Home treatment for mucoceles that works every time

i actually found a video on the surgical procedure on how to remove a mucocele and did it in front of a mirror with a razor blade and tweezers! i dont have health insurance... it was crazy. wow. i pulled my lip out to make the bulg taught so i could "operate" and then i made a verticle incision starting at the lowest point of the bulge (closer to my teeth than my lip, cutting the bulg in half with a verticle line. you are supposed to cut lightly and expose the "bag" of mucous and blood. you are supposed to make an incision and peel the skin back, pull the bag out and snip the "tail" of the bag, which is a salivary gland. what actually happened however is that the razor blade cut wy down into my lip and the bag popped! OH MY GOD! first, there was an exposion of blood, all over my wall, sink, mirror. THEN there was a huge trail of yellow mucous dripping out of my mouth (like, immagine if youve ever cried hysterically and have mucous trainls coming out of your nose). it was so gross, i couldnt believe it. anyways, the bulg was gone and all that was left was a maybe 3-4 centimeter razor gash. and so i looked into the gash. the best analogy i can use here is the sight of a baby being born. so: imagine the slit of a womans vagine with a round head tring to get out. thats what it looked like. so i had to spread the vagina/razor gash open with my fingers, and then the damaged salivary gland (that had been supplying fluid to the mucocel sac) POPPED OUT! oh my god, and the more i worked it the further it came out. eventually i just sucked on it as hard as i could and used my teeth to bite it off at the base of its tail. anyways, i am SO PROUD OF MYSELF for pulling this off. i cant believe it. i performed a fairly complex dental surgery on myself in my bathroom. my mouth looks great, the incision is only 3-4cm long, its been a week and the mucocele has not come back. for some odd reason, this whole experience has been so good for my self-esteem... its like, normally i would have to go through i doctor, submit to an "expert" who wants to charge me lots of money, will treat me badly. but i was just like - "to hell with that! im going to do this myself!" how can i explain it - its like the difference between teaching yourself to ride a bike and being taught how to ride a bike for your uncle. haha. anyways, my prayers go out to everyone suffering from one of these mucoceles, they are painful and very annoying.

do you just gargle or rinse with sea salt

Does anyone know the cost of the surgery?

The self-surgery done 3 posts above this is pretty damn disgusting. I'm glad you didn't hurt yourself too badly. It has been 3 weeks for me, and I've done the EPO for a couple of days with no progress. I'll start the alum spice soon and take pictures. -K

Really, in my experience, making the mucocele itself shrink or disappear because of this kind of treatment is really an unimpressive result; it'll often do that on its own.  Part of the diagnostic criteria for identifying a mucocele is that it fluctuates in size, sometimes seeming to go away; that's just part of the mucocele experience.  It's whether it comes back or not that's important, and since the problematic salivary gland is still there and the alum isn't doing anything to heal it, this treatment isn't going to be any kind of longterm solution.  Which sucks.  But I tried it for months, and the fucker often didn't even respond, and, if it did, always came back.

I've given up and am having surgery tomorrow.  

what is alum?

THIS IS MY FIRST POST: First of all this is a great place to find and share information about mucoceles. I will share my battle with mucoceles here and what I have learned from my experience having the surgery (twice) and multiple mucoceles. First, I would like to comment on the home remedies. Home remedies like the alum/Listerine method are temporary remedies but great options to have in order to have relief from your mucocele. Every mucocele is different in every way. Some will react to certain methods and others will not. Some mucoceles have a normal cycle where they get inflamed and grow big and 2 days later they are flat with only a white hardened scar type of dried skin on top but it only fills up again in days or later. Some go away after the cycle or after bursting only to come back later in weeks or months. The home remedies induce this cycle where the sack gets drained and keeping the area dry enough with alum or other ingredient it can manage to stay flat or disappear for a while giving the impression that it is completely gone. The problem is that the damage created on the salivary glad is still there which is what created the mucocele in the first place. Eventually, the mucocele will reappear either smaller or larger in later months or weeks. Basically, it is never fully gone but dormant for some time until it starts to be overactive again. The home remedies are great to give relief if your mucocele is reactive to the chemicals and method. Like I said, every mucocele is different. It will completely go away with surgery if done properly with extraction of the damaged salivary gland. I know surgery really sucks because I have done it twice and the second time it did not work. I know I am going on and on but it is all great info. I will post my surgery stories and my issue with the current mucocele I have in my next post. Just don’t want to make this too long. "E34"

