Just Call Me Canker Face

So I still have this wicked-evil canker sore, though its been down graded from a Spawn-of-Satan canker sore. I realized earlier this weekend that I didn't really know much about canker sores except that gargling salt water sometimes makes them feel better. After a quick bit of research I learned a couple more fun factoids from emedicinehealth.com:

• 20-40% of the people have had canker sores, also known as aphthous stomatitis, at some point in their life (for the 60-80% of the world who don't know what a canker sore is, I've included the diagram above). Cankers are most common in adolescents and young adults, and frequency of sores decrease as you age (hip-hip hooray!).
• The exact cause of canker sores is unknown, but some suspect it is an immune reaction. Other suspected factors include heredity, stress, trauma, food allergies, toothpastes with sodium lauryl sulfate, and iron, folic acid and B12 deficiencies.
  
• The current canker I'm suffering with is officially a major canker (a name I intend to call someone next time I'm in a disagreement), as it is 1cm in length. Others are regular or minor cankers that clear up within 3-14 days.
  
• There are a few at-home treatments, like rinsing your mouth with a salt water mix or Maalox. Some of the medical treatments are downright scary, ranging from administering tetracycline and dietary supplements to injections of cortical steroids, yikes! There are a few drugs that seem to have a canker-depleting side-effect, so sometimes a doctor may prescribe ulcer and heartburn meds, oral contraceptives, and in rare cases thalidomide (remember We Didn't Start the Fire mentioning the "children of thalidomide"? It causes severe birth defects, but you can get it for canker sore treatment).
  
• Prevention advice was kind of entertaining. First you should avoid trauma to the mouth, even minor trauma (so watch out for those mouth-punching-ninjas). Next, do not talk while chewing (but what else am I supposed to do while I chew?). Hormonal factors can trigger outbreaks, so...(they recommend taking oral contraceptives). And if you have any dietary deficiencies, take care of them.
  

After learning this I thought "Great, one more symptom of iron deficiency." I've been taking a multi-vitamin occasionally because vegetarians are often at risk for iron deficiencies, and iron deficiencies cause sluggishness and anemia, among other things, and I was dreadfully tired. After I started the multi-vitamin thing my energy level went up to a point I could function again, but I hate trying to gag them down early in the morning, so I don't get one every morning. Plus taking a multi-vitamin makes me feel old. Look at the people in the multi-vitamin commercials, they're usually not the picture of youth and vitality. However, for the most part I've come to terms with it.

The site I was reading about iron deficiencies at said that it takes time for your body to recover to normal iron levels, so the canker sores could be a side effect of that. But then I discovered something shocking. My lame toothpaste has sodium lauryl sulfate in it! A neighbor told me years ago that sodium lauryl sulfate caused cankers, so I figured it was something that would have been removed from most oral care products.. Well, I was wrong! It's not even an active ingredient in the toothpaste! I was moderately horrified. In the end I threw away the toothpaste because it was paste, and I prefer gels, in addition to it being a probable canker-causer (it seems last time I was toothpaste shopping I was being particularly inattentive).

For now I'm relying on Ora-gel to get me through the meals and hoping that new toothpaste and my multi-vitamin will clear up this particularly heinous canker. In the meantime I plan on avoiding mouth trauma and stress.