What helps now against the complaints? First of all, the causes should be treated. If a fungal disease is present, an appropriate anti-fungal therapy is naturally at the forefront of the measures. An iron or vitamin deficiency can also be easily remedied.
Next, an attempt can be made to calm the irritated oral nerves. This can be done, for example, by using a local anesthetic (e.g., lidocaine lozenges). There are also studies on the effectiveness of sucking (not swallowing) sedatives or even antidepressants. However, this therapy should be prescribed and monitored by a physician.
Local overstimulation with pepper extract (capsaicin ointment) may help improve after a period of irritation, although this can also be uncomfortable.
Taking antidepressants also leads to an improvement of the symptoms in some patients, especially if this makes sleep restful again.
But in most cases, the causes are not so easy to outline. Once the vicious circle has been established, no sustainable progress can usually be achieved through simple measures. More complex, multimodal procedures are then necessary.
Multimodal therapy
In the case of pronounced complaints, there is an increased influx of stimuli, on the one hand from the oral cavity, and later usually from other regions as well. The result is an increased sensitivity to pain, or a general sensitivity to stimuli. The constant burning sensation draws attention to the mouth region, which - unintentionally and without influence - further intensifies the symptomatology.
The affected patients later enter a state of general insecurity and irritability, in the end also anxiety and depressiveness.
In order to remedy this situation, it is necessary to re-establish security and trust in one's own body and to make it possible to "look away" from the complaints, i.e. to ignore something that is obviously in the foreground. This is similar to the difficulty of not thinking about yellow elephants for one minute.
Therefore, the focus is on procedures to increase well-being and safety. This is usually achieved through massages, physiotherapy, heat, exercise, healthy diet, relaxation procedures, respiratory therapy and the like.
At the same time, procedures are added to increase confidence in one's own resilience. Here we use physical training, cold chamber and also psychotherapeutic procedures.
Very often we find a change in breathing. Normalizing this is often a decisive step in therapy.
It is important to successfully "convince" the body to process stimuli in a different way, i.e. to block them out again. This can only be achieved by practicing highly intensively for a while. That is why we mainly rely on intensive therapies in which two experiences are sensually experienced again and again in a very short period of time, many hours a day:
- My body feels good, it is safe.
- I can trust myself to do something
In this way (to work hard, not to work too hard), progress is usually possible that cannot be achieved through longer but less intensive therapies (once a week for months).
More details can be found in the functional disorders and in the description of the different methods.
