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A few months ago, I began to notice that coffee wasn't tasting as
good as it did before.  It seemed the aroma and the flavor was gone,
and didn't seem to agree with my stomach.  Not long after that, I
began to get canker sores on my lower lip.  I have been a sufferer
from canker sores as far back as I can remember, but beginning in
January 2000 when I realized that gluten was causing them, I went
gluten-free and the canker sores went away, except for the odd one.
It became very rare for me to get a sore on the lip, and that is why
I was so surprised that they had come back.

I am suspicious that it is the coffee that is the culprit in this new
outbreak of the sores, and have stopped drinking it and switched to
tea.  Because I have been an enthusiastic drinker of coffee for about
40 years, this has been pure torment, although stopping coffee seems
to stop the canker sores, too.

Twice now I have waited until my lip is free of canker sores and then
made myself a cup or two of coffee, and both times I have been
punished within a day with a canker sore outbreak on the lower lip.
I also find that the aroma, taste and reaction to coffee are as
absent or unpleasant as I described in the first paragraph.

I have been trying to reason out why coffee should have turned on me.
I have been living in Ireland for the past 6-1/2 years and coffee
here is significantly stronger than in the USA, so I suppose it is
possible that the greater strength of the brew has done something to
me in that time.  Of the period here, I've been off gluten for nearly
3 years.

I also have been eating lots more dark chocolate and salted peanuts
in the past year or so and experimented with leaving them out of my
diet and then re-introducing them, but they don't seem to cause the
sores.  However, I find that chocolate tends to be constipating, and
I am beginning to wonder if eating chocolate and drinking strong
coffee means that something in the coffee is staying in my intestines
longer.

As an experiment I have also been taking Mastic Gum tablets to see if
they would help.  It seems to calm my stomach alright, but I'm not
sure it stops canker sores altogether after drinking coffee.

Has anyone else had an experience like mine and been suspicious of
the coffee and chocolate combination as a possible factor in the
return of canker sores after a long absence while living gluten-free?
 Or is it just likely to be the coffee that is the culprit?

I'll end by adding that I've tried several blends of coffee beans and
ground coffee, and several ways of making it, and have invested in a
filter to remove organics from the tap water, and have tried bottled
water to make the coffee-all to no avail.

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