Mi son (young adult) has a weird problem. He’ll sometimes bite the inner part of his lip while eating and make a small wound. The weird part is (he claims) it won’t hurt the same day, but over the next day it will start to swell a bit and hurt a lot, and it will last for one to two weeks. I already knew (or thought) he had some trouble with canker sores, but this is the first time he described it in detail and, to my untrained ear, it sounds a lot like a infectious process.
So, this morning he bit himself (by accident) and I decided to try some science. My plan is to use mouthwash for 30 seconds on the wound, followed by a slight application of gentian violet. I’m hoping that doing that 3 times a day might help cut off the infection.
So the question: Does my hypothesis make sense? Does my plan tracks? Is there any other logical explanation for his symptoms?
I am really interested in where this thread goes because my son (pre-teen) and I both have this problem. For me it bothered me a lot as a kid/teen and not as much as an adult.
Things I have learned about:
asparagus, weirdly enough – the dental receptionist gave me this advice when I was a teen – if I eat a bunch of asparagus right when I notice it hurts a little, it seems to really reduce the amount it swells and hurts. I believe there are some topical medications based on this but I haven’t tried them (since I like asparagus). (I’ve tried topical medications with my kid but he only tells me about his canker sores when they’ve already swelled up super big, and neither the ointment nor asparagus help very much at that point.)
His dentist recommended a toothpaste without sodium lauryl sulfate, so we just started trying that.
(This isn’t really answering your question exactly! But some other things for your son to try. I know from experience these are really painful!)
Sounds like the bite is triggering a canker sore. Careful to avoid sodium laurel sulfate in the mouthwash for your experiment. That can make canker sores worse.
I get that constantly. It’s caused by a strain of herpes. I dab the area with a Q-tip dipped in hydrogen peroxide a few times a day at the start and that seems to hasten the healing process. Do not swallow the H2O2. And avoid spicy foods, especially too close to bedtime.
I used to get these if I banged my gum with my toothbrush. After a day or so, an extremely painful sore would develop, which would take a week or more to heal.
Electric toothbrushes solved that problem.
I often bite my lip, but for some reason, those never turn into sores.
The herpetic cold sores more commonly are outside on the lips or around the mouth. Not absolute but recurrent on mucosa only is more typically the not infectious aphthous canker sore one.
Oh my BIL swears that avoiding chips, especially corn chips, helps. The chips allegedly cause micro traumas which trigger them.
Hard candies, like peppermints are notorious.
Chewing gum, jaw breakers. That type of thing.
Avoiding biting, I know, hard to do.
It may be a slight misalignment of the teeth that is at fault.
I got them on the tip of my tongue for months after I got implants done.
Baby Ambesol helped.
Neither a preventive nor a cure, but a soothing treatment for any sort of mouth pain (possibly with some antimicrobial effect as well): spilanthes tincture.
I am innately skeptical of “natural” remedies but someone gave me some when I had a toothache and several days before I could get to the dentist. The first dose felt tingly in a weird way but I quickly came to appreciate the numbing effect and how clean it made my mouth feel.
