Ask the Dental Experts
Our philosophy is to help our patients achieve and maintain exceptional dental health. We work hard to make sure that our level of care is deserving of our patients’ respect and confidence. Our tradition of preventive dentistry is the basis for all service and care in our practice. We welcome all questions and comments regarding dentistry in the hope that we increase your dental "IQ" and help you make better dental health decisions.Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Numbness following Anesthesia
Q: Are there any remedies or solutions that can reduce the numbing feeling after local anesthetic is applied?
A: Unfortunately, there is no way to eliminate the numb feeling after an injection (local anesthetic). There are several things that you can do to minimize the effects of the numbness from the local anesthetic. First of all, you can ask your dentist to use a short acting local anesthetic. Most local anesthetics that we use in dentistry have a very small amount of epinephrine in them and it causes vaso-constriction which in turn reduces blood flow to the area. This keeps the anesthetic around longer. A short acting local anesthetic generally will not have epinephrine in it and therefore the length of numbness is shorter.
The other way to reduce the effects of the numbness is to apply heat to the area that was injected. Be careful not to burn the tissue. You will have no feeling in the injected area and you could burn yourself. As a rule of thumb, I instruct patients to use hot water form the faucet by soaking a cloth with it and apply it to the injected area. Most times the tap water will not burn you. The heat will increase the blood flow to the area and the blood will remove the local anesthetic a little faster than it normally takes.
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