Tonsil Stones FAQ 2

Following the positive feedback received after publishing the previous FAQ section that was put together to provide quick fire answers to questions I’ve been sent I wanted to add part two (and part three will be coming soon) answering more of your questions, there are more detailed blog posts earlier in the blog but my current focus is on answering the 30ish question that keep appearing in my inbox:

How To Prevent Tonsil Stones Naturally

The key part of this question, as this entire blog is basically about treating/preventing/getting rid of tonsil stones is the word “naturally”. More and more people are looking for natural cures and treatments for any ailment that they suffer and there is an increasing distrust of traditional medicine. Fortunately almost everything discussed on this blog regarding tonsil stone remove is a natural treatment, by the very nature, the process of dislodging is completely natural and the “unnatural” options, which basically include anything you cannot do yourself at home are actually the extreme treatments in this case.

For more details on how to prevent tonsil stones naturally take a look anywhere on this blog, you will find natural treatments and cures on almost every page.

How Long Does It Take For Tonsil Stones To Form

As we have established elsewhere in the blog tonsil stones are a very under researched condition and because of this there is not always a credible medical source that I can point to when I make statements, however, I do have considerable experience and that is what we will fall back on here.

The speed tonsil stones form varies, however, I do know that the condition of your mouth as a breeding ground for bacteria can greatly impact the speed at which they can form. I’ve noticed that under extreme conditions tonsil stones can form overnight and in this short period they can actually form to a size much larger than I would normally experience. For me, extreme conditions would be on a bachelor weekend away where a poor diet is been consumed, Im going to bed drunk and perhaps not keeping up as strict a routine as I would at home.

To help understand how quickly a tonsil stone can form consider that they are forming all the time when they conditions are right, when you ask how long it takes for tonsil stones to form what you are actually wondering is how long it takes the tonsil stone to form to a size that you identify and recognise it.

Tonsil stones are likely forming in your mouth all the time, the inside of your mouth and especially your tonsils are the perfect breeding ground for bacteria, however, the stones will start off small and grow over time. Just because they start small and need time to grow does not mean someone with tiny almost unnoticeable stones does not have tonsil stones… So the answer to this question could actually be “a few seconds”.

What Do Tonsil Stones Feel Like

This question has a few answers, in the interests of trying to get back on track with the quick fire FAQ format I’ll answer by saying:

Small stones in your throat may feel like nothing, you might not even notice that they are there.

Larger stones may also feel like nothing but you may find you have associated problems like ear ache.

Large stone could feel like you have something stuck in your throat (these are usually the easiest to remove).

Once you remove a stone from your tonsils and it is in your mouth it feels a lot like a piece of rice.

Once you spit the tonsil stone out in your fingers it will feel like a soft sticky ball, you could crush it very easily and it will turn to what feels like damp powder, however, this will emit a smell like nothing you have ever smelt before.

Can Tonsil Stones Cause Ear Pain

Yes, to all degrees from a subtle bunged up feeling to actual serious pain depending on placement and size. I used to have a lot of ear pain as a child and while the focus was always on what was inside my ear (80s medicine) as I have got older and know my body more than I did as a child I am almost certain that my childhood suffering was down to tonsil stones.

Why Do I Keep Getting Tonsil Stones

Some people are just more susceptible to them than others, the general opinion is that people with more cracks, dips and wrinkles in their tonsils are the most susceptible to tonsil stones and people who have fairly smooth tonsils are almost completely immune.

The reason you likely keep getting tonsil stones is that:

• You unfortunately are naturally susceptible to them
• You are not doing all that you can to combat them naturally

If tonsil stones have been a reoccurring issue for you then I would advise you to invest in waterpik, you can pick up a manual syringe style one for under £10/$15. Using a waterpik to gently clean the tonsils a few times a week after an initial more intense cleaning period.

Can You Have Tonsil Stones Without Tonsils

Basically, yes. A purist would argue that they are not actually tonsil stones because they do not form in the tonsils but the exact same bacteria lives in your mouth and if left uncleaned the stones can form in your mouth not just your tonsils. It is highly unlikely that you will get tonsil stones if you have had your tonsils removed because, the tonsils provide the perfect breeding conditions for the stones. To get tonsil stones after having your tonsils removed you would have to have a remarkably disgusting level of oral hygiene.

