On Mon, 3 Nov 1997, Karen Presser wrote:

> My son gets frequent bouts of canker sores however his diet is completely
> dairy free as he is caseine allergic.  Wish we could discover the culprit.
>  Have been told that they are viral by his pediatrician.  The pain is pretty
> intense.

I've been dealing with canker sores for probably 15 years or more...so I
think I've tried just about everything from topical steroids to burning
with silver nitrate.

I think it's reasonably well accepted that canker sores are at least
partly viral and that the virus does not go away.  What I'm not sure is
well accepted are the various ways they can be triggered.  I know that at
least in myself, they can be triggered by stress, accidental ingestion of
dairy, or cuts from biting the inside of my mouth.  Depending on the sore
and location, the pain can be so bad that it hurts to talk or eat.

For treatment, I've found that one of the most important things is keeping
them clean (that shouldn't really be a surprise), so rinsing with an
antiseptic mouth wash seems to help.  Rinsing with dexamethasone
(prescribed by my dentist) sometimes seems to help as well.  Xylocaine
(lidocaine HCl) jelly can also be used to temporarily numb them, and is
nice to use before covering them with kanka (made by blistex) or
zilactin...both of which can sting quite a bit if you skip the xylocaine.
Once they're covered, you can probably eat a normal meal without much
pain.

I've also found that if they get a secondary infection and start to swell,
covering them only makes them much worse.

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