pad and rest it on the side where the infection is. I say recliner chair because laying down can actually make the pain worsen. Also 1 raw garlic clove a day for about 5 days will help rid the infection. Use yellow mouth wash. If your a smoker try not to smoke and if you do mouthwash right after you smoke. Teabags and saltwater can also help draw out the infection. For sleeping, I use sleep aids because I cannot sleep laying down with the infection, also loud music helps but obviously is not good for your ears. Hope this helps. Remember everyones body is different and will react differently. rating: 3 (29 votes) Submitted at 2009-11-16 03:46:55 thanks for all your tips, tried most of them, van.extract seemed to work best, but only relieving pain by about 50 percent. If anyone suspects they have an infected tooth, activated charcoal powder will work,the the type you grill with ! Make a paste with charcoal and water, place in a small piece of paper towel, fold over and apply directly to sore area. A bag of about 4 oz costs around 11 dollars. Charcoal is an absorbant and

will draw out the infection/toxins. Good luck, I'm just trying to cope til I can make it to the dentist and negotiate a payment plan ! rating: 3 (7 votes) Submitted at 2011-02-02 02:50:49 thank you to the people saying to use extract. I didnt have any vanilla extract so like anyone with enough pain willing to try anything almond extract worked great. rating: 3 (14 votes) Submitted by houstont at 2011-05-01 04:56:32 brush your teeth gently with crest baking soda (whitening) . then crack open a tylenol pm *gel fast relief* or ibprofen and let saliva break the pill over yur tooth with pain then gargle! rating: 3 (7 votes) Submitted at 2011-03-14 19:57:15 swishing cool or cold water in your mouth helps temporarely. must do often to work rating: 3 (20 votes) Submitted by tweety 1962 at 2008-05-20 13:07:16 I just wanted to warned women who are pregnant not to full around with a abcessed tooth of any kind get medical care A.S.P. It can kill the unborn child. rating: 3 (13 votes) Submitted by peppermint extract at 2008-10-09 00:06:14 Pure pepper mint extract- just take a few cap fulls n pour on tooth n swoosh aroundinstant relief no lie!!! 89% alcohol kills the pain instantly and cleans mouth leaving u w/ minty breath.... Cheap effective and can be found in spice cabinetrating: 3 (6 votes) Submitted by In Pain at 2009-01-09 15:56:08 Take a swab of cotton and mix up some salt and baking soda together and put it on the affected area it takes care of the pain i have yet to find out if it draws out the infection rating: 3 (3 votes) Submitted by john k at 2011-06-20 06:04:44 if yo havea broken tooth do this 1.)goto walgrens bu dentemp os or the toothache gum. 2.)go gome, brush well, i know it hurts but you need to clean ir out first. now use a qtip to dry the broken area of the tooth. 3.)here comes the pain, but its worth it in the end.pack your broken tooth with the dentemp os or tooth ache gum 4.)now it really hurts, i know that made it worse at least for now. 5.)use some clove oil and vanilla extact and oragel on your tooth until the nerve stops freaking out, also taking some ibuprofin will help along with excedrin back and body, because its an nsaid. 6.)in an hour or so you will notice you have to put less and less ora gel and clove oil to keep it from hurting. this is because you filled the hole and the air and suction that were pissing ff your tooth's nerve now cannot.

just remember, dont go eating anything or it will hurt like hell since the dentemp os is now sitting onto of he nerve.but at least its not exposed! next step call a damn dentist! rating: 3 (6 votes) Submitted by Jemmy at 2011-04-18 23:27:24 Hi guys, Firstly I totally sympathise with everyone going through this. Im lucky enough to live in the UK where I get free dental treatment so I feel the need to share some tips with you guys especially in the US who cant afford it. (God knows I wouldnt be able to) Currently up at 4.25am with my second absess, its actually inside the tooth so Im unable to get at it. Something that wasnt mentioned too much on this site, is something that I do which I dont know how Id live without when this pain comes. For instant short term relief (Like 2 minutes but at this point 5 seconds would be enough!) Get some cold (not fridge cold just normal cool water) and swish it around the infected tooth, the first time you do this you may feel extra pain but believe me just keep going and you will get instant relief! I always keep a bottle of water next to me just so I can do it when the pain comes. If you dont already know this secret I do not know how you have survived. I also find brushing my teeth helps and swishing some listerine around the tooth. Also I dip a flosette in some listerine and floss between the infected teeth. That eases the pain for a bit longer than the water but not by that much! Currently trying to teabag method... It seems to be making the pain a tiny bit more barable but not quite im gonna take it out now and go back to the water! Good luck guys! rating: 3 (11 votes) Submitted at 2007-09-05 19:29:53 Rinsing tooth with warm epsom salts and making a paste on cotton to put on the tooth, works better then Ambsol, cuts the pain from the rince and the paste draws out the infection, always worked good for me rating: 3 (8 votes) Submitted by tiffany at 2009-11-19 19:48:06 i have suffered from tooth pain for a while now if you put a heating pad on the side of of your cheeks it depends on what side of your mouth hurts it sounds weird but it helps rating: 3 (5 votes) Submitted at 2010-02-08 00:29:09

