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Mouth Ulcers

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to treat mouth ulcers? I've got one of my ulcer sprees coming on and there's a nasty one forming on the under side of my tongue on the left.

I've tried baking soda and that works for my lips and some places on my gums but I don't think my saliva allows me to keep the baking soda in place long enough when it's anywhere behind my teeth.
 
i voted no in the poll as i dont get true mouth ulcers, but i do get a sore spot on my tongue every so often.

one of the key tricks to get them to heal quicker is to avoid anything acidic, and increase things alkaline, such as milk, ice cream, yoghurt (plain). there is something here in the uk called Bonjela - not sure where you are Colt, but its worth seeing if its available. very good stuff - once you've applied it and let it dry for a few seconds, it stays put and really does calm the ulcers down.
 
Bonjela looks to only be available in the UK and it works by disinfecting. I'll probably use mouth wash to disinfect but that usually doesn't help all that much in getting it to go away and stop bothering me. It keeps it from getting infected and becoming a serious problem though.

What do those sore spots look like?

I get these:



and these:

 
ouch! oh you poor thing - i'm not surprised you're trying to find something to help heal those :(

no - the spots i get are nothing like that - they are the kind you get if you eat too many oranges, like acid spots. just one raised spot on the edge of my tongue, which is very sore, and with no apparent cause because i don't eat or drink anything acidic at all.
 
Laser treatment sounds nice but at this point I couldn't really afford it. 4 days isn't much shorter of a wait for the healing either.

Yeah, I get them in big bursts of ulcers. For about a week I'll have ulcers open all the way through my digestive system from my lips to the exterior of my rectum. It really sucks. During my last ulcer spree I had 6 of them in my mouth at one time. My tongue swells up and everything. It gets a little difficult to speak and it hurts really bad when I eat. Especially if what I eat has any salt.

It's the main thing that's always made me a little curious about maybe having behcet's disease instead of crohn's but I've never had a chance to be tested. I have so many extra-intestinal symptoms (RA level joint pain, etc) that it's on the unusual side of crohn's disease.
 
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i've never heard of behcet's disease, but a friend of mine with crohns also gets ulcers right through her digestive system, including her mouth, and she also gets ulcers on her neck - and this has been put down to the crohns itself.

sorry to hear you're troubled by this painful symptom so often :(
 
Behcet's is an autoimmune disorder like crohn's where the body exaggerates inflammation. It has pretty much the same kind of symptoms that crohn's does but it will affect anywhere in the body with a blood supply.

If you get a little bit of inflammation anywhere in your body it goes way overboard and turns it into ulcers and such. Mouth ulcers are actually the #1 symptom that all cases must display. It also causes RA-like arthritis and intestinal inflammation/ulcers.

There's a lot of other things that cause me to be suspicious too like eye and skin inflammation.

The problem is that all of these things can be explained by crohn's and crohn's is more likely for someone to have. Unless I ended up with an inflamed heart or something there's really no way to decide if it's behcet's with extra bad intestinal problems or crohn's with extra bad extra-intestinal problems.
 
sounds very hard to distinguish between one diagnosis and the other.

would i be right in thinking that the treatments for both conditions would be similar, given that they're both immune system disorders?
 
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Yeah, it's pretty much the same treatments. Steroids and Anti-TNF treatments like Remicade and Enbrel.

It would be very nice to know though so that I could be wary of the fact my vascular system could inflame at any moment and kill me if the doctors don't know what they're dealing with. It also greatly affects how other things should be handled like my shoulder injury which suspiciously seemed to everyone like it was much more severe and had more swelling than it should have making everyone yet again think that I was exaggerating or something.
 
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I used to get massive outbreaks when I was younger. Often 10 to 20 at once. The doctor just told me that all I could do was to swill my mouth with salt water.

After finding out I had Crohn's and getting treatment, they stopped appearing. Is it a sign of a flare-up?
 
Well all I know about the areas with Crohns that are of focus Colt is "mouth to the anus" as the documentation all says, so could still be Crohns, but this other disease you mention that honestly I've not heard of yet, sounds to be a real candidate too. That's gotta suck, I feel bad enough with my recurring thrush (though that's more of a side from Crohns meds, not so much the Crohns itself IMO).

Dingbat the first thing you were talking about up top I believe was a "chancre sore" as I know them. Come from eating sweet or acidic foods too often without enough sanitation in there. I get them every couple months, they're almost like a tiny pimple on your tongue, and mine go away on their own after no more than a couple days.

Colt, what is "Enbrel"? Another name for something?
 
