Tag Archives: Burning Mouth Support Website

Year 14 Begins – Burning Mouth Syndrome

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In addition to celebrating my first Mother’s Day as a grandmother, I am sobered by the fact that this begins my fourteenth year of Burning Mouth Syndrome.

Gigi & Miles!

I never imagined when this journey began that it would last so long and would affect my life so much. Each year at this time, I review and see what I have learned, whether there has been any improvement in my pain, and evaluate how much I have been able to help others who are not as far down this road. I have kept up with the research on the BMS Support website and respond to comments on this blog regularly, and it feels like those are helpful things to do.

2020 was a challenge for everyone. The COVID19 pandemic took the chessboard we usually move around on and tossed it in the air. Sickness, Death, Lockdowns, Masks, Respirators, Ventilators, PPE, Social Distancing, and more, all became a part of the pandemic landscape and our new vocabulary. The folks who dealt with chronic pain and illness had to find a new level of coping skills and count ourselves lucky that it wasn’t worse if we were able to avoid COVID.

2021 started out very hopeful with the advent of incredibly effective vaccines, but the rollout was uneven and slow, frustrating even the most patient of us. Then the variants began popping up around the world, inevitable but scary, and things were made even more chaotic as disinformation spread and vaccine hesitancy became a thing.

Continue reading →

Stress and Burning Mouth Syndrome

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Stress. We know it makes our chronic neuropathic pain worse. Our pain increases as stress rises, which increases pain, which increases stress…and well, you know the rest.

It’s an automated answering system from Hell, with no readily visible pound sign to hit to get a live person on the line. Or is it?

Stress is coming at us from all sides now, from the worries and complications of the pandemic to the feelings and actions we are experiencing about racial equality and equity. We are not alone in our stress by any means, but chronic pain sufferers can be triggered in more than one way by it.

I admit that I resisted counseling at the beginning of my Burning Mouth Syndrome journey. I had an instinctively negative reaction to the assumption that this pain was “all in my head,” or that therapy could or would help. It also felt suspiciously like I was getting shuffled off into the “menopausal female” box where any aches or pains or issues were part of the incredibly mysterious malady that seemed to be menopause. As a strong and independent female, I rejected this categorization and marginalization and started fighting back.

How? Continue reading →

A New Year with Burning Mouth Syndrome

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Another year begins and this summer it will end my twelfth year and start my thirteenth with our little friend, Burning Mouth Syndrome (BMS).  That is a long time, but there are others out there who have suffered longer. Sometimes, much longer.

As we round the corner into 2020, what have we learned?

BMS is still a mystery. There are evidently no celebrities in the world who suffer from it (or at least they aren’t publicizing it). Diagnosis is still one of exclusion and takes dedication, discomfort, time, and resources to achieve. Most importantly, there is no cure in sight. Continue reading →

Breaking In a New Doctor – Burning Mouth Syndrome Challenges

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Photo by Shopify Partners from Burst

You can find yourself with a new doctor for a variety of reasons. New insurance, moving to a new town, a referral to a pain specialist or Neurologist…these are just a few. In all of these cases, you will need to bring your new doctor up to speed about a chronic neuropathic pain syndrome they may never have heard about.

A Neurologist or pain specialist may have dealt with BMS before and if you have a choice in the matter, try to find one who has. Their experiences may be to your benefit.

However, many of us are caught in that somewhat awkward position of educating our medical professional and it can be daunting if you aren’t prepared. Continue reading →

Heat and Burning Mouth Syndrome

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photo by Pexels

Here’s something that has crept up on me gradually over the years and was greatly masked by the air-conditioned environment I live in. My home is Texas, ya’ll, and so hot summers are the price we pay for moderate winters. It’s expected, and to be frank, if everything wasn’t air-conditioned, I think only the hardiest individuals (along with snakes, scorpions, bugs of many sizes, and lizards) would hang out here much.

Heat and heat indexes (the temperature it really feels like) are what have inched up over the years. Texas fakes you out with the occasional string of 100 degree plus days each summer, and until some source shows you the overall trend over decades, you don’t really get that it is just flat getting hotter! I never enjoyed that aspect of Texas summers (I am a Washington State girl when it comes to temperatures!) but since Burning Mouth Syndrome has become a part of my existence, it is even worse. Going outside for a walk right now is like entering a dryer and breathing oven air for me. The hot wind flares my BMS pain more than anything else I can think of and the flare continues long past when I have retreated into air-conditioning.

Hydration and medicine help, and sometimes I even resort to xylitol discs to moisten my mouth, but often it seems like nothing pushes back that flare until it is ready to retreat. Meanwhile, I throw iced water down like a marathon runner and hope it will end soon.

Does this happen to you? Let me know in the comments!

The BMS-Support website has several articles that deal with ongoing research into the salivary system in Burning Mouth Syndrome sufferers, and although I applaud that scientists and researchers are looking at it, a diagnostic method and treatment option can’t come fast enough.

We are burning up.

Burning Mouth Fantasies

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canstockphoto67880648-Marisha

(c) Canstock photo/Marisha

A friend asked the other day how I was doing. Was the burning any better? Had they found any cures?

I assured her that all was the same. I am so grateful for the efficacy of Aimovig in controlling my migraines, but it has, as expected, done nothing for Burning Mouth Syndrome (BMS). The Clonazepam ODT I take twice a day keeps the burning at a level where I can function and only occasionally do I have a flare of a day (or three) where nothing seems to touch the pain level much and staying very hydrated, sleeping and being quiet are the only coping strategies that get me through the day(s).

