How Long Does It Take For Your Tongue To Heal? – (How To Treat It?)

Everyone that we know has bitten their tongue at least once in the past, especially if we were kids. When you eat something and then try to speak, your tongue moves in many different directions inside your mouth, which makes it easy for your teeth to bite your tongue. The pain is almost unbearable, and you even can’t tell or shout how painful it was. After a few minutes or even hours, you can feel that pain on your tongue and that’s why you’re here to learn how long it takes for your tongue to heal.

Unfortunately, it depends on the bite itself, which teeth have been used to hurt yourself. In most cases noted in medicine statistics on average, it will take

2 to 4 days to fully heal but can speed up that process in many ways.

If you feel like that bite was unusually painful you should appoint a medical consult.

First aid for bit tongue

If you just bit your tongue a second ago, or anyone near you did it, then follow these instructions to help them immediately:

1. Washing the hands carefully with soap and warm water.
2. Rinsing out the mouth with fresh water to get rid of any leftovers.
3. Applying a gauze pad or clean cloth to the wound.
4. Applying consistent and firm pressure to stop the bleeding while bending the head forward to avoid swallowing blood from the wound.
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After that, you can apply a cold pack to reduce swelling and make it less painful or put inside your mouth an ice cube. If the pain is unbearable take a pain pill, it

will counter the onset of pain, which is likely to occur shortly after injury. Rinse your mouth after some time again. Over the next few hours or even days, it is important to monitor the wound for any signs of infection, fever, or swelling.

How bad was that bite?

If the bite was made with Canine (the sharpest teeth), then that wound can be really deep, as our sharpest teeth can lead to many issues with your tongue. When the wound is deep it can be the cause of infection, because it will take longer to seal the wound. You should avoid eating during that time, but you can rinse out your mouth with water.

If you can feel the blood in your mouth a couple of hours later, then you know it’s serious. Avoid sticking out your tongue to prevent any infections, just sit still and don’t talk too much.

You should contact immediately a medical clinic if your tongue:

• Appears swollen or red
• Is accompanied by a fever
• Bleeds extremely
• Is visibly deformed
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• Bleeds for a second time after the previous bleeding has stopped
• Has red pus or streaks
• Is it big pain

Don’t worry if you have any of the above (you should consult your doctor) but your doctor might decide you need:

• Antibiotics to prevent or treat an infection.
• Stitches to close wounds.
• Reattachment to connect part of the tongue that was bitten of, as the worst case, but is very uncommon.

How to speed up your tongue healing process?

If you still ask how long does it take for your tongue to heal? Then, you must know that it depends on how much time you can spend to make it heal faster. Here are some ways to speed up your tongue healing process:

• Apply aloe vera gel – You can purchase aloe vera gel at any drug store, or a mall. If you have an aloe vera as a plant in your house then can cut its leaf and squeeze out some of the jellies from it. Apply these jellies to your wound a maximum of 3 times a day. For best results, apply after rinsing out your mouth as well as before you go to sleep at night. An alternative can be aloe vera as a juice, you can purchase it in almost every store, then drink 3 times a day in a total of one liter daily.
• Apply a mouth gel – Purchase a numbing and antiseptic gel from your local drug store. It comes in a small tube for easy application. Rinse your mouth then put some of that gel onto a clean cotton swab and apply to the wound area. Repeat this application 2 to 4 times a day.
• Eating honey – Lick the spoon with honey on it or just put it onto the wound area. Repeat this process three times a day. The honey will spread inside your mouth to prevent infection and the accumulation of dangerous bacteria.
• Oral adhesive paste – This works similarly to the mouth gels. Take a bead of the paste, put it on a swab, and apply it to the wound site. Repeat this method up to 4 times a day until healed. You can also apply the paste directly with your finger.
• Lick cold compress or ice cubes – It will lower the pain and swelling of your tongue, you can also drink cold liquids.

Those methods above will make your tongue heal faster, but remember that your tongue needs to rest so avoid long conversations, or sucking candies. Taking a nap is good for that because while you sleep your tongue is resting inside your mouth, which will speed up the healing process.

What exactly is the tongue?

The tongue is a muscle in our mouth, that helps us to manipulate food for swallowing, also it is the main organ that has receptors to feel the taste. The upper side of the tongue is covered by taste buds and is richly supplied with blood vessels and nerves.

It has a side, hidden purpose to clean our teeth, a major function of the tongue is enabling speech, without it we couldn’t pronounce properly any word. So yea it’s really important for us to keep it in top shape. All of us have bitten our tongues many times, it’s a common injury and almost unavoidable, but you can try to prevent it with less talk while eating. There are situations that you can’t prevent it like while doing sports like jogging, or while you sleep, even the stress can be the reason why people bite their tongues.

In summary, how long does it take for your tongue to heal?

If you do nothing that process will take about 2 to 4 days, but if you try to speed up this process with the methods that we’ve described above then you can shorten that time even to 24 hours. Call your doctor if you don’t see any improvement in the next 4 days, even if the wound is small. Our knowledge was based on PubMed studies.