My tooth broke away a year ago and since no dental insurance and a dislike to dentist I am now in terrible pain. I have been up all night trying these rememdies. The best so far is the tea bag flavored with natural bergamot. It seems to be helping. I wish this boil would surface so i could drain it.... No one should have to suffer with this kind of pain. I have taken Ibuprofine all day and as soon as the 4 hours is up the pain comes back. I need amoxicillin for 8 days and that will clear up the infection. rating: 3 (5 votes) Submitted by Travis at 2010-05-11 01:37:00 Hurricane Spray Gel. You can pick this up at most drug stores, i.e. CVS. It costs around $20-$30 per little bottle but! this will get rid of the pain in less than 1 second from spraying this onto your infected area. I've had this abscessed tooth for about a month now and only used Hurricane once, I think it may have completely killed the nerves or something because I have absolutely no pain. I went from wanting to rip it out with pliers to no pain. rating: 3 (10 votes) Submitted at 2007-09-18 12:49:31 I have found that Blistex does help with the pain and Abreva really does not help at all, save your money. I finally used Acyclovir which helped alot and I plan to try Lemon balm next time to see if that works any faster. rating: 3 (2 votes) Submitted at 2010-01-03 19:34:59 I rubbed my teeth with the inside of an orange peel then brushed my teeth, then i waited a while, then poured some extra virgin olive oil on a white wash cloth and scrubbed my teeth. wow my teeth felt sooo clean and smooth. And my teeth looked really white. rating: 3 (4 votes) Submitted by Richard at 2009-09-10 19:17:22 Hi all, I want to thank you all for your suggestions, I stumbled on this site as I have a very painful abcess and I have been told I only need to go to hospital if it heads up to my eye socket or throat / neck. Doctors have prescribed me Amoxicillin and Dihydrocodeine which doesn't help the pain so I'm going to try some of your ideas. I'm actually for the UK and I have to admit I am shocked at the lengths you have to go to in self-remedies in the States due to lack of a National Health Service (NHS) I'm currently out of work over here so all my treatment is free including all dental even dentures etc, and I have had to have two teeth out this week and even if I was working it would only cost me around 40 - $60 to have the work done. I am disgusted that such a fantastic country like America can't do the same, please do support Obama's health service the British NHS is good and yes, private is better and has less waiting times but here in the UK we have the choice which to opt for (depending on income). Good luck to everyone and I hope some of these remedies work as this pain is torture! rating: 3 (20 votes) Submitted by Al Gunshefski at 2006-02-09 18:04:26 An even better treatment than clove oil is good old whiskey. Take a small mouthful of