After we spoke, however, I found myself in a fantasy where I typed the amazing title of a blog post. “Burning Mouth Syndrome Cure is Here!” I was delighted as I daydreamed about a day when we would all descend on our doctors in droves, eager to start the totally fictional therapy that would break us out of the bars of this chronic pain prison. I imagined how gleeful I would be to write that very last post in my “Burning Mouth Journey” as I sent people on to pursue their cure and closed this shop up once and for all. Continue reading →

Chasing the Clues – Burning Mouth Syndrome

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I have gradually synced my neurologist appointments with my eleven anniversaries of BMS membership.

Each Mother’s Day ticks off another year with Burning Mouth Syndrome and I once again experience the joy of celebrating those lovely young women who are my daughters with the sadness that comes with another year of no cure in sight.

I saw my neurologist this week, and there was really nothing new to try so I will continue with my Klonopin/Clonazepam ODT and will keep dealing with the drowsiness side effect it brings.

But no pity party for me this year. Instead, I am focusing on the pain in my life that has been relieved successfully (Migraines practically cured by Aimovig), and some recent studies that indicate that a few researchers around the world are looking at our mysterious syndrome and finding some clues. The Burning Mouth Syndrome Support website just posted a link to a recent article from Scientific Reports titled “Proteomic profiling of whole-saliva reveals a correlation between Burning Mouth Syndrome and the neurotrophin signaling pathway.”

That’s a mouthful, isn’t it? You can read the entire report, along with many other articles, study reports, and abstracts at BMS-Research.

The scientific report article is dense, full of med-talk, science-talk, and many other things that sail over the heads of non-professionals but here is the main idea. Guy Krief, Yaron Haviv, Omer Deutsch, Naama Keshet, Galit Almoznino, Batia Zacks, Aaron Palmon, & Doron J.Aframian wanted to do profiling and bioinformatic analyses of whole-saliva (WS) from BMS patients compared to WS from healthy individuals. Continue reading →

Welcome to Burning Mouth Syndrome…Maybe

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If you have found this blog, you are probably a Burning Mouth Syndrome sufferer or know someone who is. Perhaps you are someone who only suspects you have BMS and what you have read on the Internet so far is scary, disheartening, and often filled with errors and speculation. Let me set your mind at rest about several things…some will still be disheartening, but that is the reality of this under-diagnosed and often baffling chronic pain.

Burning Mouth Syndrome will not kill you. It is not fatal in itself, but unless people find coping strategies, medicines, and support, it can be as dangerous as any other chronic pain condition. If you don’t get medical treatment and support, chronic pain can lead to depression and even self-harm.

The hallmark of BMS is diffuse burning in the mouth and tongue with no visible symptoms. This means if you have lesions, cracked or geographic tongue, discoloration of the tongue or oral cavity or any other visible symptom…you may be barking up the wrong tree. It is possible to have Burning Mouth Syndrome that is caused by underlying conditions, and you will always do better if you treat those ailments first. Your BMS pain may simply disappear, and wouldn’t that be great? Continue reading →

Speak Out – Burning Mouth Syndrome

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© Can Stock Photo / rmarmion

I have read quite a bit about this mysterious pain syndrome that has affected over ten years of my life and recently I read a review from the Cochrane Library site that clarified something for me. Here, see what you think.

“Authors’ conclusions: 

Given BMS’ potentially disabling nature, the need to identify effective modes of treatment for sufferers is vital. Due to the limited number of clinical trials at low risk of bias, there is insufficient evidence to support or refute the use of any interventions in managing BMS. Further clinical trials, with improved methodology and standardized outcome sets, are required in order to establish which treatments are effective. Future studies are encouraged to assess the role of treatments used in other neuropathic pain conditions and psychological therapies in the treatment of BMS.”

In all of my reading, the low numbers involved in various studies have given me pause, but the Cochrane Library actually considers many studies to contain bias in the study structure. Not to mention, of course, there just aren’t that many of them.

It is no wonder that little progress has been made in even the very first step in our Burning Mouth Journeys…diagnosis.

I don’t mean to lower your spirits or hope. We should have both, but unlike other neuropathic pain syndromes that have celebrity spokespeople, foundations, or nonprofits to raise money for research, or even a decent percentage of name recognition in the medical community, Burning Mouth Syndrome has none of these. We only have a website that posts credible, updated information after review and coping strategies because volunteers pay for and maintain it. We only have Facebook support groups (some more evidence-based than others) because volunteers have created and donated their time and energy to fostering them.

What can we do about this? Here’s one suggestion that will be easy for some and very difficult for others.

Talk About It.

Take the time to explain what you know about Burning Mouth Syndrome to your friends, your family, your Facebook, Instagram, or other social media circles, and raise awareness. I have lost count of the doctors, specialists, friends, and colleagues I have educated about this chronic pain and I know there will be many more. You never know when that casual conversation you have with someone about BMS may turn into a critical contact that will lead a researcher to this particular disease, encourage another sufferer you don’t even know, or simply erase one more blank stare in the general population as they discover someone they know, or maybe even love, deals with BMS and just never talked about it with them.

Try it, and let me know how it goes. As it stands, we have nothing to lose.