Discovery- A Cheap way to treat Mouth Ulcers in the Hot Tropics 

by Wong King Ming  18-08-2015

I often have mouth ulcers, almost once a month recently especially during the hot days or after I just came back from long distance travelling. The ulcers in the mouth and tongue not only caused severe pain but also pain that spread to the teeth, besides losing the taste of food.  I remember during my younger days and my children's, the pain would cause great discomfort and torture. My children would fret whole day and fever sometimes ensued or vice versa. Coughs could happen and then the ulcers would start to develop in the mouth and on the sides of the tongue. The children would not want to eat and could not sleep, leading to weaker resistance and longer time to recover. My parents and I would just watch over with heartache and helplessness. We often brought the children to the clinics, be it contemporary or traditional medicine. The Chinese physicians always diagnosed excessive body heat as the cause of such ulcers. They would advise taking cooling drinks, barley or tea plus applying watermelon powder  on the ulcers and liquid herbal medicines to be consumed. The western doctors would diagnose that the body was attacked by virus/bacteria which caused the body temperature to rise when resisted by our anti-bodies. It also caused ulcers to the mouth. They would prescribe vitamin tablets, pain killer, coughing mixtures, anti-biotic and other tablet forms of medicine. Whatever were the recommended treatments, we all have to suffer for at least five days and at least RM20-60 (US5-15) has to be incurred. Nowadays, the medical cost is spiraling. Typically our parents and my wife would often boil barley, herbal tea or green beans during the hot days for consumption. Perhaps the cooling effect has also reduced the ulcers incidents. 

But as I grew older, ulcers began to occur more often until one time when I was seeking treatment of tooth pain, the dentist advised me to see the mouth specialist to have extensive tests whether I have mouth cancer. I was indeed alarmed!  I used salt water to rinse my mouth and it did help to speed up the recovery. It was a painful treatment. I do not think the kids can take the pain of putting salt on the wound! Furthermore, salt is no good for the teeth which are basically calcium carbonate. Too frequent application of sodium chloride may deteriorate the teeth.

Then three months ago, I realised that whenever I went to my farm, located 360km away from Kuching to do manual work under the sun, I did not get ulcers. Only when I came back and stayed in the air-conditioned room, I started to have ulcers. Then I recalled that I consumed 3-4 bottles of 1.5 litres of water per day while I was working in the farm. At home I took less than 1 bottle of water and perhaps another 1 bottle of barley water. In the farm, I sweated profusely and therefore automatically wanted to drink more water to re-hydrate. But at home, I did not sweat much, especially in air-conditioned room because I was not thirsty for water. I suddenly realised WATER could be the solution to my problem. If the body generates too much heat, it is logical to use water to cool my body system by draining away the heat. But taking too much water will increase my toilet visits and this is inconvenient. Excessive water consumption may also overload my kidney and put pressure on other organs, especially my heart. Since my main problem is the mouth, why not just rinse the mouth more often with the clean cool water or just soak the mouth with drinking water whenever convenient. Or even drink it if necessary! Both ways can bring down the temperature.

So I used this method for the last two months and no more ulcers appeared! Yesterday was a hot day, I did not take or rinse as much water as I was out the whole day. By evening I felt some discomfort at the tip of my tongue, I started rinsing again with water before going to sleep, about five times, each time five minute or more. In the morning, the discomfort was gone! No Ulcer!

So, water treatment seems to be effective for me and has no side effects. I did not have mouth/tongue ulcer/tooth pain for the last two months.

From the scientific point of view, the water cools the rising temperature in my mouth and tongue during environmental change or sickness, preventing the skin from cracking and bacteria from breeding. Our body temperature is about 37degC when healthy, rises to more than 40degC when having sick/fever. Water at room temperature at tropics is about 26-30degC, allowing mouth heat to be transferred to the water and cools the mouth. Perhaps, mouth cracking will occur beyond 40degC. Without septic wound, fever will not develop and will not spread to roots of the teeth. There won’t be tooth pain. The mouth is indeed quite a dirty place because it is exposed to breathing air and food. There are thousands of bacteria in the air and food which are often stuck in the teeth. If we rinse often (besides brushing teeth), the bacteria will be at a minimum. Even if the skin cracks, they will be less aggressive and the body will repair the cracks faster than attacks by the bacteria. Thus recovery will be faster too. If we rinse our mouth after just getting up from sleep, it is best to spit out this water. If we have rinsed many times already, then there will be little harm in ingesting.

In summary, this WATER RINSING/ HOLDING method has hardly any SIDE EFFECT (only visit the toilet more often if you drink it). This method also hardly COSTs much, US$0.30 per 1.5litre bottle of drinking water here! It may cost more in desert countries. It is also not painful or bitter as water will not react with wound. No matter what, prevention is better than cure. Advise your children to rinse/hold water in the mouth more often during the hot day or when they are starting to feel sick.

Hopefully, this method will work for anybody, not myself only. Imagine the cost implication, we have 7 billion population. If half of the population has this problem once a year, about US$30 billion medical expenses can be saved per year! Let's review the efficiency of this method after experimenting for some time.