I swish Miracle Mineral Supplement around in my mouth to kill bacteria. It actually improved my gums enough that the dental assistant noticed it. You can buy it on E-bay

I am quite sure if it is due to bacteria. it will clear it up quickly.

It is completely experimental, but some mouth wash already has this chemical in it.

Dan
 
The ulcers are a recognized symptom of crohn's. They come right along with ulcers in the rest of my digestive tract.
 
M

md87

Guest
I had 2 in my mouth just as I was diagnosed with Crohn's, but they seemed to go as soon as I went on the Pred.
 
Some antibiotics can cause ulceration for people with crohn's. I know Azithromycin has a major contraindication with crohn's disease because of this and it can even cause C. Diff infections also known as pseudo-colitis. I don't know for sure if cipro shares this side-effect at all.

High dose Flagyl is the typical treatment for C. Diff BTW. I was treated with high dose flagyl too back when I had a doctor and we were experimenting with treatments. I found that I got a lot sicker while on the one week run of flagyl and then I would go into a short-term remission. Each remission got a little bit longer too.

I don't have a doctor currently though. I live in the US. When I turned 18 my free health care went away and I had to stop getting treatment. Now it's been so long (I'm 23 now) since I was getting treatment that my medical records have apparently been destroyed due to age. So, even if I managed to get a doctor I wouldn't just have to pay for treatment and constant doctor visits but I would have to redo every test and prove all over again that I have crohn's disease and am not just trying to scam the doctor into giving me pain killers.
 
I have the same thing. When I get home I will try to remember to get on line and send the name of the stuff I use. It helps a lot. I get mine when on ascal. my whole mouth breaks out. I feel for ya.
june
 
I used to live in Canada. The FBI took so long to get my background check done, though, that I couldn't get my immigration finished in time and I had to move back because I wasn't allowed to work up there.

Insurance in Canada isn't what the US has. That's a major mistake made by Canadians that really frightens me. Insurance in Canada is basically an attempt to trick people into a private health system. In a private health care system like the US without the government to compete with insurance won't cover the first 5-25 thousand dollars in medical bills, only covers up to 50-100 thousand, and of what it covers it will only pay 50-80% of it. Payments are usually 250-500 dollars for the absolute minimum. It doesn't matter if your company offers insurance here because no one can afford to spend 25-50% of their income on it and then put in probably twice of what you get out of it. That, and insurance won't pay for any condition that you had before you signed up so no one will ever pay a penny for my crohn's disease or anything even slightly affected by my crohn's disease including side-effects from medications or surgeries.

Originally my doctor had me on prednisone and flagyl in 1 week bursts for flare-ups and then darvocet as needed for pain.

Currently I have darvocet, which I only take when I get to the writhing/screaming in pain stage. I've been rationing those from my shoulder injury about a year ago. Before I lost my Medicaid my doctor gave me a prescription of 60 of them and that lasted me about 2 years with rationing. But for 2 years I didn't have it and my main issue is really bad intestinal pain so I really suffered because of that.

I also take over the counter stuff to accomplish the little I can on my own like Gas X, Tylenol, antacids, flax oil, and a multi-vitamin when I can remember it.
 
ok take b-12 and i also take Amosan its a wound cleaner for your mouth. its made by oral-b. But u will be surprised how well b-12 works. But the Amosan helped lots and lots.
hope it helps.
 

soupdragon69

ele mental leprechaun
Hi Colt,

I was reading something recently about using liquorice to treat mouth ulcers. Think it worked better if it had a particular element removed...

Just editing this as I found out what the aspect was...

Needs to have DGL removed from it (deglycyrrhizinated) from a health food store as opposed to the commercial sticky stuff.

Another thought is changing your toothpaste to one that is free from sodium lauryl sulphate (SLS) which is a foaming agent used in toothpastes that is thought to reduce the protective mucous layer in the mouth.

See what you think. Am just pondering out loud here... hope you get some relief soon.
 
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soupdragon69 said:
Hi Colt,

I was reading something recently about using liquorice to treat mouth ulcers. Think it worked better if it had a particular element removed...

Just editing this as I found out what the aspect was...

Needs to have DGL removed from it (deglycyrrhizinated) from a health food store as opposed to the commercial sticky stuff.

Another thought is changing your toothpaste to one that is free from sodium lauryl sulphate (SLS) which is a foaming agent used in toothpastes that is thought to reduce the protective mucous layer in the mouth.

See what you think. Am just pondering out loud here... hope you get some relief soon.
Thanks. I'm currently mouth ulcer free but I'll try that. I may use mouth wash only next time and I think I can get a hold of some natural liquorice.
 
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