How To Get Rid Of Tonsil Stones Home Remedies

Unlike most medical conditions where standard advice would be that you must consult your doctor tonsil stones are actually something that you are better treating at home 95% of the time. I use the term “at home” loosely as many of the treatments that you have at your disposal could be done anywhere. As people become more familiar with their tonsils, oral hygiene, the back of their mouths along with what seems to increase tonsil stones growth rate (dairy products/protein etc) you can actually become skilled at removing them anywhere with a flick of the tongue or by tensing your throat. I’ve removed and spat out stones as soon as I found them while driving/walking on many occasion.

Why Do Tonsil Stones Smell

The stench of tonsil stones is so bad that just having a small stone at the back of your mouth can seriously affect the way your breath smells. The one positive with the smell of tonsil stones is that the small is so distinctive that it becomes fairly easy for someone who knows the smell to identify what is causing it.

The reason that they smell the way they do is because of how they are made and what they are made up of.

Tonsil stones are ball of bacteria that ferment in the tonsils, all the germs, dirt, bacteria and other unholy contents of your mouth and throat work in harmony to ferment into these stinking stones, need I say more?!

Tonsil Stones FAQ

I find that I keep getting the same questions via the contact form, all worded differently or sometimes similar question which would really be explained by the same answer.

Lots of the questions are really just quick fire questions which I could answer in a moment but it is not really worth writing a long details post on, or I don’t currently have time to go into more detail.

For this reason I have put together this FAQ covering the most asked questions and, in the future, I will expand with an FAQ part 2 and 3 providing answers to some of the questions which I have not had time to answer this time around.

These answers are short and to the point, the purpose of this page is getting quick answers on the site to simple questions which people are seeking my insight on.

How To Get Food Out Of Your Tonsils

It is very unlikely that you will have food stuck in your tonsils, it may feel as though there is food trapped there but it is much more likely that you have tonsil stones. There is a load of advice on this blog explaining how to get rid of them, if you are sure that there is food trapped in your tonsils it will likely dislodge itself within an hour or two but you could accelerate this process by gargling and increasing the amount of water you take in.

What To Do If You Have Tonsil Stones

The simple answer to this question is to remove them yourself, unless you have a complete infestation you should be able to treat them yourself at home and even in extreme cases you should still be able to cope on your own.

The only time you really would need professional or medical level assistance would be if they keep coming back extremely quickly to a chronic level or if they are causing you pain or breathing problems. If either of these things are true then its unlikely that you would have been reading up online for a solution anyhow and are most likely already undergoing some kind of medical treatment.

How Can You Tell If You Have Tonsil Stones

Its quite easy to tell if you have bad tonsil stones but it can be more difficult to establish if you have a tonsil stone or a very mild problem. Note that more difficult does not mean it is not possible just that you need to investigate a little deeper.

Here are a collection of tests you can try to identify tonsil stones, use them in combination to help self-diagnose:

Ear pain or a feeling that something is stuck in your throat

This in itself could be caused by one (or several) other issues, however, it can be tonsil stone related. If you are having ear or throat issues it is well worth carrying out some more checks to see if tonsil stones are the issues, because, if they are, it is such an easy thing to treat.

Taking a look in the mirror

A lot of the time the stones are visible but this is not always the case, looking in the mirror at the back of your throat is a sure fire way to identify tonsil stones, if you can see them at the back of your throat you have tonsil stones.

Poking with your tongue

If you are flexible enough to manoeuvre your tongue to the back of your throat and touch your tonsils you can often feel stones that you could not see or otherwise identify. A few years ago I could not touch my tonsils with my tongue but after a few weeks of trying it seemed as though my tongue found a new level of flexibility and it has been easy for me to run the tip of my tongue across my tonsils ever since.

This is actually my preferred method of diagnosis/checking for tonsil stones, it allows me to check in all of the places within my tonsils which I am not able to see. Also, as I became more familiar with my tonsils and where the stones formed I was able to check those locations quickly and catch small stones as they started to form.

