Hi:

My daughter has recently started raw food and greenies. She is doing great but has developed a mouth full of canker sores. Can you please tell me what she can needs to eat to counteract this? Is it too much fruit or veggies?

Chancre/Canker sores can be of several types and from several causes; not always easy to determine what is causing them in a given case. Some are bacterial infections, some are triggered by nutrient deficiencies, but one very common cause is eating something that one is intolerant of or allergic to (sets up an auto-immune reaction in the cells lining the mouth, when exposed to the offending food. Bacterial infection may follow).

What foods is she now eating that she wasn't eating before? Try removing specific foodss one at a time and see if that helps; if the sores disappear within a couple days of stopping to eat a food, that is the likely culprit. Tomatoes are a common offender, but it could be almost anything.

Very poor oil profile (intake of a diet very badly balanced in Omega 3/6/9s), deficiencies of certain B vitamins, and of certain minerals can also be causative factors.

You might also try a very painful approach: chew some raw garlic and/or raw cayenne pepper, swirling it over the sore. If the sore is caused by bacteria, this might kill off the colony, giving relief after the initial pain subsides... however, if it isn't from bacteria (or even if it is), you may also risk damaging tissues that are already less-protected than usual by the normal mucosa that lines the mouth, and thus slowing the healing, so I would try other measures first.

Bixarrely, I used to get rid of those sores when I had them repeatedly for a few years as a teenager, by scratching/puncturing the centers of them with a sterilized needle. Never knew how or why it worked, but it usually did! [I'm pretty sure that in my case, they were a reaction to wheat gluten, since I later leanred that I am gluten-intolerant.]

frankensense help heal and sooth mouth soars, very well too!! your local health food store should have it.

Thank you all:

I will relay your responses to my daughter and hopefully she will be able to get this problem healed or under control.

nannie11,

I think is a cleansing reaction. As she eats more raw foods that require less energy for digestion, her body will have more energy availble to cleanse and heal itself. If she continues eating raw, and lives a pretty clean lifestyle, these sores will disappear all by themselves without her doing anything.