Cantankerous Cankers

They’re those small, round protuberances that like to form in the mouth. About half of the country has had at least one at some point in their lives, and whether they’re on the tongue or on the insides of the cheeks, they’re painful, and they make one of life’s most enjoyable activities – eating – painful, too (a natural enjoyment of life should never be painful).

What are these protuberant polyps? They’re canker sores, and no matter how they form or where they come from, they make for very unwelcome ‘mouth’guests.

Speaking of which, how do canker sores form, anyway? No one knows for sure, actually, but the conventional wisdom is that cankers form due to a malfunction of sorts in the immune system that could have resulted from any number of things, like an allergic reaction to a certain food or medication, a hormonal disorder, stress, a genetic predisposition, even the use of certain toothpastes.

Normally, treatment of canker sores is unnecessary; they typically pack up their belongings and move out of the mouth in less than a week (10 days at the most). But that’s minor canker sores. Major canker sores – the deep ones that measure larger than the typical canker sore (which are no larger than 1/3rd of an inch across), can take weeks to heal, even months!

In such cases, people often turn to their primary care physician for some prescription to clear up their cantankerous cankers.

But why go to all this trouble when canker sores can be cleared up with a natural ingredient? And they can, with licorice.

Now, before you head to the corner store and snap up all the Twizzlers and Red Vines, I’m not talking about licorice candy. The licorice I’m referring to is licorice root extract, and dentists have discovered that this extract dramatically decreases the time it normally takes to heal from canker sores.

Published in the dental journal General Dentistry, researchers treated some people’s cranky cankers with patches infused with licorice extract root. After seven days of treatment, the researchers compared the results of the treated group with another group that received no treatment. Not only did the treated group see a reduction in size of their canker sores, but the pain subsided as well, in as little as three days! The untreated group? Their canker sores increased in size (13 percent, on average)!

The licorice-treated patch was an over-the-counter treatment, but it’s not known how available they are. At the very least, your dentist should know about it and assist with further information on where to find it.

Kudos to the dentist community for casting a light on this discovery; it’s nice to know of natural treatments being advocated by the medical community instead of the prescription-based treatments that are typically championed.