Ok, you’ve just gone on a massive sour candy-eating binge. An intensely painful burning sensation in your tongue is now causing you a lot of discomfort. In fact, you’ve actually eaten so much sour candy that your tongue is damaged. Relax. There is no need to panic. This damage is not permanent, and it will heal with time. But are there ways you can help your tongue heal itself? How long will it take to heal? Well, that’s what we’ll be taking a look at today. So, just ignore that pain for a little longer as we find out all the answers you need here today.
So, how do you heal your tongue after eating sour candy? You can heal your tongue after eating sour candy by drinking plenty of water (to normalize your mouth’s PH) and with time and patience. However, you can reduce pain and inflammation with Benzocaine Oral Gel and/or Baking Soda.
Ok. We’re going to go through the processes of healing your tongue after eating sour candy.
First, we’ll start by going through how to heal your tongue, and then after that, we’ll go through a few prevention tips so you know how to not burn and damage your tongue next time.
Contents
How to Heal Your Tongue After Eating Sour Candy
There are several techniques that can help you heal your tongue after eating sour candy.
These techniques can be split into two categories.
The first is to do with the actual healing process itself.
The second is to do with preventing your tongue from being burnt or damaged in the future after you’ve eaten sour candy.
Let’s delve into them.
Healing
Tip 1 – Be Patient
Although we humans can’t regrow limbs, we can heal wounds and damage. And the same is true if any wounds or damage are inflicted on our tongues.
Now, when we talk about the damage inflicted by eating too much sour candy, luckily, we’re not talking about your tongue falling off.
Instead, your tongue will burn and may peel. But this is damage that the human body is capable of fixing.
So, after you’ve damaged your tongue after eating sour candy, it will start to heal of its own accord.
How well and quickly your tongue heals will depend on how much sour candy you ate and how bad the damage was.
At the same time, eating certain foods may disrupt the healing process and prolong your pain. We’ll talk more about them later.
But for now, the first tip is to be patient. Allow your tongue to heal itself. Any negative reactions you have to the pain and damage will only add, funnily enough, negatively to the situation.
So smile, be patient and let your tongue do its healing thing!
Tip 2 – Stay Hydrated
It’s very important to get lots of H2O into your mouth after you’ve eaten sour candy, whether you’ve suffered damage or no damage.
After you’ve eaten sour candy, the pH level in your mouth will have been reduced significantly.
pH level is a measurement of how acidic something is. The lower the score, the more acidic it is.
Water has a very high pH level of 7.0. Drinking lots of water will therefore help stabilize your mouth’s pH level much quicker after you’ve eaten sour candy,
So it’s important to drink water because it will stop your mouth from being acidic and causing further damage.
An acidic mouth is also not the best environment for a tongue to heal in. Because remember, sour candy inflicts damage on our tongues because it is highly acidic.
So drink plenty of water throughout your tongue’s recovery.
Tip 3 – Chew Gum/Produce Saliva
Saliva will also help return your mouth’s pH level to normal. You, therefore, need to help your mouth produce more saliva.
There are plenty of safe ways of doing this.
Chewing gum is a great way, in my opinion, of producing saliva. Just make sure it’s not sour-flavored gum!
Tip 4 – Apply Benzocaine Oral Gel
Personally, of all the products on the market, I would recommend you purchase some Benzocaine Oral Gel.
This will help your tongue heal quicker and reduce any pain and inflammation.
Simply apply some Benzocaine Oral Gel on the point where your tongue has burned.
Tip 5 – Apply Baking Soda
A damaged tongue after eating sour candy can be a painful business.
Baking Soda will help you out here.
Place a small amount of baking soda on your tongue’s burn, and this should reduce the pain you are experiencing.
Once the pain has subsided, spit the baking soda out.
Future Prevention
Now let’s discuss some of the ways you can ensure that you don’t burn and damage your tongue whilst eating sour candy again.
Tip 1 – Limit Consumption
Yes, sorry to break the news to you, but your tongue was probably burnt and damaged because you ate too much sour candy.
