Have you ever found yourself in this situation? You’ve just gone outside. It’s early in the morning, there’s a chill in the air. You take in a quick breath through your mouth and WHAM – your teeth jolt you with a shock of pain that carries all the way up inside your head and stops somewhere behind your eyes.  If you have, then congratulations, you’re a member of the sensitive teeth club. But how did this happen you ask.

Well, teeth sensitivity tends to creep up on most of us; it doesn’t happen overnight. But we tend not to notice it at first. Then, when it’s gone on for a while, we’ll notice it when we’re shocked by something very cold, like our favorite ice cream dessert or that cold beer at the end of a long, hard day. So acquiring teeth sensitivity to cold doesn’t happen overnight.

The tooth sensitivity occurs specifically when our gums recede; they shrink away from the roots of our teeth and expose them a bit. That little bit is just enough to expose the tiny pores or tubules that cover the roots. These pores are little freeways to the inside of the root where the pulp and nerve live. So when we suck in some cold air or suck down a cold drink, that cold is transferred straight down to our nerves. And the nerves don’t like that so they shoot off a pain message telling your brain that they’re unhappy.

Now our gums can recede for a couple of reasons. First, they can recede because we don’t take good care of them. We ignore good oral hygiene and let plaque build up on our teeth until it turns to tartar and harms the gums. And when the gums aren’t healthy, the teeth aren’t healthy – it’s as simple as that.
The second way our gums can recede is, oddly enough, if we take oral hygiene to the extreme – specifically, if we over-brush our teeth. For instance, if we brush too many times a day or for too long or if we use a toothbrush that’s too hard, we can damage our gums over time.

If you find that your teeth are sensitive to cold air, you can do something about it. To start off, you can make sure to practice proper oral hygiene. Then you can switch to a toothpaste that’s specifically made to combat sensitivity. There are several on the market and they all use the same active ingredients. After a couple of weeks your sensitivity should be reduced – if it isn’t then you should see your dentist for a full check-up.

Just because your teeth have become sensitive doesn’t mean they have to stay that way. Take a couple of positive steps and you should see some relief.