1. Endodontic (Root Canal) therapy removes the sick tissue from inside the tooth and replaces it with filling inside the roots. The diseased tissue causes inflammation inside the tooth and irritation in the surrounding tissue areas. Once the cause of the irritation has been removed the tooth should start to heal. Although healing is not immediate you should start feeling better in one or two weeks. To understand the healing process, consider the familiar example of having a splinter in your finger. Once the splinter is removed, your finger feels better but the surrounding tissues still feel sore. This is similar to what an endodontic treatment will do – it removes the cause of the problem but the ligament and the bone that surrounds the root(s) are still bruised. This is the reason anti-inflammatories work so well, since they reduce the bruising surrounding the tooth. Sometimes the tooth does not become sore till the next day, so we recommend that you take anti-inflammatories immediately after endodontic treatment. This will prevent the production of pain mediators that will later cause you pain.