Some dental questions: salt water, pain medication

Factual Questions
1

  1. For most of my life, if ever I had a sore throat or possible infection in my mouth (say I accidentally bit myself), the motherly advice would be to rinse or gargle with salt water. Having just had my top wisdom teeth removed, I see the advice again is to rinse with salt water. So, ok, that’s nice… but is there something more to this? Would it be a good idea to use salt water over, say, Listerine, as general oral hygiene? (In addition to brushing and flossing, of course!)

  2. As I mentioned, I just had my top two wisdom teeth removed. It is pretty important to make sure the blood clot that fills the socket stays put, so strenuous activity needs to be avoided, gentle mouth cleansing needs to be used rather than vigorous swishing, avoid creating pressure differences by sucking, no spitting, and so on. Presumably because of the strenuous activity and spitting part, one should also avoid vomiting. Yet both times I’ve had my wisdom teeth out (lower set years ago when they came in), the initial bout of pain medications were narcotics that have nausea and/or vomiting as a possible side-effect. Is it just that there is no other safe and effective pain medication? Why would we want to give me something that might induce vomiting when that would surely pose a risk to the clot? As a subquestion, do all narcotics have this side-effect?

2

If your mouth is sore I would say definitely suspend using listerine

3

Regarding your first question.
I’ve had extensive dental and gum work, it seems, for my entire life. The warm water and salt suggestion was always used by my dentist, so, I took that one step further and decided to do it on a daily basis. I use a ‘WATERPIK’ that I fill with warm water and salt, and I do the cleaning on a daily basis. My hygienist is simply amazed at the condition of my gums when I go in for a cleaning. I don’t have many of my original teeth, so keeping my gums tight around what’s left is a good thing. The dentist said it was a great idea, as long as I kept the water pressure to a minimum.(The device is a pump that shoots out water at a high rate of pulsation). Try it…can’t hurt.
See my smile? :smiley:

4

Yeah, the teeth look good, but the skin tones are a little pale – getting enough iron? :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyway, with respect to the OP’s first question, salt water helps to draw excess fluid out of inflamed tissues, and is particularly helpful when dealing with blood-engorged post-surgical tissues. It’s called “osmosis.”

Regarding the second question, yes, virtually all narcotics can cause nausea – the important word is “can.” It’s not a problem for most people; did you vomit when taking narcotics? If not, I fail to see the reason for your concern. Vomiting may be undesirable following oral surgery, but writhing in agony is worse.

5

No, Nametag, I’ve not had anything other than slight nausea, for which I am grateful. Narcotics are yummy. Osmosis, eh?