5 Home Remedies for a Burnt Tongue
As anyone who has had to suffer through it will know, burning your tongue is extremely painful, and can affect your enjoyment of eating and drinking for days afterward. Here are just some of the many remedies that you can try at home to alleviate the pain of a burned tongue.
1: Apply Ice to it
The first one might seem blatantly obvious to anyone reading this, but it does in fact work. Just as you would apply something cold to a mild burn on your skin, so applying something cold to a freshly burned tongue will help numb the pain somewhat. If you don’t have an ice cube to hand, then you can use an ice pop or even a cold drink to achieve the same affect.
2: Breath through your mouth
Obviously, you might burn your tongue somewhere where ice or a cold drink aren’t to hand. In this case, the best way to diminish the pain is to breath through your mouth. Breathing sharply through your mouth will cool your mouth down to an extent and sooth the burn.
3: Sprinkle Sugar on your tongue
This method is a little less obvious, but many people swear by it. All you have to do is apply the sugar to the affected area and the pain should die down fairly quickly, if not instantly. And even if the pain doesn’t go away immediately, then at least you’ve got something sweet to take your mind off the pain to an extent.
4: Avoid Carbonated Drinks and Salty food
When you burn your tongue, it is your taste buds that will bear the brunt of the damage. They usually take a few days to heal or re-grow. Carbonated drinks, which have a higher level of acidity, and foods that are high in salt will mean that it will take far longer for them to heal. And as a result, the pain is going to last longer.
5: Use Painkillers
Even if the above methods work incredibly well, you’ll have to bear in mind that a burned tongue will, just like any other burn, hurt for a while afterward, which can seriously get in the way of your enjoyment of food and drink. So, try taking a painkiller to make this more bearable. Of course, it is important to ensure that the pain killers that you do use are suitable for a burned tongue by either checking the fine print on the box or by consulting your doctor. And this is only advised if the pain is so severe that it actually bothers you to eat and drink.
These are just some of the many methods you can use to soothe a burned tongue. In the future, make sure you wait long enough for your drink or food to cool. No coffee is going to taste so good that you can’t wait an extra five minutes before you enjoy it!
