Wounds taking weeks to heal on skin disappear in a week inside the mouth (2013)

This is key. It's like saying a bones takes months to heal, but skin heals in weeks. Different tissue, different healing process.

A Tegaderm has a similar effect on small scrapes and burns. It seals in a lot of the moisture while still allowing you to sweat through it. I still irrigate the wound thoroughly before bandaging, but it's nice not having to change dressings while the wound is healing.

https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/company-us/all-3m-products/~/Nex...

While true, the reason covered skin wounds heal faster is often due to the cover stops the drying out of the wound which slows healing.

Agreed, and presumably there's evolutionary factors here too. If you can't eat you die - having a wound in your mouth that reduces your ability to eat is not good, so there must be strong selective pressures for tissues that can regenerate rapidly. I guess the selective force in the opposite direction might be the caloric demands of healing, hence why we don't regenerate too rapidly.

That, and the blood supply. The inside of my mouth is a sort of lurid pink, because all the tissues are packed with capillaries. Meanwhile, my skin is a barely pinkish off-white, because what blood vessels there are are deep below layers of cells and connective tissue.

You can get SLS free toothpaste. Unfortunately the tubes I've found are also flouride free, and they have Sodium Lauroyl Sarcosinate in them, which I assume is similar to Sodium Lauryl Sulfate.

SLS is only used to make foam when you brush your teeth. I promise I won't think any less of your toothpaste if it doesn't foam!

You can just use baking soda ...

Fluoride is a thing.

Bee Propalis has worked spectacularly for me, and you can buy it for this purpose on Amazon.

If you're open to alternatie medicine, traditional Chinese medicine (and probably ayurvedic medicine) splits food into hot/cold groups that affect your body's balance.

My personal armchair doctor explanation is that the inside of the mouth experiences a lot of small cuts, but our immune system takes care of those before they turn into larger wounds. When your immune system is weaker, or your mouth is drier, then those small wounds open into larger ones.

It's not so much that you were drinking milk, as that you were drinking milk to answer thirst—i.e., you were drinking milk when dehydrated. When you're dehydrated, the mucous membranes of your mouth and throat and sinuses become highly absorbent to any fluid that passes by. If there are things dissolved in solution in that fluid, they'll get absorbed into your mucous membranes too, and stick around for quite a while (either until you drink something else; until you exercise or take in a sauna, and sort of "sweat internally", purging said membranes; or until your lymphatic system slowly flushes the contents of your interstitial fluid out to your liver.)

To talk about canker sores, I first have to talk about dental plaque. Plaque appears when both of these conditions are true:

1. your mucous membranes are saturated with nutrients (such as those in milk, or juice, or soda, or "saucy" foods) amenable to the growth of bacterial biofilms; and

2. you are dehydrated enough—or under the chronic effects of diuretics such as caffeine—such that you don't consistently produce enough saliva to reach the mucous membrane and battle the nascent bacterial colony.

(That's right: plaque may live on your teeth, but the food those bacteria consume mostly isn't food stuck to/between your teeth; it's food "in" the mucous membranes of your lips. This is why the regrowth speed of plaque seems to have no correlation to how well you've brushed your teeth—the factor is how much food they have access to, and brushing your teeth has no effect on the nutritive content of your mucous membranes.)

Canker sores, then, happen when an established plaque (bacterial biofilm) colony is pressed into a dehydrated mucous membrane, further isolating it from the reach of saliva, for an extended period. Picture, say, a dirty tooth pressed against your lower/upper lip as you sleep, with your face laying to squeeze that part of your lip around the tooth, such that saliva can't get in.

So, ways to avoid the problem:

1. brush your teeth at night (i.e. after you stop eating food.) It's more important than brushing in the morning, if you want to prevent canker sores.

2. If you're dehydrated, drink water or another substance that contains few bacteria-promoting nutrients (like unsweetened flavoured carbonated water, or even hard liquor.) If you can't—if only milk/juice/soda/beer/coolers are being served—then try to "chase" your drink with water as soon as possible. When you do, swish some of the water in your mouth as if it was a mouthwash. Ensure your mucous membranes themselves are getting hydrated.

3. Get enough vitamin C. Subclinical hypovitaminosis C ("pre-scurvy") causes the linings of your mucous membranes to weaken, making it easier for rough spots on your teeth to cause micro-abrasions in them, which is where bacterial biofilms get in. But make sure you're not "getting enough vitamin C" by drinking orange juice when you're dehydrated!

Keep in mind that many aphthous ulcers are actually viral in origin, too, relating to the body's reaction to them. There are a wide variety of causes of canker sores and mouth ulcers, which likely represent different kinds of pathologic mechanisms with the same result. Even some systemic diseases can manifest this way.

Great point. I have found that if I eat fresh uncooked pineapple then a similar few days later I get one. Sure can take a while to make the connection.

What diet do you use to treat acid reflux? I am taking pills, but want to avoid it.

Then why is it that brushing too hard is also cited as a cause of gum recession in mainstream dentistry? Shouldn't it grow back in that case, if the underlying tooth is full?

I recently had a post for a dental implant installed and the doctor used ground cadaver (or maybe bovine) bone to help grow new bone around the post area. Is that related to what you are talking about?