THIS IS MY SECOND POST: Continuation from last post. Ok so now to what happened on my surgeries. 3 years ago I developed a mucocele from probably biting my lip somehow. I had it for about 4 months thinking it would go away. Finally, I went to the dentist and he recommended to go to an oral surgeon to diagnose and possibly extract. The oral surgeon diagnosed it and said it needed surgery. I went ahead and had the surgery done. Cost $475 with everything including lab tests. The procedure took about 30 minutes. He numbed the area and cut with couple of tools and scissors. Couple of stitches after and it was done. The issue with the surgery is that you have to sign something that says that the mucocele could return. Also, your lip is discolored and disfigured for a week due to the swelling. You look like Shrek for a week so you need to plan for that. Luckily, this mucocele never returned and I was good as new after a week or so but it is true that there is always a weird tingling numbing in that area of the surgery sometimes but nothing major. I developed a another mucocele earlier this year around April 2010 in a different spot of my lower lip not associated with the last one but it was different than the one I had 3 years ago. This mucocele had a cycle where it would grow for 2 days then it will flatten out for 3 days and again. I can describe it as like a balloon with air then a balloon deflated. This continued on until I decided to have the surgery in June 2010. When I had the surgery the mucocele was in the deflated stage where only a white dried up skin small bump was there. He extracted it and again I looked like Shrek for a week. A week later in my follow up everything looked fine but a week after that it started reappearing again. I believe since it was in the deflated stage he probably did not get all of it especially the damaged salivary glad. I went back to the doctor and said he would do the surgery again for free but I had so many plans and events to attend in that time of the summer that I decided to postpone it for another day. It is almost September now and I still have not gone back because I know I don’t want to go thru that surgery for the third time. This is why I found this website trying to find other alternatives. I am glad that there are home remedies that can help it deflate or even have it go away for a while. So far I have not tried any of the home remedies yet but most likely will. My mucocele still goes thru the cycle but it is nice to know that there are alternatives that can provide relief and temporary solution. Again, every mucocele is different. I will most likely try the alum/Listerine method to see how my mucocele reacts to it and continue posting my battle here. I believe it's worth the shot because any relief for whatever time it lasts at this point is better than getting the surgery done for the third time not knowing if it will work. "E34"

THIS IS MY THIRD POST: Today is the 4th day using the alum and rinsing with Listerine. When I began, the mucocele was huge for some reason more than normal and it was difficult to hide it in my mouth because you could see it a little with my mouth closed. If you guys recall from my previous posts, this mucocele has been around since April 2010, had surgery June 2010 and it came back 2 weeks after surgery. Since then, it has gone thru the inflating and deflating cycle as I described before but 3 days ago when I started the alum, the mucocele was the biggest I have ever seen it. The first time I used alum, the mucocele increase even more in size but it felt like it was going to pop after that. 4 hours later I applied more alum again for 15 minutes and on my way home from work it felt like it was going to pop for sure so I helped it by playing with it with my mouth. Many people here say to use needles or other objects to pop it but I don't recommend that. Mine did not really pop but a small leak from the base of the mucocele began to very slowly come out so I helped it drain as much as possible with my tongue and other lip. When I got home I used alum again. The alum basically helped the mucocele get to the point that the liquid could be drained and it also burns or kills the extra skin encompassing the bulge by drying it and hardening it while turning it into a white color kind of like a callus that you get on your hand from playing tennis or griping something too long. It looked really weird but I knew that it was working. I continued using the alum (15 minutes) and rinsing with Listerine (2 minutes) 3 or 4 times a day. I recommend doing this when you wake up, once or twice during the day, and definitely before going to bed. The extra dead white hard callus type skin breaks off eventually and you can help it with your tongue and teeth once you see that it is breaking away. Today is the 4th day of doing this and the mucocele has decreased dramatically. The callus is very small and looks like the alum is still working. I will continue using this method until hopefully everything is gone. "E34"

WELL I HAVENT TRYED THE TREATMENT YET BUT IT SOUNDS IT WRK IM GOING TO START TRYN IT TODAY MAYBE I CAN GET SUM RELEAF SOON.

i HAVE HAD THIS BUMP IN MOUTH FOR A 3 MONTHS NOW DO ANYONE ITS TO LATE FOR ME TO START TREATMENT R SHOULD I SEE AN ENT.. IF ANYONE OUT THERE THAT IS LOGGED ON PLEASE RESPOND..

Just wanna report that I had a mucocele that keeps popping up and bursting for a couple of months and after reading the recommended treatments here I seemed to have licked it.

Where I am the supermarket doesn't stock Alum, so I just used plain table salt that I got from McDs and just keep applying once in a while on the mucocele and rinsing after 15 mins or so. Initially I thought it wouldn't work as the mucocele seemed to get bigger but when the last time it punctured and the skin around the mucocele started turning white I knew I am on the way to recovery. The trick is the get that skin covering the mucocele to turn white so that it doesn't get reattached back over the mucocele and impede the natural healing of the salivary duct opening.

Bottom line: No need Alum, just use table salt! and loads of perseverance and provided the damage to the salivary duct is just minor at the surface it should heal WITHOUT the blardy expensive surgery!

