Got me a nice canker sore inside of the bottom lip. Bought me some Campho-Phenique (knowing quite well it’s used for COLD sores) to apply to my affliction. Read the warning and it says: For external use only… If swallowed, contact poison control.
Good lord. I put this crap in my mouth before reading the label. What to do? Are they being over-precautious? Is it cool if I just keep putting this in my mouth (I happen to like the “temporary pain relief”) for the next week or so?
Wel, many of the ingredients are poisonous (camphor, phenol, eucalyptus oil), but you’d normally have to drink a bottle or two to get a toxic effect. That said, canker sores are NOT like cold sores, and materials like Campho-Phenique may actually make the sore worse. My dentist warned me against treating canker sores with Chloraseptic, which has much the same action.
If you’re in the market for a canker sore remedy, I highly recommend rinsing with hydrogen peroxide. Dilute it down by about half with water, and swish vigorously in the canker-sore area for about 30 seconds, then rinse your mouth with water to get rid of the fizzies. Repeat morning and night until the sore is gone. I find that this is amazingly good at reducing the pain in my canker sores and speeding healing.
In fact, I’ve had a bugger of a sore for the last three days. It was really huge, vile, and painful. I finally got around to swishing with H[sub]2[/sub]O[sub]2[/sub] last night. The improvement is startling. Why didn’t I do this three days ago instead of suffering? :smack:
If you need pain relief, maybe you could dry Anbesol.
H2O2 it is then. Thanks guys!
Another good treatment is to gargle with Listerine.
It will burn. Oh yes, there is some burning. But if you keep it in your mouth after about a minute your sore will go numb. It will stay numb for hours. Then just gargle some more. The sore will go away pretty quickly.
I had frequent canker sores until I discovered I’ve developed an allergy to pineapples (one of my favorite foods 
). I remember I’d sit for hours with a funny “blowing a pocket of air out my cheek or upper/lower lip” look to ease the pressure on the sore. Gargling w/ listerine didn’t help (and the burn! the burn!), and h202 was mildly helpful. What really helped me was something my dr. at the time told me to do: mix 1/2 liquid benadryl and 1/2 liquid mylanta, and swish around with that a few times a day. It relieves the burning until the day the canker sore finally dries up & away. Ooh and the funky tasty flavors you get: grape benadryl mixed with cherry mylanta! Or was it TOWA, I can’t remember.
A far better (and much more pleasant) solution is to get a bottle of lysine (food supplement found in the vitamin section at stores) and - especially if you get them with any frequency - take one daily. From my own experience, I know that you can take two daily (and I know a nurse who takes four daily year-round) without risk. I do when I get a cold or caker sore - which happens maybe once a year now; it used to happen about once a month.
Hold a wet asprin on the canker sore. It will both burn it out and give a new dimension to your understanding of the word “pain.”