Not recent, but here is a previous discussion of canker sore remedies
People who drink buttermilk rarely get canker sores.
I just want to second this. I get them occasionally - probably a couple times a month, and I just suffer through it most of the time. But my brother gets them chronically - really bad. Sometims he’ll have 5 or 6 at the same time (can you say “agony”?). His dentist also told him about SLS and recommended Rembrandt by name. And since he started using it, he has had none.
Heh, Wow, I did not mean to resurrect a year-old thread. It came up on a search my wife had done for sodium lauryl sulfate, and I just saw it on my screen.
Sorry!
Eh, don’t be sorry. I’ve got a couple of mouth sores myself now. During the stress of this holiday season, maybe we all needed a refresher course.
Mouth ulcers appear to be stress related - try a vitamin B complex supplement. topically bonjella, ora sed or any baby gum soothing gel is helpful.
I will second, third and fourth this. Application is a bit of a pain but once it’s on, it’s on. The sores began healing right away for me and were usually gone one or two days later. And the painkiller it uses is perfect. I really couldn’t feel any pain though I was still aware of the sore being there.
Just curious but what causes these?
I doubt mine are herpes or something since i had them since i was about 5 years old.
I couldn’t say with any certainty what yours are, but they could in fact be herpes, notwithstanding the fact that you started having them at such a young age. You see, the virus that causes herpes is the same virus that causes chicken pox (and shingles), and what usually doesn’t happen, but can happen, is that the chicken pox virus can lay dormant in your system for some time, then come back as herpes later. Also, once you have herpes, you always have it. It can be dormant (mine has, for years and years), or it can be active. A lot of people report it returning at the same time every year.
In any case, you want to be careful when you have these mouth sores, because if they ARE herpes, oral-genital contact with your SO can translate into genital herpes. I found all this out 14 years ago. My toddler daughter had chicken pox. My mom, whose immune system was compromised by cancer, caught shingles from my little girls’ chicken pox. I, who did not know what shingles looked like, and rubbed cream on them, got oral herpes from my mom’s shingles. Probably would have been a mild case (one or two sores), but I had a terminally ill mom to take care of, a toddler daughter to take care of, and I was planning my wedding! A year from hell, indeed. I ended up with more than 100 sores in my mouth and throat (OWOWOWOWOWOW). Doc said nothing could be done, they’re viral in nature and only time would help. We said “Yeah, but we’re getting married in 9 days” She took pity on us and gave us something “experimental and expensive”. $3.00 a pill, 2xa day! But the experiment must have gone well, cuz the med was Zovirax, now commonly used to treat herpes. It was the doc who warned us about oral sex (not that I was in any shape to have any kind of sex)! Luckily, I was all better by our wedding, and we were able to have an unrestricted honeymoon:)
By your description, it sounds like an Alphus ulcer. The affected area appears whitish & translucent & is very tender.
I’ve suffered these for about 30 years off & on. They seem to appear in periods of acute distress. The 1st dentist I asked about it gave me a tannic acid-based product that is no longer available. It worked immediately on application. He also said that smoking tends to suppress them (no chance, Chester - bring on the sores!)
I have not found anything that really works as well as the Tannic acid medication (name: Tannihist). One dentist gave me an Rx for the same stuff genital herpes sufferers use (I didn’t know this until after I had it filled. The pharmacist really gave me the looks, I recall - no wonder!).
When I get one now, I screw up my courage and do my best to dig out the affected tissue with my toothbrush. I have a feeling that amputating my tongue would be less painful, but if I don’t do this, the sores persist for days. Getting at least the top layer of the ulcer abraded seems to facilitate healing.
Aren’t you glad you asked??
Happy holidays!
If tannic acid is an effective treatment, you could try just applying a wet tea bag to the sore. It’s a good source of tannic acid. Also works for minor burns.
So to sum up:
You should rinse with listerine several times a day, as well as brushing your teeth often (but not aggressively like Johnny L.A., and use toothpaste without sodium lauryl sulfate). Avoid citrus and sour foods, but put a little lemon juice on a swab and apply it to the sore. Better yet if you use baking soda and lemon juice at the same time, and use a tea bag instead of a cotton swab. Then wash with salt water. Follow up with some asprin and alum.
Then, go to the store and get some buttermilk, Kanka, Ambesol, Tannihist, Rembrant, Ora-Gel mouth aid, baby teething soothing gel, L-Lysine, and vitamin b complex. If nothing else, we’ll thank you for boosting the economy.
-Nardo, who prefers the L-Lysine and baking soda.
