WAKE up sleepy head, it's time to go to the dentist to boost your energy. One side effect from having a dental abscess, in fact having any infection, is that it can cause a person to feel chronically tired.
One of the lingering leftovers from lockdown is that some patients have had to endure dental infections for much longer, so more people may be starting to feel this low-grade tiredness creep over themselves. It's the type of tiredness that a good night's sleep just doesn't kick into touch.
And it's not just tiredness that infections can trigger they may also be contributing to runny noses, as bizarre as that sounds. These side effects are put down to the myriad of wonderful molecules and their interactions with all the different substances that are floating around in our bodies.
A dental abscess is a ball of bacteria filled pus. The bacteria spew out inflammatory products causing inflammation, and this signals the body's immune system to switch on. The body sends out white blood cells and cytokine proteins to fight the infection. The inflammation is then ramped up and under normal circumstances the immune system will deal with and neutralise the bacterial threat and your body will return to a state of normal.
However, due to differences between individuals, some people's immune response is sent into hyperdrive – especially if the abscess is left to dwell in the body. In this case the immune system is continually stimulated to release its inflammatory fighting cells, sort of like being unable to turn a tap off.
This overstimulation requires a tremendous amount of energy from the body and hence fatigue can set in; some people even describe brain fog. If the distant inflammation occurs in the nose, then this is what can cause a runny nose.
Antibiotics can dampen down an infection but really the cause of the infection should be treated; this could include a tooth being removed, a root filling carried out, deep cleaning of gum disease or surgically cleaning infections that have become stuck in the jaw bones.
Even if you don't have any pain from an infection, the body performs best when it's infection free so that energy levels can return to normal.
