I was told to hold rubbing alcohol in my mouth for a toothache?



There is a good chance that rubbing alcohol will help ease your toothache, as it has both antibacterial and analgesic properties to some extent. It will therefore ease the pain slightly as well as kill the bacteria that are present, if the cause of your toothache is a bacterial infection. However, there are two problems - one is that rubbing alcohol is not entirely safe, and the second is that the solution is in any case only a temporary one.

Rubbing alcohol is not suitable for ingestion, and drinking it could be harmful, so it is better not to rinse your mouth with it, just to be on the safe side. Regular alcohol will achieve pretty much the same result, so rinsing your mouth with a large sip of whiskey is a much better idea. There are other common remedies for toothaches that will also have about the same effect. Clove oil is one, but it is also not entirely safe, so you should use it sparingly; or you can rinse your mouth with warm salt water.

A more important point to remember however, is that these are only temporary remedies that work mainly to ease the pain. The only real cure for a toothache is to find out what exactly is causing it, and then take the required treatment to address the cause.

answered by M W


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