I have a high pain tolerance. For some reason, even though I can “take it” my body refuses to go numb with the Novocain during dental procedures. I’ll start to go numb, but when the dentist starts his work I can feel it. I have no idea what is going on. Have you encountered this?
Paul
Dear Paul,
Yes, I have encountered this before. Often it has nothing to do with your pain tolerance and more to do with your past experiences at the dentist. If you’ve had painful or traumatic experiences in the past, you body remembers that. Because of that, your body responds by speeding up your metabolism, sort of a fight or flight response. This burns off the numbing medication.
What you need is to see a dentist who offers two levels of dental sedation. The first level is nitrous oxide. This is a mild form of sedation administered by a nosepiece. You’ll breathe in the gas and it will make you feel relaxed and floaty. It is often enough to help people with mild dental anxiety. This relaxes many patients enough to allow the Novocain to do its job. Once your procedure is finished, your dentist will switch the gas back to oxygen and you’ll be back to normal and ready to go on with your day as normal.
There is a second, stronger, level of sedation if nitrous oxide isn’t enough for you. This will work. Oral conscious sedation is administered by swallowing a pill. However, this is so strong you will need someone to drive you to and from your dental appointment. Even after the procedure, you won’t be very lucid and will need someone to stay with you until you are steady on your feet again.
While there are other levels of sedation, they are rarely necessary. One of the two levels already mentioned have fewer risks and are satisfactory solutions.
There are some pretty good benefits to this, though. Your dentist will be able to get a lot more work done in one sitting. This will allow you to catch up on any work you weren’t able to do in the past because of the issue of not being able to get numb. Patients who previous to using sedation avoided the dentist, find they have fewer dental emergencies because they’re now able to go to the dentist without fear.
This blog is brought to you by La Jolla Dentist Dr. Stephen Doan.