Numb Your Gums

Recently, my teeth is started to feel fairly sensitive when chewing on foods that didn't used to give me any kind of issue. 

Suddenly even chewing on toast made me feel like maybe my precious mouth bones will just fall out. Then, one molar started to ache off and on without provocation.

If you're feeling this way, seeing a dentist ASAP is a necessity. If, for some reason, your dental appointment can't happen immediately, getting some topical anesthetic can make things less awful.

This is what I found. I am so happy for the massive picture, even if the pictured product is a bit greener than the real thing.

If you're the kind of person you can walk into a Japanese drugstore, ask someone for help and actually get it, I'm exceedingly happy for you. After too many encounters with store employees who 1) have no idea where anything is, 2) have no interest in communicating with a non-native Japanese speaker, or 3) are too busy/bored to be bothered with helping a foreigner, I usually no longer ask. I just search.

I went straight to the cankre sore medication section but it turns out that in the drug store closest to my home, cankre sores count as a skin ailment more than a mouth ailment as far as medicinal organization is concerned.

The toothpaste section was my next stop, but I was overwhelmed and confused. Ignoring the toothpaste tubes, I focussed on the smaller, which tubes seemed to be entirely filled with whitening cream.

Taking out my phone, I searched for mouth numbing creams, wound up on Amazon's Japanese site, and found a Japanese brand for this item. I took that info to the shelves and had a much easier time finding what I was looking for.

This one worked really well for me, though this may or may not be the best choice depending on the cause of your tooth pain. For me, this was extremely beneficial. After getting home and get washing my hands, I put some on my finger, rubbed it onto my gums and felt a blissful absence of pain.

So teal! Heal with the power of teal...or at least numb...

For less than 1000 yen, I had a way to stop the pain, at least temporarily, until I could get an appointment with my dentist.

With any medicine, be sure to check the dose limitations and requirements, with Google translate if necessary, before you start using it.