Most people don’t associate fun with the dentist, and when you’re talking about potentially painful procedures that require your mouth to be numbed, “fun” probably isn’t the first word that pops into your head. To add insult to injury, your mouth feels all numb, and you can’t taste or talk right for a while afterward.
Numbing Basics
The most numbness that you feel from dental anesthesia is from a local anesthetic that is injected. This injection is typically lidocaine. The numbness usually spreads all over the area injected including your teeth, gums, tongue, and lips. However, numbing can be a result of a topical gel, IV, pill, or laughing gas as well.
How Long Will the Numbing Last?
The numbness of your mouth is many times drastic. You will lose basic feeling to a large portion of your mouth. You won’t be able to properly feel your tongue or cheeks like you usually can. This means that you need to stay conscious of accidentally biting down on your tongue or cheeks and causing yourself injury.
The numbing can last as little as two hours all the way up to five hours, and if you are administered a heavy painkiller as after a wisdom tooth extraction, you may feel numb to pain for much longer.
Numbness from a local anesthetic will depend much on how much is administered and where. The lower part of your jaw requires more anesthesia because of a nerve, that if not properly numbed, could still cause you pain. Another factor is your own metabolism. People with a higher metabolism will regain feeling much faster than people with a slow metabolism.
Our best advice is not to worry about it, within the day you will regain feeling, and things will go back to normal.