USC Health Now

Q: Someone told me that my headaches may be related to my teeth. Is this true?

A: If you sufferer from headaches, you might want to consult your dentist as well as your doctor, since headaches and dental pain have a lot in common, says Glenn Clark, D.D.S., director of the Orofacial Pain and Oral Medicine Graduate Program at the USC School of Dentistry. Pain centered in the nerves and muscles running throughout the face and neck, as well as poor habits the discomfort may cause, can trap sufferers in a painful feedback loop, with head pain triggering jaw and neck pain and vice versa. “Headaches and toothaches all transmit through the trigeminal nerve, the largest sensory nerve in the head which supplies the external face, scalp, jaw, teeth and much of the intra-oral structures,” Clark says. “Pain in one branch of the nerve has the potential to activate other branches of the nerve, and when that pain is chronic and sustained, it is more likely to trigger a sequence of events that might lead to a headache.” Besides the close anatomical links between head, face and jaw pain, reflexive behaviors caused by pain and tension such as jaw clenching and muscle tightening can exacerbate and transfer pain. “In general, headaches don’t have physical signs, and diagnosis is all related to the history and pattern of the pain,” Clark says. “If the patient is being treated for the migraines, tension headaches or sinus pains and the medications or other methods of treatment given by the physician are not effective, they are often referred to a dentist for evaluation.