whiskey and let it sit in your mouth until the pain subsides. Do not squish it around in your mouth and do not swallow it. This will temporarily relieve the pain and will have to be repeated again once the pain returns. Also will cause your mouth to burn momentarily but that is worth the pain relief you will get. rating: 3 (12 votes) Submitted by Kendra at 2010-10-11 19:50:44 iv been suffering from a abscessed tooth for about two weeks now and haven't been able to eat or sleep. I've Tried everything and nothing works. i started looking through my kitchen and looked through my spices and seasonings and one that Ive found is McCormick Lemon and Herb it works really well i put it on my tooth and and about 2 mins later my toothache went away rating: 3 (5 votes) Submitted by Sameshtdiffliez2@yahoo.com at 2011-05-04 12:17:51 We're all taking ibuprofen but while you wait for that to kick in and you don't have orajel, here's an option. Take an ice cube and hold it on the web between thumb and index finger on the same side as the tooth ache. (left side of your mouth hold ice on.left hand. I know it sounds crazy but I guess the nerves in your hand and jaw are connected. It'll work long enough for the pain pills to kick in. Right now I have no ibuprofen or orajel so I'm gonna try the cloves & tea bag. Hope Earl Grey works. My hand is frozen already but it knocked the pain back to a dull roar. rating: 3 (13 votes) Submitted at 2009-03-16 03:40:24 Had bad tooth ache and thought I would try oregano leaves, I placed it on tooth and I was amazed at how quickly the pain left. This remedy is a winner rating: 3 (3 votes) Submitted by Shawn at 2009-04-01 21:46:46 This goes along the same lines as others have suggested,using throat spray on a cotton ball and placing it on the tooth. I just improved it slightly. They make chloraseptic strips now. I simply moistened two of them with my tongue and using my tongue wrapped them around the painful tooth.as it dissolves it actually shrinks tighter against the tooth filling in the cavity. It works like a charm. Good luck! rating: 3 (3 votes) Submitted by Samarendra upadhyay at 2009-09-19 10:31:41 use mustard oil with a little bit of salt added to it.tastes bad but use mouthwash afterwards. rating: 3 (4 votes) Submitted at 2010-10-18 18:36:54 Okay this works rly good it rly only lessens the pain .. but anything is better than nothin i hae a tooth cracked down to my jaw bone this rly burs but all u gotta do is rinse with water ... so heres wat u do 1. all u do is rinse with rubbing alchohol an peroxide . then rinse with water imediatly ( DO NOT SWALLOW) rating: 3 (4 votes)

Submitted by amy at 2011-05-07 15:55:49 I am 26 and have 2 girls. My baby is now 8yrs old! I have stretch marks on my belly, thighs and boobs. I started using vit.e oil (u can get @ dollar general for $2-massage in and then use palmers pure cocoa butter stick. Its been a little over a week and I have very good results :) try it, its even cheap! rating: 3 (30 votes) Submitted by MArgarita at 2010-03-25 05:04:11 ok last year i had the same problem like all of you if your tooth is hurting bad for about 2 weeks thats a serious problem??? if you are one of the people here who is suffering with a toothache i sujest you tried the following: Mexican REmedy. Take a warm shower 2. when you get out of the shower right away por some alcohol on your face and all over your body But do this in tHe night wear some warm clothes because youre going to sweat a lot ! because it helps to relieve the pain and is calming the nerve from the bad toothache, try to see if this remedy helps u it help me whenever i have a bad toothache if that doesn't help tried the following 2. Get a clean sock put Beans inside your sock put it on the microwave let it heat up until 2-3 minutes.. (only) do this everyday until you start noticing a abscess like alittle bump where the affected area is please Get your sock of beans and put it on the area where you're feeling the pain.... on the side of your cheek or where the toothache is bothering you (please don't bite on the sock :}} just roll it on your face So don't worry if you start noticing your face red is normal because what this those is kllling the bacteria and thats what you WANT ! you want Results! 3 drink lots of warm milk that helps too everyday 4. also drink some liquor too it helps a lot to relieve the pain and it also kills all the bateria. i hope my Mexican remedy helps all of you:D rating: 3 (19 votes) Submitted at 2008-03-17 11:17:20 In reply to the marijuana post, marijuana is beneficial in many places, but it is not recamended for abcesses, as the ''cottonmouth'' one gets from smoking can cause the area of abcess to become a dry socket which is very painful as well. rating: 3 (12 votes) Submitted at 2010-04-30 01:00:44 ive tried almost every thing known to man.iv had this doggone toothache for about two weeks.a triend told me a few things to do.1.crush up a regular bayor asprin.put the powder on a cotton ball and put it on the tooth. rating: 3 (7 votes)