I think that’s supposed to be an “aphthous” ulcer.
They can be caused by stress or trauma – jabbing your toothbrush into your cheek, for instance. The only effective treatment I ever found was cauterization with silver hydroxide. (I don’t think that is done any more, though.) The next time I get one I will certainly try some of the cures in this thread.
I have found that if I eat spicy food – salsa, hot peppers, etc. – I am almost guaranteed to get ulcers unless I wash my mouth out with water afterwards. Since I love hot stuff, I used to get ulcers all the time; now, I hardly ever get them as long as I follow this rule.
I have also been told that eating acidic foods will bring them on, but that doesn’t seem to be the case for me. Also, some people swear by L-Lysine as a preventative, but that did (Warning! Sophisticated medical term ahead!) diddly-squat for me.
Good luck with yours. They’re no fun.
RR
Not actually. The herpes virus is Herpes Simplex, while the Chicken Pox one is Varicella. Two different viruses, but from the same family, and both act the same way, as you describe–they hide out in your body and maybe they come out again and maybe they don’t, as you described.
I’m given to understand that this is impossible. Someone with shingles can give someone chicken pox, but not the other way around. Your mother’s shingles was more likely a result of the immune suppression the cancer treatment caused. (And I’m sorry to hear about your mom. My mom had colon cancer last summer, and I know how scary and upsetting that is, though she’s been incredibly lucky so far.)
I don’t see how this is possible. First of all, they’re two different viruses, and you would have gotten chicken pox from your mom’s shingles (assuming you hadn’t had it as a child), not an attack of herpes. What you describe does sound like herpes, I’ve read that some people have really dramatic first episodes of it. But you didn’t catch it from your mom. Speaking not as a doctor but as someone who is married to someone with herpes, you could easily have been exposed and infected years before your first outbreak. You are absolutely right, though, about transmitting it during oral sex.
Forgot my cites.
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/health_and_medical/pubs/shingles.htm
also from that site:
I’ve been looking for a cite on the time between infection and first outbreak of herpes, and have found 2-20 days, and also that some people infected never have an outbreak, but not my “years” thing, so that may be wrong.
I used to get them periodically, but haven’t had a problem in the past five or six years. Here’s what worked for me:
Put an asprin over the sore and let it sit there until it dissolves (actually, it just falls apart). Then just rinse and spit. It kills the pain and seems to leave a coating over the canker sore for a few hours. If the pain comes back (a few hours later), do it again. I never had to repeat it more than once; they seemed to heal within a couple of days.
Salt water & baking soda didn’t seem to work (and I seem to recall not having enough money go actually buy things like Anbesol), but the aspirin treatment seemed to do wonders.
However, from the previous posts, I get the impression there are several causes of these things, so perhaps they only work on mine (which I think were generally caused by stress).
Bren_Cameron Thanks for the info. The story I related was true to the best of my knowledge, as this is how the doc that treated me figured out my outbreak was caused. Of course, that was 14 years ago; maybe medical science didn’t understand something then that they understand now.
- Avoid Coffee and acidic foods
- Take 500 mg L-Lysine 3 times daily. You might get a bit of a headache, if so, titrate down.
- Brush, Floss, Gargle with 50/50 Hydrogen Peroxide/H2O
- Don’t put any of those topical preps that cover the sore. They may help in the short run but end up irritating it more.
i haven’t read this whole post, but i will tell you what brought me from getting the worst kind of canker sores every other month, to not getting them at all unless i bite my lip on accident.
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brush with toothpaste as infrequent as possible. toothpaste dissolves the slippery coating your mouth has, and makes it susceptible. wash your mouth out with water thoroughly after toothpaste use.
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after eating, swish around pure water in your mouth. do this all day long, any time you think of it. any time your consume anything other than water, do this (soda, snacks, even juice). you shouldn’t have to worry about eating acidic foods if you do this.
try this before anything else. if you still get them, it’s probably an immune system problem or genetic or something else… good luck!
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Canker is a word, according to Webster’s, that comes from the same root for cancer as does the word chancre.
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True canker sores from Herpes simplex appear generally at the jucntion of the lip and outer cheek, not all the way within the mouth. Those are more often from another type of virus.
Thanks to all who gave remedy suggestions here. I can’t magine intentionally rubbing salt and lemon juice into one of these excruciating sores–criminy, how masochistic can you get? I’d rather just wait for the thing to heal and put Chloraseptic spray on it to kill the pain. Or, I’ll try that Kanka remedy from Blistex next time.
Thanks again for the tip