Problems in the Mouth

Taste loss

1 Boil 1 tsp mint leaves in 1 cup water, take off and add ½ tsp powder cardamom
Mix and drink

2 Mix cinnamon powder with honey; rub on tongue; allow to remain for sometime

3 Steep 1 tbsp pudina leaves in 1 cup water for 30 mts. Drink the infusion

Mouth ulcers

1 Make milk out of ripe coconut
Gargle or apply at the affected part
Or mix with honey and massage

2 Boil 1 tsp coriander seeds in 1 cup water
Gargle with this warm decoction frequently

3 Boil fenugreek leaves with ½ cup moong dal and 10 small onions
Eat regularly

4 You can gargle with fenugreek boiled water 5 times daily

5 Chew few leaves of tulsi

6 Chew coconut

7 Take amrood leaves, chew and spit

8 Steam half cup of manathakkali leaves, add equal quantity of freshly shredded coconut and take with meals every day for few days

9 Mix the milk of banyan tree with honey and apply on the ulcers

10 Chew few leaflets of jasmine for 10 minutes and rinse out the mouth in luke warm water. Repeat frequently

11 Wash the mouth frequently with the decoction of rose petals

Speech defects

Take 2 to 3 pinches of the root powder of vasambu with honey every morning on an empty stomach

Stammering

Stammering is not a disease but a habit formed in the child in his early years of speaking. Some parents are very strict with their children and this causes an anxiety in the child whose speech pattern gets affected. It only communicates that the child is internally tense and that tension has taken away the fluency in speaking.

. Parents can cure this problem in their children only by giving back the love and affection that our children best deserve. Parents might ask as to what to do if the child needs to be punished on certain occasions. Someone said that

“Children deserve love when they don’t deserve it”.

Following are some of the measures that parents can take

ü Be calm and confident that things will get well
ü Pour and shower love on the child
ü Never mimic and never make your child conscious of his problem
ü Enjoy being with your child
ü Be always gentle and tender and never force anything on the child
ü Remove the feeling of fear and insecurity in the child
ü Get acquainted with his teachers and solicit their support in boosting his self esteem
ü Let the child know that his parents love him
ü Make your guests know the child’s problems so that they do not make any negative remarks
ü Motivate and invite the child’s friends home for interaction with your child
ü Identify letters that generate trouble
ü Give that letter practice
ü Be aware the child has his inner strength. Only he feels shy
ü Have and give confidence that it would go away
ü Try the home medicine given for speech defects, as above
ü Also try the following exercises

The Exercises

Exercise 1

· Some people do find it difficult to talk without stammering. Their stammering is more caused by their self consciousness than due to any physical deformity.

· The cure for them lies in talking. Just talking. Continue talking. If they stop being self conscious and start talking, their power to talk well will return to them.

· They should start by doing what they can do easily. Then they should slowly build upon what they talk.

· Let them first start with talking to themselves silently.
· Let them take a good time on this ‘self talking’
· I am sure they would ‘self talk’ without any kind of stammer

· Then they should choose some time and place where no one is around
· During that time, they should whisper to the wall
· They should make whisper conversation with the wall

· Slowly they should increase the sound of this whisper talking
· They should make it louder and louder over a period of talking
· Till they come to the natural volume

· Once they have mastered talking to the wall without stammering
· They should start talking to the mirror

· These exercises are bound to increase not only their ability, but also their self confidence. And once self confidence is built up, there would be no turning back.

Exercise 2

· There is a second method also to cure stammering
· This is through an exercise called ‘Negative Practice’

· The stammerer should pick up a small passage of say 25 words
· After memorizing this passage, he should repeat this passage
· But the condition is he should stammer each and every word
· He should deliberately and consciously stammer each and every word
· It should look like actually practicing stammering
· He should force himself to stammer each and every word in that

· The stammerer would feel through this passage that he is stammering unnecessarily and that he can talk through the passage fluently
· This is the mindset, this exercise is supposed to build up

· Once this mindset gets developed, the stammerer would feel confident of himself and would not stammer

· From then on, it is simply a matter of learning the proper use of the voice in speaking and in overcoming self consciousness in talking to others.

Arthritis in the jaws

Before reading this, please go through the chapter on Muscles and Bones where the disease ‘arthritis’ is well dealt with.

Arthritis can also affect the joint at our jaw and it is called Temporomandibular disorder. It is an inflammation or misalighment of the joint that connects the jaw to the head. The symptoms may include muscle pain, clicking, noise in the jaw etc. First have it checked up by your dentist to rule out the possibility of dentures getting worn out. Once it is confirmed it is only mandibular arthritis, take the following actions:

1 Do not open your jaws wide
2 Avoid hard items like nuts for eating
3 Wrap some ice in a towel and hold it against your jaw for 20 minutes
4 Try doing this again and again with good intervals
5 If by two days, you don’t get relief, try a heat pad instead of cold pack
6 Consume vitamin C in the form of fruits and vegetables