Canker sores should not be confused with cold sores on your lips or nose that are caused by a virus and are contagious. This cold sore remedy works great if that is what you have – not a canker sore.
Unlike cold sores, canker sores are not contagious and are the result of the diet of the sufferer. Even if a canker sore seems to be triggered by something else, say a scrape from a dental appliance like braces, the underlying cause is STILL diet. In other words, if the person had been eating right in the first place, the scrape on the inside of the mouth would not have resulted in a canker sore!
That’s right! What you eat GREATLY affects whether or not you suffer from canker sores.
The Number One Food That Causes Canker Sores
Guess what franken food is the primary cause of canker sores in the Western diet?
That culprit would be high fructose corn syrup also referred to as HFCS.
High fructose corn syrup promotes inflammation in the body, which in turn impairs the immune system. An impaired immune system is thought to be the underlying cause of canker sores.
A person on a typical diet of grocery store processed foods is a sitting duck for canker sores because these foods are simply loaded with HFCS as well as plain corn syrup.
This is why eating too much fruit or fruit juice can cause canker sores as well. The sugar in fruit is primarily fructose. It ain’t the acid, folks, although this may be a contributing factor. If acid were the problem, drinking kombucha would also cause canker sores and it doesn’t.
TOO MUCH FRUCTOSE = CANKER SORES
Even agave nectar, touted as a health food, contributes to canker sores. Agave nectar is a scam food – it is neither healthy nor helpful in any way to the person consuming it. Stay away from it if you want to avoid canker sores!
I used to suffer from canker sores all the time to the point where I had at least one bothering me much of the time. I haven’t had a canker sore now in over 15 years. Why? I have totally cut out HFCS from my diet and I watch my intake of regular fructose from other sources like fruit.
How Much Fructose is Too Much?
A good idea is to limit your intake of fructose from all sources to no more than 15 grams per day. Dr. Richard Johnson MD in The Sugar Fix describes how important it is to limit your fructose intake for health and weight control. To give you some idea, in a big, ripe banana, you’d get maybe 10 grams of fructose. So, if you eliminate HFCS in your diet completely and eat no more than 1-2 pieces of fruit a day, that would be a good way to go.
Be aware also that going over the fructose limit of 15g per day (25g at the absolute most) can cause a canker sore overnight. When my kids attend a birthday party, for example, if they have even ONE Capri Sun juice or 1/2 can of soda they will invariably have a canker sore within a day or two.
Bottom line is that even if you control your fructose intake 99% of the time, consuming a single food loaded with HFCS can cause one of these baddies within hours.
Imagine what incredible damage a high fructose diet is doing to a person’s insides if it can cause an ulcer in the mouth so quickly!
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Sarah Pope has been a Health and Nutrition Educator since 2002. Her work is dedicated to helping families effectively incorporate the principles of ancestral diets within the modern household. She is a sought after lecturer around the world for conferences, summits, and podcasts.
Her work has been covered by major media including USA Today, ABC, NBC, and many others.
Fitness Forum!
I was just thinking about this the other day. I used to be plagued with canker sores all the time. I would get especially bad outbreaks after a trip to the dentist and/or before a high stress event. Now, I cannot remember when I last had one. It's been almost 3 years since I've had soda, or sweetened coffee drinks from Starbucks, or any of my old treats and I honestly don't miss them or the canker sores either!
I agree canker sores are so painful. For me checking out all toothpaste shampoo etc for Sodium Lauryl Sulphate,(even from the health food store) and also checking out prescribed medicines for SLS
along with reducing sweets cured mine. It is such a relief not to have those nagging sores, and hope this may help someone.
Sarah,
Something I noticed this past week when I had THE best cinnamon rolls in the world made for us by my dear neighbor, is acid indigestion! I had it two night in a row after eating one (each day) of those! (I hate to say it, but totally worth it!!) I had pretty much cut out all sugar except what occurs naturally in fruit, so I am pretty sure it was the sugar that caused the indigestion.
Any ideas for a true cold sore? They seem to run in our family. Not me, but occasionally my husband, and 2 of my kids.
Thanks,
And I love your little video clips! Very informative!
Cindy
I used to get canker sores all the time. Since I've been on the GAPS diet, I haven't gotten any. I've also noticed since being on GAPS that I don't have to get up and go pee in the middle of the night.
Great post!
Tina
Hi Cyn – cold sores are a virus so anything that would keep them at bay would work. Cod liver oil, coconut oil (very antiviral), keeping vitamin D levels optimal all would help considerably. Eating right in general and keeping the refined sugars out of the diet and natural sugars at a minimum helps too. The gut is 80% of immunity so keeping that gut in ship-shape is the best way to go.
As a point of interest, HFCS and table sugar have about the same chemical balance of glucose and fructose, about 50/50. The "high" in high fructose is in comparison to regular corn syrup, which has no fructose. Scientists figured out a way to chemically alter the HFCS to contain more fructose so it would taste sweeter. My point is that most forms of sugar are high in fructose, not just HFCS. If you want to avoid canker sores, you have to avoid sugar in general, not just HCFS.
