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Cut Out Wheat for a Healthy Mouth

http://blog.drdavidwilliams.com/blog/dr-david-williams/0/0/cut-out-wheat-for-a-healthy-mouth

One of the more painful problems you can experience is that of mouth ulcerations, commonly referred to as canker sores. These aren’t necessarily the same as “cold sores” related to the herpes virus, which generally occur on the outside of the mouth.

There doesn’t seem to be any one trigger for these recurrent mouth ulcers. For some women, they develop when certain hormones fluctuate during the menstrual cycle; for other individuals, excess exposure to the sun may be the trigger; and for others yet, they seem to crop up in times of stress or from actual physical injury to the mouth.

They can be very painful and interfere with swallowing and eating, and oftentimes take a week or longer to resolve.

One very interesting study screened patients suffering from these recurrent ulcerations, looking for gluten intolerance (an allergy to wheat and wheat products, as well as to other grains that contain the protein gluten). Common symptoms include unwanted weight loss, chronic constipation and diarrhea, and bloating and gas.

When individuals with gluten intolerance or celiac disease were placed on a gluten-free diet, there was a very significant improvement in their prior problem with mouth ulcerations. (BMC Gastroenterol 09;9:44)

A gluten-free diet may not be the answer for everyone with this problem, but for some it will be a godsend in more ways than one. Mouth ulcerations may be just the one noticeable symptom of gluten intolerance that could be destroying areas of the small intestine. A gluten-free diet is not the easiest thing to follow, but it would be well worth trying if nothing else has helped one’s recurrent mouth ulcerations.