The sniff test

This one is often overlooked but anyone who has ever extracted a tonsil stone themselves and crushed I between their fingers will know the smell that they produce. You can actually detect this smell if you are to press your tongue against your tonsil for a few seconds and then lick the tip of your finger. After a few seconds, if your finger carries the slight smell of tonsil stones it is likely that you have some stones in there that need to be cleaned out.

If your tonsils are perfectly clean, tonsil stones free and not infested with bacteria then there will be no unpleasant odour at all left on your finger.

The hygienist/dentist

Ultimately if you are not sure if you have tonsil stones or not it could be a good idea to get a second opinion from your hygienist/dentist, amazingly a lot of hygienist/dentist know very little about tonsil stones so you might want to have a conversion with them first to decide if they know enough to help you with the problem. In my experience people who have read a little online often know a lot more than a trained hygienist/dentist when it comes to tonsil stones/diagnosis of hygienist/dentist or treating/removing them.

How To Stop Getting Tonsil Stones

The unfortunate answer to the question of how to stop getting tonsil stones is that you probably cannot. Some people will never get tonsil stones and others are susceptible to them for life because of the shape of their tonsils. The one caveated here is that you could prevent them by having your tonsils removed of another similar medical procedure known as a Cryptolysis but these are quite extreme measures and not rarely recommended by medical practitioners.

Rather than asking the question of what you can do to completely stop tonsil stones you would be better focusing on keeping them under control and managing them. You can likely almost stop them but people susceptible to them will never be 100% resilient without some kind of surgical procedure.

There is a section of this blog discussing treatments and preventative measures but in summary the best thing you could do to reduce the likelihood of getting tonsil stones would be to wash your tonsils a few times a week with a waterpik after an initial thorough clean.

Less Discussed Cures For Tonsil Stones

This blog contains a lot of information on treating bad breath and tonsil stones, however, much of the tonsil stone discussion is around my experience of the problem and my experience with the various treatments. It is worth mentioning at this point that one cure might work for one person but not for another and it is for that reason I decided to list the below less discussed treatments which I have discovered but they do not seem to have received the coverage online that the more conventional treatments have received:

Nasal Drops

The letters ENT are associated with one another in the medical profession such is the association between conditions effecting one area creating symptoms in another, we even have Ear Nose and Throat Specialists.

Having established that no one knows for sure what causes tonsil stones but that we are certain that they are mainly made up of bacteria, in my experience, an effective preventative measure for tonsil stones is the elimination of bacteria in the mouth. Given the close link between ears, nose and throat it seems to naturally make sense to also eliminate as much bacteria from the nasal passages as possible and there are nasal drops available that will take care of this for you.

Check out amazon where you can pick up some drops if you are interested.

Throat lozenges

Another slightly less known option for tackling tonsil stones is the trusty throat lozenge. It is possible to buy anti-bacterial throat lozenges, which, if you allow to dissolve as far back as comfortable in your mouth actually leave an anti-bacterial coating in your throat. As with the nasal drops the lozenges are really more of a preventative treatment than a cure but, if you are a chronic sufferer then they might well act as the final nail in the coffin of the tonsil stones, and they actually taste good too.

Push Or Pull Your Tonsil Stones

So this title is a little bit of a play on words really, let me warn you that there is very little information on removing tonsil stones in this post it is more to do with the selection of products that are currently available and how they are promoted.

Tonsil stones are a global issue and statistics show that around 25% of randomly sampled population had tonsil stones, in many cases the people who had them were totally unaware of them as they were identified using xrays.

Just because someone does not know they have tonsil stones does not mean that the stones are not doing any damage/causing bad breath/impacting your life, you are better off without them!

25% of people is a lot of suffers, when you think of what is basically a cosmetic medical market (think hair loss/cellulite etc) there are a huge number of products that spring to mind but nothing comes to mind for tonsil stones and this is mainly because the condition is still one that is not widely discussed.

There is a gap in the market for an informational solution lead campaign

There is a serious gap in the market here which could be seriously exploited, the companies with a natural assumed advantage here, the big oral hygiene players are missing a trick.

