My tongue has started doing this too. My doctors attribute it to stimulants I am taking to keep myself awake (yes, I have narcolepsy). It is in the family of Tourette 's syndrome. I was told by my son's doctors years ago that if you have a certain gene, a stimulant (Ritalin , Adderall, Provigil) can activate it and you cannot turn it off even with coming off the medication. I have learned to live with it by chewing gum during the day and using a Lidocaine rinse at night that temporally numbs my tongue allowing me to fall asleep. Hope this helps someone. I know this is an old post. . . . . Oh yeah, sugar, caffeine, nicotine can really increase it for me.
A low B-12 level can cause a sore, this happened to me after tx.
Very interesting! I will be trying it soon.
Thanks for the "hot" (burning hot) tip. The flat, front part of my tongue really does feel like you scalded it with a hot drink. It is strange how the internet has linked people
suffering from such an odd malady. Before the internet, your chances of finding another person on the planet that could relate to such an oddity would be slim. Even if it was someone I'm around every day, I probably would never likely know. Who goes around discussing their tongue problems at work or church etc.
Thanks again. If I didn't live way out in the country, I'd hop in the car right now to get some liquid benadryl.
Ev
My girlfriend is a medical transcriptionists and the benadryl & maalox is what they reccomend, it works good. The sides of my tongue gets raw from rubbing my teeth and at night my retainers. I guess we just have to deal with it.
Denise
I mentioned it to a couple of dentists but they didn't have a clue. I was able to find internet reports of lots of other people with very similar symptoms and nobody was having much luck with getting medical help. It doesn't seem to be life threatening...just painful and annoying.
I have never tried the Benadryl with Maalox. I've not heard of doing that. Is that something you have tried with success? My tongue is actually bothering me right now and I am going to suck on some ice. When my tongue swells, it is not hugely swollen or anything but it swells enough to leave little teeth imprints along the sides of my tongue. It feels really uncomfortable to talk sometimes and reading out loud to my kids is less enjoyable. I've learned to just cope with it.
Ev
Hi, did you ever try mixing childrens benadryl with the maalox? I Have the same problem. Also the Dr gave me a script of swish and spit stuff. When you mentioned the swollen tongue my thoughts were "try wearing retainers on your teeth at night" LOL.
Have you ever gotten a diagnosis?
Denise
I have had this ,on and off, for years. If you google search "burning mouth syndrome" you can find some information. Sometimes I suck on ice cubes for a while and it seems to help. I have also rinsed my mouth and brushed my tongue with baking soda and that seems to help. ( Sugary foods seem to worsen it for me. Anything with cinnamon or ascorbic acid makes it worse too) The other thing that seems to help is to swish my mouth with the liquid antacid, Maalox. I have read that some Doctors are recommending Alpha lipoic acid as helpful but I haven't personally tried it.
It has been very uncomfortable and distracting sometimes and my tongue actually swells a little which makes it brush up against the edges of my teeth and causes more pain. I think I read somewhere that they estimate 1% of the population has this phenomenon. I think some people think it might be some form of neuropathy. It might be more than one cause. Mine started up about 10 or 11 years ago. The first few years was almost constant. It just comes and goes now.
One more thing I have read about is using red pepper sauce on your tongue several times a day which in some way desensitizes the nerves to a degree. I haven't tried this either. The three relief methods I listed above have helped me tolerate the annoying pain.
Hope something will help soon,
Ev
Are you on the interferion treatment?