Ice Ice Baby: Preventing a sore mouth and changes to your taste.
Unfortunately changes in your sense of taste are all too common with chemotherapy. This can range from a complete loss of taste, to things tasting saltier, to what once tasted sweet now tasting bitter.
The other symptom that often goes with changes in taste is a sore mouth, otherwise known as mucositis. This can lead to sore gums, mouth ulcers, a swollen tongue - it ain’t pretty and it’s even more painful.
Around 75% of people having chemotherapy will experience some form of this.
I read that sucking on ice (oral cyotherapy) whilst having chemo can help reduce BOTH of these side effects - winner winner chicken dinner.
It’s thought to work in the same way to the cold cap (if you’ve not read about hair loss yet - check out that other post here) in that if you suck on ice during chemotherapy it reduces the blood flow to your tongue/mouth and so reduces the amount of chemo reaching the cells there and so reduces the risk of side effects/damage to those cells.
I had my first round of chemo without sucking on ice and I noticed that my mouth felt dry and sore. Do you know that feeling when you’re getting a cold and you have a slightly sore tongue/mouth and no matter how much you drink you can’t quench your thirst? Well, that feeling.
So I started taking ice to my chemo sessions, I would fill up my big chilly’s water bottle (other water bottles are available) with small ice cubes/crushed ice. I would start sucking on the bits of ice about 10 minutes before the first chemotherapy drug would start going in and continue sucking on ice during the treatment and for about 20 minutes after.
I got bored of ice/I have sensitive teeth so found this quite hard to do. My wonderful friend suggested ice lollies - and bought me some delicious goodies from ice kitchen. These not only worked but are super tasty.
The issue I had was the melt! I’m a slow ice lolly eater and so there was a mess all over the show. I bought some reusable silicone ice moulds and made my own ice lollies (think calippo style) - but unfortunately the moulds smell/taste a bit like plastic and after a while were making me feel a bit sick during chemo which is far from ideal! (The moulds have been rehomed with other people who wanted them). I then tried smooze ice lollies which are like the old school sun lollies in a little pyramid cardboard house. These are equally delish and less mess for me - just remember to take some scissors to get into them!
I bought a small freezable lunch bag from BUILT, would pop the whole thing in the freezer the night before chemo. I would take 5 ice lollies with me if I was having one bag of chemo (about 90mins) or 10 lollies if I was having two bags (around 2 hrs). Even if my chemo was delayed - which it often was, the ice lollies would stay frozen.
At the beginning of chemo, when I didn’t use ice, wine tasted a bit funny to me (no great loss during chemo) but I have had no other taste changes and since sucking on the ice and lollies - wine tastes good and my mouth hasn’t been sore again!
Some people have a 24-48hr infusion of chemotherapy, so sucking ice during the entire time may be pretty difficult. I would suggest trying to have only cold water, fast if possible but if not possible to try and have only cold food, avoiding anything spicy or strongly flavoured and trying to eat things that don’t require much chewing/mouth movement to minimise the blood supply to the mouth and the possibility of trauma from biting your tongue/cheek etc.
Here are some really useful websites…
NHS
Info on mucositis and how to manage it.
Cancer Research UK
Info on mucositis and a dry mouth and how to manage it.
Macmillan
Info on mucositis and a dry mouth and how to manage it.
Study Evidence
Study showing some stats about sucking on ice.