Push Vs Pull

All the people doing marketing theory at the moment will have heard of push vs pull and how pull marketing is the future. Rather than having stuff shoved down our throats 247 by media outlets (think TV advertising or radio) we are told that the truly interested people are the ones who search out the information for themselves (pull the information to themselves rather than have it pushed to them).

This is true to an extent

If everyone who knew they had tonsil stones knew that they had this problem and also knew what the problem was in addition to its name then pull marketing would be the most effective approach for the sale of tonsil stone products, however, it has been proven many people with tonsil stones don’t know they have them. Of the portion of people who do have tonsil stones many ignore them (who would not ignore them if they knew what they were and the impact that they were having on their bodies) and of the ones who do try to take action may cannot find the information that the need to treat the problem.

The Corsodyl Example!

Corsodyl monthwash has been around for a very long time but it was never a market leader, even though it had been around for longer then Listerine it had never the market share owned by Listerine, however, recently things started to change.

Most people were aware of Corsodyl (market awareness/top of mind as the theorist like to call it) but they were chosing to buy Listerine, however, Corsodyl did have one advantage and that was that it is specifically designed to be used by people with bleeding gums….. but people did not know that.

Following the TV campaign shown above sales of Corsodyl increased and they also captured some sales from Listerine, the marketing hook was clever as the campaign had a two part effective message:

• Get the attention of people whos gums bleed
• Inform them that there is a product exists to address bleeding gums

This same logic could be used to sell products that exist to combat tonsil stones but it would need to go a little further. Think of the above 2 steps as doing the following:

• Get the persons attention
• Tell them about the product

The tonsil stone advertisement would need to have a little more focus on step 1 and include an educational element, the approach should be:

• Get the attention of people who have tonsil stones but without using the words “tonsil stones” at this stage
• Highlight some of the negative effects of tonsils stones
• Introduce the product that could be used to remote/treat/prevent tonsil stones

There is really a gap in the market here and the first company who steps into that gap could well own it for a very long time. It has been established that a huge number (up to 25%) of the world population has tonsil stones, I am amazed that no one has stepped up yet but it will happen!

Special Toothbrushes

So, I can honestly say I never thought I would find myself writing this blog post and if you had told me even a few months ago I would be an “oral hygiene blogger” then I would probably have laughed at you, however, after my opening posts about tonsil stones I have actually had a few questions coming in about:

• The best ways to remove them,
• Oral hygiene in general,
• Bad breath,
• And specialist toothbrushes!

At this stage for anyone who has not read my earlier posts I would like to stress that, although I do have a little experience training as an oral hygienist, I am not qualified to give you medical advice and you need to do your own research on what is right for you. I am, however, willing to share what works for me and that is what I do here.

Onto the business of specialist brushes

The reason that this post came about was I received a message via the blog asking me which brush might be the best to poke out tonsil stones as in one post I did explain how you could customise a brush to make your own tonsil stone poke, however, I did also say it probably want the most comfortable or effective way of removing a stone.
"Specialist brushes" might sound like something that would be exclusive to dentists or other people who work in the oral hygiene world, however, they are pretty common and manufactured but the usual suspects such as Wisdom, Reach, Colgate etc.
Probably the most well-known specialist brush is the Interdental brush and the most well-known manufacturer of that brush is TePe.
I was first introduced to these brushes as a child when they were given to me after having braces fitted, they were the perfect brush for getting between the permanently attached brace, at that time I used to just pick up any packet off the shelf and buy it, I never realised that they colours of the brushes related to different thicknesses:

In later life I have realised that these brushes are actually really good for cleaning between the teeth as it actually now their marketed use. Tonsil stones don’t form between the teeth but we have established that generally controlling the level of bacteria in the mouth is a good thing for keeping tonsil stones under control so they are a sensible weapon in your arsenal.

Which specialist brush is best for cleaning tonsil stones

So onto the likely reason why you are reading this article, which brush is the best for cleaning tonsils? Interestingly or perhaps amazingly there is not yet such a thing. No brush manufacturer that I know of has developed a brush specifically for cleaning out tonsil stones and there isn’t really a brush that is well designed to pop out the stones off the shelf, for now my best advice is to stick with a waterpik.

