Everything she ate with any taste would cause a mouth ulcer. Nothing from the chemist worked until she found a natural gum which stopped them coming back.
BY Amy Myles 3 July, 2007
“I’ve first started getting mouth ulcers when I was 14. They coincided with getting glandular fever, which made me very ill and run down. At that time the whole inside of my mouth and throat was covered in ulcers and I was in agony.”
“I was prescribed a type of paste to put on them by my GP but it didn’t work at all, it just numbed them for about an hour and then wore off.”
“Since then I’ve had regular outbreaks of mouth ulcers. Sometimes I’ll get just one or two, other times I’ll get up to ten ulcers at once. I got a lot when I was at university, I guess I was drinking a lot and eating a bad diet. It used to really inhibit my social life as it was hard to eat anything or even smile when I had a really bad attack. It also made my breath smell bad and my mouth would be slightly swollen. Kissing anyone would be out of the question.”
“I’ve tried just about every over the counter and prescription treatment for my ulcers but nothing really works and most seriously sting when you putt them on. My GP told me there was no real cure for them and no reason for getting them either. The best solution I have found until now was gargling with warm salt water.”
“But when I saw an advert in the ES newspaper asking for people to trial a new natural treatment for mouth ulcers I immediately enrolled. I was sent a chewing gum and a mouthwash both made from Mastic Gum, a natural resin taken from a Greek tree similar to the pistachio tree. I chewed the gum every day, which tasted strange at first but I soon got to really like it and I rinsed with the mouth wash twice a day.”
“In the six months that I tried the mastic gum products I have only had two very small ulcers, which is practically a miracle for me. I used to get between 4-8 a month, usually around my period but sometimes at other times too. Stress and alcohol tend to trigger them, I even had four ulcers in my mouth on my wedding day.”
“The only time I was ulcer free for this length of time was when I was pregnant. But as soon as I had had each of my babies, the ulcers came straight back. But I’ve now been virtually ulcer-free for six months and it’s really improved the quality of my life. Mouth ulcers are really painful and make you feel grumpy and run down. And I’m tetchy with the children and my husband. I’d recommend this treatment to anyone who is plagued by regular mouth ulcers. I now chew the gum every day and it has replaced my normal gum – it’s a very handy and painless way of keeping mouth ulcers away.”
