Thanks to the wonders of the intarweb I can put a name to yet another of my small physical oddities. These are two small bony outgrowths on the inside of my lower jaw, under my tongue.
Googling about has scared the crap out of me as while mine are small, and I only notice them when at the dentist (finally an explaination for why it hurts like hell, I wasn’t over-reacting!), my googling tells me that they continue to grow, and to be frank some of the photos out there are horrible. I realise that they only take photos of the really good ones, but I would still like to know the average growth rate of these things. Is there anything else I need to know? The sites I found were generally extremely scientific or very basic information.
Very slow growing, you will forget they are there. They generally cause no problems unless you need dentures, in which case they can be may need to be removed or reduced in size.
I have torus palatinus. Not pretty, but it causes no problems except for the occasional sesame seed that gets trapped along the side. My “bumps” are about the size shown in that pic.
Why’s it called Torus Mandibularis ? That sounds more like some sort of jaw rot brought on by too many donuts, than it does little bony things under the tongue.
Really slow, it may take decades for the growth to double in size. Yours may never get larger. Many attain a certain size and stop growing.
My speech is not affected. It took 25 years for the torus to get this large. If it had just appeared overnight it probably would have caused trouble. Other than trapped seeds, the only real drawback is that pizza burns heal more slowly than in most people, due to the almost constant cantact with my tongue.
Tori seem to have a genetic basis, being more prevalent in certain ethnic groups. The palatal growths are more common in women. Habitual clenching also may play a role in the development of mandibular tori.
