Canker sores are not contagious. Usually, doctors explain them as the result of some trauma in the mouth, such as accidentally biting your tongue or scraping the inside of your cheek with a sharp piece of tortilla chip. One pair of readers thinks that these painful lesions might have started as a consequence of COVID-19. They also came up with a solution that vanquishes canker sores.
Combination of Supplements Vanquishes Canker Sores:
Q. A little over a year ago, my wife began to get canker sores, which she hadn’t had since her youth. It wasn’t an occasional one; she had two or three at a time, and before they healed, there were two or three more!
Her dentist suggested hydrogen peroxide rinses, but they were ineffective. Her PCP prescribed doxycycline, but that was also ineffective. I looked on the internet and got several suggestions. She was in such distress that we tried them all at once:
- Vitamin D3 (enough to keep her level around 70 ng/dL)
- L-Lysine 1000 mg daily
- Zinc 50 mg daily
- Folic acid 800 mcg daily
- Vitamin B6 100 mg daily
- Vitamin B12 1000 mcg daily
I have proposed dropping the items one at a time, but my wife is reluctant to change a winning solution.
We hadn’t thought much about this until last night when she mentioned that the canker sore outbreak started while she had COVID. When I searched online for COVID and canker sores, there were numerous hits.
A. We too were surprised to find many articles on this topic in the medical literature. Canker sores are somewhat mysterious, with a range of triggering events.
We have heard from other readers that vitamin B12 supplements can help prevent recurrent canker sores. In addition, some readers find that consuming either sauerkraut or kiwifruit helps them heal quickly. However, neither of these foods is a good source of vitamin B12.
Thank you for sharing your wife’s cocktail that vanquishes canker sores. She would be smart to follow your suggestion to gradually reduce the doses of her supplements with a goal of eventually phasing off some of them. Several of her supplements are at the “tolerable upper intake levels.” Consequently, she should not plan to stay on them indefinitely.
Vitamin B12 Supplement Reduces Aphthous Ulcers:
Q. I was excited to read about canker sores in your column. They are also called aphthous ulcers.
I have suffered for many years with extremely painful mouth ulcers. I read a magazine article that mentioned a study done at Ben-Gurion University in Israel. They found that patients given 1000 micrograms (mcg) of vitamin B12 for a six-month period experienced a substantial decrease in break-outs or even a complete cure.
I have been on this regimen for six months to date, and if I experience any sore, it lasts for only one day, then disappears completely. I recommend that people who have recurrent canker sores check with the physician first, and then consider 1000 mcg of vitamin B12. It has made a major difference in my life. No more suffering, no more pain.
A. We tracked down the study you read about. It was published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine (Jan-Feb., 2009). The investigators used a sublingual (under the tongue) form of vitamin B12.
They concluded:
“Vitamin B(12) treatment, which is simple, inexpensive, and low-risk, seems to be effective for patients suffering from RAS [recurrent aphthous stomatitis, or canker sores], regardless of the serum vitamin B(12) level.”
That research was conducted quite a while ago. More recently, researchers reviewed the medical literature on this topic (International Journal of Vitamin and Nutrition Research, Oct. 2022). They suggest a daily dose of 1,000 mcg of vitamin B12 sublingually for six months can treat recurrent aphthous ulcers.