If you, therefore, want to eat sour candy without burning your tongue, don’t eat too much!
Tip 2 – Don’t Suck Too Much
Maybe this doesn’t apply to some of you, but others of you may be suckers. By that, I mean you love to suck on your candy to prolong the time it takes to eat each piece.
If you suck on sour candy too much, you’ll be subjecting your tongue to more acids. As we know, acids are the ingredient that causes a burning tongue from sour candy.
So avoid sucking on your sour candy, and that way, you’ll reduce the chances of burning and damage.
Tip 3 – Stay Hydrated
Yep, back to our good old H2O friend again. As you know, water helps restore your pH levels to a normal state again.
But it’s also a good preventative measure to take because it will wash the acids off your tongue and down into your gut.
That means it can help reduce the chances of your tongue being damaged or burnt after eating sour candy.
Tip 4 – Produce Saliva/Chew Gum
And again, we’re back to saliva and chewing gum. You know this will help ease your pain and speed up your tongue’s healing.
But did you also know that it will help prevent your tongue from being damaged or burnt after eating sour candy in the first place?
How Long Does It Take For Sour Candy Tongue To Heal?
Your tongue will likely heal itself within 10 days. However, it could take a shorter amount of time or a longer amount of time. It all depends on several factors.
If you were expecting the pain to subside after a few moments, think again. Sour candy eating can be painful stuff if you overindulge.
After burning your tongue on sour candy, the cells in your tongue’s surface layer will have acidified.
These cells will completely regenerate within 10 days. So this is the time it takes for your tongue to have fully healed itself.
Now, don’t worry. Because right now, you might be feeling some pain and thinking, ‘how am I gonna last for 10 days?’
Well, you should last quite easily. Because although it takes 10 days for your tongue to fully heal, that doesn’t mean that you’ll have to wait 10 days for the pain to subside. That occurs much sooner.
After you’ve burnt your tongue on sour candy, it will be raw, sensitive, and painful but only for a few days.
A few factors will influence how long your tongue takes to heal and also how long it takes to stop hurting.
The first is the quantity you’ve eaten. The more sour candy you’ve eaten, the longer it will take for your tongue to stop hurting. Simple.
The second is the level of damage actually done. If it’s a lot, then everything will take longer. If it’s not so bad, then everything will be over sooner.
Of course, if you haven’t eaten too much sour candy and you apply some of the methods of healing I highlight in the following chapters, then your tongue could stop hurting pretty quickly. Probably within a day!
Once the top layer of skin peels off from the burn mark, that’s when you’ll be able to start enjoying food again.
The third factor is whether you are behaving. By that, I mean, are you doing things that are disturbing your tongue’s healing process? What are these things? Time to find out.
What Not To Do When Healing Your Tongue After Eating Sour Candy?
Whilst your tongue is healing after eating sour candy, you shouldn’t eat any more sour candy or foods, but you should also avoid other highly flavored foods.
Believe it or not but eating more sour candy is not a good idea while your tongue is healing.
It will increase the acidity level of your mouth, which isn’t helpful.
It may even result in your tongue being damaged or burnt further.
The same goes for sour foods that aren’t candies. These will still be acidic, which is the ingredient that caused damage and burning to your tongue in the first place.
Highly flavored foods should also be avoided because they can exacerbate your tongue’s burn and disturb the healing process. These types of highly flavored foods are spicy, salty, citrusy, and crunchy foods!
Finally
Now that you know your tongue can heal itself relatively quickly after you’ve eaten too much sour candy…
… DON’T use this as an excuse to carry on having those sour candy binges every Saturday night!
You may want to read my other sour candy guides:
Hello, I’m Matthew, a candy expert and enthusiast with over a decade of experience in the candy industry. My passion for candy started at a very young age. Since then, I have worked in numerous, large candy stores, and have been fortunate enough to try out hundreds of brands of candies, different types and flavors. In addition to my work, I enjoy sharing my extensive knowledge with others, and decided to create Sugar Stand in order to do so. My mission is to make the world a sweeter place, one candy at a time.