"L" is for Lysine
If I don't know something, I Google it and find out. The amount of information available to us today astounds me. I can safely say that Google has changed my life, and probably yours too. Regardless of the situation I'm in—resetting the oil change indicator light after changing the oil in our car, needing to know how to troubleshoot a septic pump, looking for a free desktop application that will do some small task and make life easier, or researching any number of topics from recipes, to the nuances of cascading style sheets—Googling it does the trick.
One thing all of this Googling has taught me is that we're not alone. We're not the first ones to have a mole problem in our yard. We're not the only people that have ever had to deal with stray dogs digging holes on our property. As a matter of fact, just two minutes ago I wondered if there was a way to see all of the searches I have Googled recently. There is. I Googled that too—and I'm pretty sure I'm not the first person to wonder that.
Knowing that someone somewhere has surely been through what you're going through is invaluable, especially when coupled with a powerful search engine. Case in point: I am very prone to cankers. They usually flare up as a result of stress or something I eat, like nuts, seeds, or fruit. I could always count on a sore mouth during finals week. And I have avoided nuts and pineapple (among other things) for years. Or at least I tried. I like nuts and pineapple and pretty much everything else that would cause cankers for me.
I had talked to dentists and friends who told me about Kank-a, which is an oral anesthetic. That helped for a few years. But it didn't help for very long. If I needed 15-20 minutes of relief, I'd dab some of this gel on my lip. But the numbness never lasted long enough.
When I was little my dad told me that putting salt on my cankers would help them heal faster. It's no easier to do now than when I was six years old. It still stings. Bad. But just after Christmas, when I had three cankers on my bottom lip (two of which were merging into one mega-canker), I was back in the bathroom with the salt, trying to speed the healing process so that I could smile, laugh, and talk normally.
I updated my Facebook status: "There has got to be a less masochistic way of relieving cankers than putting salt on them." Commenters suggested baking soda, Orajel, alum, and other topical treatments. There were also suggestions to increase my water intake and decrease my stress levels. But I wanted a magic pill. I didn't want to treat them so much as prevent them.
And now we're back to Google. At 2:26pm on January 12, 2010,* I Googled "canker sores, home remedy" and found this forum. After a few minutes browsing the posts, I noticed many people had decreased the number and severity of their cankers with L-Lysine. It was worth a shot, and it was the closest thing to a magic pill I could find.
*Should I be a little freaked that Google is keeping track of this, or should I be grateful that I can find this type of information when I want it?
Now, exactly four months later, I have not had a debilitating canker sore since. I pop one of my L-Lysine pills each morning with breakfast and I don't worry about it anymore. In the past four months I've enjoyed fresh pineapple, airline peanuts, peanut butter and jelly (and, even better: grilled pb&j—thanks Phelan!), Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and this delicious recipe for Satay Lettuce Wraps, just to name a few. When I go on a canker-binge (eating a ton of food that I know used to cause me weeks of canker grief) I can feel my mouth get a little raw, but it doesn't escalate past that. I haven't had a canker-smile, a canker-lisp, canker-induced bad breath, or a salty, throbbing canker-lip for four awesome months, and I'm loving it. Bring on the brownies with nuts, the peanut-butter-chocolate pie, the roasted almonds, the pesto sauce, the hummus, and everything else I love but tried to avoid.
Add mine to the testimony of L-Lysine for canker relief and prevention. You can find it with the vitamins in your local grocery store if you're interested.
Go to the board!
One thing all of this Googling has taught me is that we're not alone. We're not the first ones to have a mole problem in our yard. We're not the only people that have ever had to deal with stray dogs digging holes on our property. As a matter of fact, just two minutes ago I wondered if there was a way to see all of the searches I have Googled recently. There is. I Googled that too—and I'm pretty sure I'm not the first person to wonder that.
Knowing that someone somewhere has surely been through what you're going through is invaluable, especially when coupled with a powerful search engine. Case in point: I am very prone to cankers. They usually flare up as a result of stress or something I eat, like nuts, seeds, or fruit. I could always count on a sore mouth during finals week. And I have avoided nuts and pineapple (among other things) for years. Or at least I tried. I like nuts and pineapple and pretty much everything else that would cause cankers for me.
I had talked to dentists and friends who told me about Kank-a, which is an oral anesthetic. That helped for a few years. But it didn't help for very long. If I needed 15-20 minutes of relief, I'd dab some of this gel on my lip. But the numbness never lasted long enough.
When I was little my dad told me that putting salt on my cankers would help them heal faster. It's no easier to do now than when I was six years old. It still stings. Bad. But just after Christmas, when I had three cankers on my bottom lip (two of which were merging into one mega-canker), I was back in the bathroom with the salt, trying to speed the healing process so that I could smile, laugh, and talk normally.
I updated my Facebook status: "There has got to be a less masochistic way of relieving cankers than putting salt on them." Commenters suggested baking soda, Orajel, alum, and other topical treatments. There were also suggestions to increase my water intake and decrease my stress levels. But I wanted a magic pill. I didn't want to treat them so much as prevent them.
And now we're back to Google. At 2:26pm on January 12, 2010,* I Googled "canker sores, home remedy" and found this forum. After a few minutes browsing the posts, I noticed many people had decreased the number and severity of their cankers with L-Lysine. It was worth a shot, and it was the closest thing to a magic pill I could find.
*Should I be a little freaked that Google is keeping track of this, or should I be grateful that I can find this type of information when I want it?
Now, exactly four months later, I have not had a debilitating canker sore since. I pop one of my L-Lysine pills each morning with breakfast and I don't worry about it anymore. In the past four months I've enjoyed fresh pineapple, airline peanuts, peanut butter and jelly (and, even better: grilled pb&j—thanks Phelan!), Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and this delicious recipe for Satay Lettuce Wraps, just to name a few. When I go on a canker-binge (eating a ton of food that I know used to cause me weeks of canker grief) I can feel my mouth get a little raw, but it doesn't escalate past that. I haven't had a canker-smile, a canker-lisp, canker-induced bad breath, or a salty, throbbing canker-lip for four awesome months, and I'm loving it. Bring on the brownies with nuts, the peanut-butter-chocolate pie, the roasted almonds, the pesto sauce, the hummus, and everything else I love but tried to avoid.
Add mine to the testimony of L-Lysine for canker relief and prevention. You can find it with the vitamins in your local grocery store if you're interested.
Go to the board!
I am pretty sure Mom tried that stuff for cold sores back before Valtrex, but I don't know that she ever suggested it for cankers.
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