Great point, thanks. In my experience though, HFCS will cause a canker where the same amount of sucrose will not. Perhaps the heavy processing has something to do with it. And, I believe HFCS has more fructose to glucose ratio than sugar (55/45)?
Found this post intriguing and left with a question. You advocate reducing fructose. What I'm not clear on is whether fructose is worse than other forms of sugar? The GAPS diet recommends honey and fruit as sweeteners because they are easier to digest. So is it that fructose is per se is so bad or is it just sugars overall?
Thanks.
Hi Jane, all sugars including fructose are bad when consumed to excess. Fructose is easier to digest but this doesn't make it better or mean that you can eat a lot of it. Once the gut heals, then double sugars can be consumed again and they must be consumed in moderation as well. Even raw honey, a fantastic sacred food, must not be consumed to excess else is will cause problems.
This is good to know. I noticed a canker sore on my 1 yr old's tongue a few weeks ago and while she doesn't eat a lot of processed foods (hardly any, I'd say), she has a lot of fruit. I've been trying to cut back on her fruit intake and counter it with more meats, cheeses and vegetables. It takes some effort, that's for sure, but it'll be better for her!
Hi Sarah,
So just to be clear, what you are really saying is that consuming too much sugar of any form is not good and that fructose is not necessarily any worse than the double sugars if you eat the same quantity. 15 grams of fructose is equally bad to 15 grams of sucrose? I realize many people eat lots of fruit thinking that they are not eating so much sugar when in reality they are consuming as much or more than if they ate candy instead. Thanks so much for the clarification
Hi Jane, thanks so much for commenting! Sugar is bad in all forms when consumed to excess. In my experience, however, fructose really enhances inflammation in the form of canker sores much more quickly than plain sugar. For example, if I were to consume a HFCS soda – I would very very likely have a canker sore the next day. Consuming a soda made with plain sugar, however, as in the ones from the healthfood store, would not. Consuming sugar to excess will also give a person a propensity for canker sores, but fructose in excess of 25g a day max does this more quickly due to the differences in how it is metabolized and how it can raise uric levels and inflammation in the body so very rapidly. Hope that makes things more clear.
Are you aware that sugar (whether it’s white sugar, brown sugar, honey or maple syrup) is 50% fructose and 50% glucose.
Another great post! We have had no canker sores at all since we cut out all sweeteners except for raw honey and real maple syrup, and we eat those in small amounts. We eat organic fruit, but only as a dessert,and in small quantities.
If I so much as look sideways at molasses or sorghum, I get a canker sore instantaneously. I have to check labels for this ingredient. If I begin to develop a canker sore, I buy those "canker covers" $11 for 6 patches from the health food store. Also, I've noticed they heal faster if I eat green vegetables like kale, collards.
I noticed that canker sores in my case are caused by a lack of probiotics in my system. I will get back on track with yogurt and probiotics and the canker sores go away. Usually it's triggered by stress.
Also, to keep cold sores away you should take L-Lysine. it's a harmless amino acid that you can take in pill form and it is the miracle cure for cold sores. You can also modify your diet to increase lysine in your foods. a web search will reveal foods high in lysine. i'm still trying to personally discover the relationship between lysine, zinc and a few other key items in my diet.
My husband and i suffered from cankers fairly regularly until switching to natural Toms of Maine toothpaste- now its a very rare occurance to get them.
Hi Sarah – canker sores are something that I’ve never had a problem with – even when my diet was poor. I have had a few throughout my life, but they have normally been few and far between. But, I totally agree with you that diet causes this problem. My husband used to get them regularly, and he relayed to my son (who also used to get them all the time) that when he ate sugar or grains, they would appear. Of course, in our house we eat very healthy. I have tried to stick to a campaign of not eating grains, and if we do, they are soaked, soured, or fermented. The only bread we keep in our house is normally long-fermented sourdough, and it’s in the freezer because we don’t go through it that fast. We rarely eat cereal, and it’s always soaked overnight or is grainless (a sprouted nut mixture). But I have noticed that each time my son gets a canker sore, it’s been just after he’s had grains or sugar or both (usually somewhere else like with my parents or at a friend’s house). I believe all types of processed foods are probably the cause of this problem and many others, but people need to know this! Thanks for sharing! 🙂
My daughter and I stayed with a friend for just one week . I didnt want to be rude to her so we ate what she had for us. Lucky charms, soda, cookies and much more by the end of the week my little girl was crying so bad from this pain in her mouth. I took her to the denist and he told me it was an ulcer in her gum. I could not believe it, just one week of eating like my friends do all the time and we eat so healthy? I thought we would be okay eating like that for the week. I learned my lesson and from now on I will go shopping even when staying as a guest. 🙂
I get canker sores when I eat raw walnuts…
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