The FDA and the AMA monopoly is in a tailspin due to their corruption of putting money before lives. They are in a tailspin due to the fact that the population is realizing that home remedies and natural remdeies ACTUALLY CURE diseases!!

The reason salt water works is because of osmotic pressure. The salt content in the water is much higher than the salt content (or tonicity) of the mucocele...and thus it draws the fluid out of the mucocele and shrinks it. This therapy is useful for pharyngitis (inflammation of the pharynx) for the same reasons.

Name: Sakib Hey everyone. Glad to see that people are sharing their mucocele experiences and conglomerating to encourage a future without mucoceles!!! About a month ago I bit inside of my lower lip not too harshly but about a day after a small bump formed, and on this day I bit the bump pretty damn harshly, so badly that it started bleeding a little. About a few days after I noticed it started to grow immensely. It was the size of a pea and I became annoyed. It interfered with talking, eating and it just didn't make me feel comfortable. So for about 3 weeks it kept fluctuating in size, but never really went away and I thought it would just normally go away... On the 3rd week I was eating dinner and bit the mucocele, and at this time the mucocele was pretty damn large, larger than its ever been I believed. So I bit it so far that it bled instantaneously and I had to wash it off vigorously, the bleeding lasted for literally an hour to an hour and a half or so. I used ice cubes to cool down the burning sensation, a chunk of the mucocele went down the drain. The next day my mucocele started turning white and by the end of that day it was completely white and decreased in size by quite a considerable amount. The next day it became really tiny and there was a tiny white pin-like shape popping out of the mucocele at the top. I thought it was going to go away for sure now. Keep in mind that I was using listerine twice a day but I was eating spicy, oily, solid food at time and I definitely think that was the prime reason for the mucocele to be fluctuating in size since it got irritated. Seemed like the salivary gland that was initally traumatized still wasn't fixed and I had no idea what other remedies to use. Well it didn't go away when it was tiny and then grew back within the next 2 days, cause I ate solid food carelessly. I visited the doctor and he made an appointment with a specialist, he said he has no idea when he is going to get back to me. The doctor did say to try rinsing the mouth with salt water to reduce the size of it, I have been trying that recently and it isn't working so nicely thus far. So this is my plan, I will use this alum + listerine twice a day for the next 3 days (well need to use it once today cause I need to purchase the spice after work). This is because I'm working very long hours plus I have a ridiculous amount of commuting to do, so once in the morning and once at night. On Friday I'll use the alum + listerine for 3 times, once in the morning, once in the evening after work and once at late night. I don't think it's really safe to use hydrogen peroxide or rubbing alcohol and poke the mucocele hoping to deplete the fluid, cause I'm afraid that I might get other infections or get more mucocele's. If this alum + listerine doesn't work, I'm going to get it surgically removed by visiting an entomologist, my father does have coverage since he works for the city so I am very fortunate. I really hope this alum + listerine works, I will keep everyone updated and I will post back this Saturday the 18th of September, 2010. What I will specifically do is the following: - Grab half a cotton ball. - Dab the half cotton ball with a couple drops of water and moisten it. - Dab the half cotton ball in some granulated alum powder (hopefully I can find it in the wild supermarket today). - Put this alum pasted half cotton ball directly on my mucocele with my lower lips outward and try to have only the mucocele receive contact from the spice. - Leave it on for about 15 mins (probably while watching television or something). - Rinse mouth with water and then directly after use listerine (regular version, I have a tall bottle) once for 30 seconds, and another time for 30 seconds, and if I see the mucocele vanishing instantaneously I might even use listerine for the 3rd time but that's too much alcohol maybe. Once again, I'll keep everyone updated. Die mucocele die!

My name is Jem and this is my first comment here. I'm laughing about Sakib saying he is going to see an entomologist to get rid of the mucocele if the home remedy doesn't work; isn't an entomologist someone who studies insects?! Perhaps because the mucocele is BUGGING you? I just completed my first "treatment." Will keep you all posted. This is the best damn mucocele chat place on the world wide web!

Hello everyone, my name is Linda and my 1 1/2 year old daughter all of a sudden developed a small bump in her a mouth about a month ago. When I showed it to her pediatrician, he really didn't know what it was. After searching online, I found this site among many others and discovered she has a mucocele. I've read all the home rememdies, which sound great! However, I don't know how much luck I'll have trying them out with my daughter. Would surgery be the best option for my baby?? I need help please!!

Sup everyone, my name is hector and i think i might have this. Ever since i got braces and food has been getting stuck i would suck really hard to unlodge the stuck food. And ive noticed ive been developing a bump in the inside of my lower lip. Im probably going to try the sea salt and water rinse. But would baking soda in water work to? Thats what my mom said to do.

i just had my second mucocele surgery,,,,i tried all the remedies but nothing worked so i had the surgery...best idea ever didnt even hurt and i had one on the bottom of my tongue and now its not there...for all the people who are trying different things and its nto working...get surgery its worth it!