Submitted by Dragon Seeker at 2011-03-11 11:25:17 I have been dealing with my toothache for about a week now and within the past 3 days it has been keeping me up throughout the night. My wife and I came across this page last night around 12 or 1 am. We tried vanilla extract, olive oil, salt water, teabags, and many more to no avail. Was taking T3 with Codine and Amoxacillin but they only worked for about 20-30 minutes at a time. But the thing that worked the best for me was taking 4 tylenol 500mg and crushing up a saltine cracker and putting it into an empty teabag, placing it on the infected teeth (I have 3 currently) and going to sleep with the cracker in my mouth after the Tylenol took effect. I finally got a goods nights rest and am currently feeling little pressure but no pain as of yet. So with that said I hope it works for others and trust me when I say 'My heart goes out to you all, I feel your Pain!'. Thank you again for the ideas. rating: 3 (8 votes) Submitted by Dexter at 2010-07-31 16:43:14 Red Cross Toothache Medicine, definitely works. Ibuprofin. And the best for overall pain if you have abscessed tooth, is antibiotics. rating: 3 (11 votes) Submitted by IpromiseI'llbrush. at 2009-01-03 00:54:43 Just by accident I found that bananas help me. Like others, it hurt so bad I was almost in a panic, so having not eaten in a couple days I ate a banana and it did ease the pain a great deal, only lasted for about a half hour though. Definately going to try some of the other remedies on here. rating: 3 (1 votes) Submitted at 2009-01-06 00:00:14 I disolved an asprin with a few drops of Almond extract. The Almond extract did burn my toung, but my pain is gone. I tried advil, tylonl, and even a vicodin and nothing worked. The asprin and almond mixed placed directly on my tooth, which is getting a root canal tomarrow, stopped the pain. I applied the solution with a q-tip. Use this if desperate but be careful. rating: 3 (1 votes) Submitted by Jesse at 2009-02-23 05:40:02 for two days i have had bad toothake do to infected wisdom teeth. I tried every thing i found that if you rinse with listrine and cut a onion and put a slice on the tooth the pain gets better altho dont go away compleatly you can go to sleep worked for me hope the same for you rating: 3 (2 votes) Submitted by stacy at 2009-11-11 02:13:12 the worst pain i have even felt came from my absessed tooth....but i eliminated it quickly.....took amoxicillin 3 times a day, 1 800mg ibuprofen, 2 5mg/500mg vikoden.....then mix 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract, 1 tsp. pure geranium (liquid form), 1 tsp. children's liquid ibuprofen, and 1 tsp. of the blue extra strength listerine....mix together well and hold in mouth over effected tooth as long as u can....it tastes horrible, but it

kills it for a good night of sleep! rating: 3 (3 votes) Submitted at 2009-11-27 23:15:03 I have been fighting 4 boils (2 very large and 2 small) for several days making ne VERY miserable (more miserable than recovering from the c-section I had a month ago.....no joke)I tried the Campho Phenique and a large bandage and they opened and drained in just a few hours. It does kind of sting as it begins to drain but gave me almost instant relief!!!! rating: 3 (1 votes) Submitted by Wendy at 2009-12-12 15:51:46 This site was a real relief when I found it today... my gum abcess has been brewing for several days & I was just using mouthwash & crossed-fingers to hope it went away dreading the thought of trying to get a dentist appointment next week. After reading these pages, I had a look in my cupboard & tried a drink of (alcoholic) peppermint then back to the mouthwash. Thought I'd also try the dry teabag method, only left it in half an hour, now, 2 two hours later, the abcess is no longer visible. Didn't feel it go, only had a slight nasty taste in my mouth but just now,after cleaning my teeth & using mouthwash I looked & prodded - nothing there! Wont' say I'm cured, see how I go but I feel fine now. Thanks to all of you. rating: 3 (1 votes) Submitted by Ed at 2010-10-29 19:29:49 No folks, Here is the truth so sit back and take it. There are a ton of home remedies but if your tooth is infected then you will need a root canal. This happens when bacteria gets under the tooth and the pulpit literally rots. So here is a way to tell if you are dealing with a cavity or a serious problem that will need professional help. Take an ice cube and place it on hour tooth. If you experience more pain than you ever thought possible then you most likely have a problem that wl require A root canal or a sime extraction. Also if heat to make it feel better you had better make an appointment. 6-8 advils and the pain should go away long enough for you to get 4 hours of sleep. I took 8 every four hours even though it's not good for hour liver. But i was considering ripping the tooth out myself ( that's how bad it hurt) if you pain is just. Cavity leaving an e posed nerve then try the other remedies. I know the kits they sell at the drug store for a temporary filling work great. rating: 2 (8 votes) Submitted by Susana at 2010-10-18 09:21:39 I could not afford a dentist but found out about carecredit.com a place that extends credit cards for dental work. The receptionist told me so now I can go to a dentist to have my flipper replaced. What helps the most is brushing my teeth when the pain is bad and putting a Tylenol on my gum and letting it be absorbed. Thanks for all the ideas to relieve pain. I agree with Sophia on the Golden Girls who said if God wanted us to eat things that decay our teeth he would have handed our teeth to us in a baggie. rating: 2 (7 votes)