Mouthwash For Tonsil Stones

Following my earlier post where I talked about using a mouthwash to remove tonsil stones, where I stated that mouthwashes could be effective for dislodging tonsil stones but that I personally did not find it that effective when compared to the other options I was asked if I had tried mouthwashes specifically aimed at the removal of tonsil stones.

I wanted to add clarity to my earlier post, I did try the tonsil stone specific mouthwash alongside Listerine (the burn was too much) and Plax, my preferred mouthwash was Plax because of the flavour but there was nothing in it in terms of the effectiveness of the solutions. I am sure if you were to ask someone who worked in the development of the mouthwashes or someone who had analysed the chemical content in detail they would insist that the products would be very different and they would probably even be able to prove this scientifically, however, in simple terms to us, the end user, I don’t think there is a noticeable difference.

If you buy a top brand of paint like Dulux or Valspar there is very little difference in quality when you are applying the paint to the wall, the chemical make up of the paint it likely very different and they both have “superior formulas” depending on which marketing team you talk to, however, really, you wont notice a difference in the paint you apply to your wall unless you are comparing it to something like Johnstones of a much lower quality, enough about paint!

The main mouthwash brand that pushes itself as a tonsil stone removal specialist is called Therabreath, I have nothing against Therabreath and if you do want to get a complete “tonsil stone removal kit” they are the company to supply it, however, you are paying a huge markup on some fairly standard products that are all packaged together under their brand.

A Therabreath tonsil stone remove kit will set you back around $100 and contain everything from mouthwash to lozenges, they also will help you attack the stones from another angle I have not covered on this blog yet, via nasal drops. You could likely buy all of these products individually at a fraction of the cost but sometimes speed of purchase and convenience trumps bargain hunting!

Are Tonsil Stones Contagious

If you have been following this blog and read my last few posts you will know I have suffered with tonsil stones for a long time, however, it wasn’t until the Internet grew in popularity that I realised what these stones were and was able to openly but anonymously discuss the problem with other suffers. Once I was able to do my own research online I established an effective treatment regime that worked for me and eliminated my tonsil stones but also all of the other associated problems that came with them such as ear pain, a sore throat and bad breath.

Given that I did not want to talk about tonsil stones with any “real people”, think embarrassing bodies, and it was exclusively something I research and discussed online there was one lingering concern that I had which I had not seen discussed anywhere and I could not really bring up with any "real" offline people.

Were My Tonsil Stones Contagious?

The last thing I wanted to do was to pass this problem onto someone else. I was seriously worried that my tonsil stones might be something that could be passed to someone else but it seemed like a topic which was not really discussed openly, even online. Everything that follows, as with everything else on this blog is quite unscientific but based on my experiences and opinions as a long term sufferer who has tried everything – there is no such thing as a professionally recognised tonsil stone expert but I would dare say that I know at least as much about this topic as anyone else out there!

Tonsil stones are not contagious in the simple sense of the word, I supposed if you were extremely unlucky they could be passed from one persons mouth to another, however, even if that would not mean that the unfortunate recipient would then be infected with tonsil stones and their production.

It is true that some people will never suffer with tonsil stones, this is due to the shape of the individuals tonsils and the small cracks and cavities within the tonsil, a fortunate few have very smooth tonsils and this in itself is enough to prevent the stones from forming, in fact, one surgical treatment for tonsil stones is a cryptolysis and the result of that treatment is that you end up with smooth tonsils. These people with smooth tonsils will never have an issue with tonsil stones and cannot become "infected". What can happen with regards to “passing on” tonsil stones if you live with someone is they can pick up your habits. While no one thing would likely pass tonsil stones from person A to person B if person A ate a particular diet and for example, person B also ate that diet and the diet was contributing to the growth of bacteria then, if person B was susceptible to tonsil stones they would be at increased risk.

In summary while tonsil stones are not contagious and cannot be passed from person to person the habits that contribute to one person having tonsil stones could be adapted by another if they, for example, move in with one another.