Bicarbonate soda Mouthwash FAQ
This video has been created by a cancer patient to share the methods they found useful in controlling the pain and feeding issues experienced during radiation and chemo therapy treatment of head and neck cancer. This should not be viewed as professional medical advice in any way and you should always consult with your doctor prior to using any of the methods described here to ensure it does not adversely impact your treatment.
That said a number of other patients have successfully trialed this method and are now able to consume food by mouth even during ongoing treatment.
Some have also asked for me to elaborate or explain further a few aspects touched on in this video and these questions are answered in the FAQ below.
Please add your comments both here and on the YouTube page. It would be helpful to others if you touch on a few of the points detailed to the right (or below) in your comments.
How well did it work for you?
Describe what happened in terms of pain relief as you went through the process.
Once your treatment finished, what state was your mouth in particularly in terms of how well you could feed and swallow?
FAQs
How often should I use this process?
Essentially I viewed this as a battle against thrush to take back control of my mouth.
Initially, when my mouth was at its most painful, I used a heavily diluted concentration of the bottled solution shown in the video increasing the concentration over the course of an hour.
During the next 12 hours, I repeated the process as soon as I felt the pain returning.
Using this method the time between me needing to repeat the process increased steadily until I reached a point where a couple of squirts with the atomiser as shown in the video was enough to promote significant saliva production and eradicate any pain I felt.
What should I expect to feel in terms of pain and relief as I use this process?
When I first tried this method my mouth was raw and extremely painful as the top layer of skin had been stripped away due to a combination of radiation and chemo therapy, dry mouth and Thrush.
As such the undiluted bicarb soda was at first intolerably painful so I added 4 times as much water, took a sip and waited for my poor old saliva glands to start to fill my mouth. It felt like I had a galaxy filled with stars of pain in my mouth but over the course of 2 minutes, as more and more saliva touched the pain stars around my mouth, they just seemed to dissolve away and disappear.
I repeated this process with a 2 times dilution of the bicarb mix and then a full concentration mix and in less than an hour the pain began to dissipate entirely as it came under control.
Whenever I subsequently felt more pain beginning to impact my mouth I repeated the process as described in “When should I use this process?”.
When should I use this process?
As soon as you can when you start to feel the prickles of mouth pain returning.
The longer you leave it the more ground will be gained by the thrush infection. Also bear in mind, if you are receiving radio therapy to the head and neck area, the efficiency and effectiveness of your saliva glands and lymph nodes is likely to be diminishing. This process will help bolster these areas of your mouth by assisting them in cleansing and sterilising the effected areas.
How long do I need to keep doing this for?
I continued to use this process throughout my treatment and for a couple of weeks after my chemo and radio therapy was complete. By this stage my mouth had recovered enough that I no longer needed to use the process at all.
Essentially I kept using the process until the pain disappeared completely.
By this stage I was able to eat almost normally. Unfortunately my taste buds have taken significantly longer to return.
Click on the image below to download a little A4 size poster you can print out or send to someone in order to share this page and help others suffering from mouth pain associated with head and neck cancer treatment.