Submitted by kim at 2009-04-04 23:19:49 my dentist was on vacation for the week and i went to see another dentist. he actually gave me clove oil. it's great. it stops pain w/in seconds and heals the infection. you aren't supposed to DRINK it, but don't rinse afterwards! apply the oil to your tooth sparingly. then, don't spit into a sink. just spit softly onto a paper towel or kleenex until the terrible taste gets better. :) rating: 2 (3 votes) Submitted by Emily Harding at 2010-02-20 04:25:36 ok So i had this toothache for 1 year now and i went back to newzealand because i live in australia. and So i went to the dentist they did my tooth but they told me i needed it to come back tomarrow at 12:30 pm around lunch. so the next morning i didnt go to the dentist because of my mum went to work i went to school on the next day and the tooth went of for about 5 months later and then it came back. i went to newzealand up in kaitaia and i woke up at 4:00am in the morning i couldnt get back to sleep i started crying and crying and went to sleep around lunch. i looked up on the internet i tried everything i went on the plane to go back to australia i was crying because i had so much fun there. i ordered a mars bar on the plane and my tooth ache came up its started playing up ever since, i got really angry and had no patience . i went back to australia and the next morning my dad told me to get a nuerofen and so i got one and then he told me to get a spoon and crush the nuerofen and place some nuerofen on my tooth in the hole . but if you dont have a hole in your toothe get a ear bud and get some nuerofen bits and put in on your tooth and on the sides. Sorry for the long story i have feelings for newzealand :( i hope i helped rating: 2 (15 votes) Submitted by autumn at 2009-03-08 20:43:41 This is an old wives tale: chewing tobacco between the cheek and against the affected tooth. my grandpa is an old farmer and told me about this one. do not use flavored tobacco, just regular, straight tobacco. it draws out the infection... rating: 2 (2 votes)

Submitted at 2011-01-28 14:19:37 Rice bags are one of the best ways to get immediate relief of tooth pain, if you dont have a traditional rice bag grab a CLEAN sock fill it with rice tie off at the end and microwave until hot. I swear by this the moist heat from the rice takes pressure off your sinuses which could be causing more pain and also offers immediate relief for your tooth. Although temporary it works great! rating: 2 (7 votes) Submitted by Rob at 2011-01-10 17:58:29 This might sound silly but really try this if it kills so much you find yourself pounding round the house in agony an dont know where to put ya head it works for me everytime . Depending on ya fitness level support your body weight with your feet of the ground just slightly maybe just an inch i use the bit where our cooker should be then slowly bring your legs up and knees into your chest do about 15 or more / less depends how fit you are basicly till ya abs hurt you should find by the time you finish that A: that angry fealing you had has gone B: your abs hurt a bit and most importanly your pain should have gone seems to work with chin up to if you need something inbetween again depends on your fitness treadmills work amasingly a good 20 min jog can remove any toothache for me personally plus keeps ya fit take a couple of paracetomol before ya jog avoid press up tho this sometimes works exept laying flat can sometimes intensafy the pain and if it a tooth sensetive to the cold i wouldent run outside sometimes it doesent help beware that awfull pain will probley return soon tho so chose to get ya heart rate up again if it does until ya pain killers are working properly am no expert but this has worked for me for a couple of years when i feel theres no way out i believe your heart pumping blood to other areas of you body as in muscles stops the nerves takin over some how any feedback appreicheiated sorry for poor gramer an spellings Rob hope this helps someone. rating: 2 (8 votes) Submitted by Tamra D at 2008-05-29 15:26:24 Take little pieces of bread soked in warm milk put one piece on side by the gum and one on top of the tooth hold there for like 2 min or so and repeat till the whole peice of bread is gone this takes the infection out and stops the throbbing and pain I am doing it as we speek works wonders. rating: 2 (5 votes) Submitted by Danielle at 2008-09-17 05:07:40 I have been up since 10 pm and now it is 2.00 am...yes i was just in excruciating pain and i was looking up remedies..the only thing i had was an ONION.. i didnt think it would work but i chewed an onion with my hurting tooth for 3 MINUTES and the pain INSTANTLY STOPPED! it works because i read that it kills all the germs in your mouth instantly.. rating: 2 (1 votes) Submitted by roh at 2009-12-14 22:10:15 seems like theres alot of things, so i ran to the food pantry and put the first thing i saw in my mouth, which happend to be a bottle of balsamic vinegar. swished it and swallowed, pain gone. rating: 2 (1 votes)

