Healing Foods for Canker Sores
On life’s sliding scale of health problems, a canker sore is a pretty annoying blemish. Also known as mouth ulcers. They are single or clustered ulcers that are white in the center and surrounded by fairly even red borders. They can show up anywhere inside your mouth and are caused by lots of things, including stress, nutritional deficiencies, trauma such as biting your tongue, bacterial and irritation from highly acidic or salty foods. Cold sores, or fever blisters, on the other hand occur outside the mouth and/or on the lips from the Herpes Simplex Type 1 virus.
The good news is most canker sores will heal themselves within a week or so, but if you would like to speed things along there are several natural herbs.
Canker sores usually indicate a vitamin C deficiency so start taking 1,000 to 3,000 milligrams of vitamin C daily along with a 50 milligram chewable zinc tablets. Note, excess vitamin C may cause diarrhea in some people. And you should only take zinc supplements in excess of 15 milligrams a day for a few days.
Swish with echinacea. Add a dropperful or two of echinacea extract to a glass of water and rinse your mouth two or three times a day.
Make your own mouthwash with licorice, camomile and calendula. Blend the dried herbs together and make a tea of them. Swish the tea around in your mouth for several minutes three times a day then spit out.
Eat some grapefruit. While eating fresh grapefruit can be torture if you have a canker sore, grapefruit extract may actually help get rid of canker sores faster. Natural grapefruit seed extract works wonders for bacterial infections of the mouth and is available in many health food stores.