Submitted by Will at 2010-05-23 02:04:48 I've been in intense pain for a few days, and I've been popping motrin and it will numb the pain. I made the mistake of trying to use orajel and that intensified the pain. But I just chewed a motrin on the afflicted tooth and the pain went away INSTANTLY!!!!! INSTANTLY!!!!! I strongly suggest this method. rating: 2 (2 votes) Submitted by Rita at 2010-06-01 17:26:49 I try everything tylenol advil orajel nothing works findly use mouthwash held in mouth till felt numb then took nite time cold pills it work long enough to get a couple hours of sleep till i could call dentist the next morning liquid nite time probaly would work by drinking an holding in mouth also try some type liquior. hope this helps someone the is terrible pain. rating: 2 (2 votes) Submitted at 2011-01-20 21:13:32 Yeah. Go get a root canal. Problem solved. Forget natural. Go see a dentist. rating: 1 (25 votes) Submitted by Morgan at 2007-09-30 01:07:13 Ok my friend told me to use, witch hazel: to swish around mouth especially around the tooth that hurts, then put a goody pack on the infected gum and tooth, make sure you pack the goody powder good around the tooth. As for me, the dentist gave me some vicodens to use when in pain, well they arent helping to much so I bought BC Powder Arthritis Strength and Goody's Powder pack for Body Pain (red pack) and I put the powders on my gum and around the tooth. Then I mixed both powders and salt in warm water, got a cotton ball and soaked it up and put it on my tooth and bit it, and it actually helps. I can bite down without it hurting so much. My tooth is sore because I was massaging it earlier instead of leaving it alone. But using these powders do actually help. I have never had a tooth ache like this, and I cant get a root canal, because the tooth is way paste saving it, so until I get it pulled, I have to use this method. Believe me I know how you feel, it sucks big time. All these other remedies I have heard work too, so whatever you feel comfortable with, try it and see what works best for you. rating: 1 (3 votes) Submitted by jimmy at 2008-07-16 11:36:38 I am plauged with these things on almost a fortnightly basis. And they are the most paintful things you could possibly deal with. I dont take painkillers so it makes things even worse. I know i should visit a dentist but ive left the two teeth which give me problems too long and i have no idea how they will remove them now (i dont want to think). The best remedy for me seems to be drinking allot of water and having some extra multivitimans/vitiman 3 rich drinks like ribeana etc. I usually continuesly swish water around my mouth and spit out the horrible taste,

eventually draining the abcess. Id love to try some of these home remedeys other people have suggested but i dont have access to them kind of products in the village i live in. rating: 1 (1 votes) Submitted by Em at 2008-10-16 12:07:56 Ok I have tried the smoking pot thing didn't really help for this pain that is up on the top of the list w/childbirth!! I fortunatly have insurance but it took me almost a year to find a dentsist to except it (medicaid) so for a year I would take a small piece of cotten wet it w/warm water and roll in eaqual amounts of baking soda and salt and tuck between cheek and gum this draws out the infection which helps w/pain!! after that u should try the pot thing! it Totally helped for me!! should only be a temp. fix until you can get to a dentist but I did this for almost a year!! when the pain first started I had a newborn baby and felt like i couldn't take care of him I am so glad i heard about this from a friend because I have been able to enjoy my baby!! and fortunatly I just got it pulled (had to go to dif. county though)!!!:) I would use this method again if need be! rating: 1 (1 votes) Submitted by Jeremy at 2008-12-17 22:33:08 I tried a lot of these things. Nothing worked for me except for whiskey. I just let it set on there till the burning sensation goes away and spit it out. My pain has gone from a 10 to at least a 2. Good temporary relief till I see the dentist in couple days. rating: 1 (1 votes) Submitted by Jm777 at 2011-08-23 13:44:10 I read about swishing whiskey. In absence of whiskey, I quickly popped a bottle of red wine. As I type, I have swished and let stand red win on my mouth four times. It feels oh boy, better? 1000 mg of mefanamic didn't work. I hope this relief lasts hours to put me to sleep. Alcohol also feels good, it eases my stress due to pain. Hope this helps, and good luck! rating: 1 (1 votes)

Copyright 2003-2004 - Webmaster

Re Paul Sheehan send to Anna:
1. Re Sheehan, (are we sure he isnt the same chappie as Paul all civil war all the time McGeough)? S. has been having a bet each way on most things for quite a long time. Read his columns/books closely and you will find that he assembles facts so as to suggest,imply and intimate, but never actually makes an argument. Certainly not one hes prepared to stand behind. This could be not so much a political position - he hasnt really got one- but the consequence of an intellectual disability- he grabs at facts that appeal to him but cant quite decide what they all add up to.

A bower bird rathe than a polemicist. That Israels moral capital thing reads like something he picked up somewhere and quite liked the sound ofbut whose exact meaning he hasnt taken the trouble to investigate. A curious case