Your lips help you communicate and share your important ideas with the world. If you have white spots on lips, you might feel bad when talking to others. There may be many reasons for these white bumps on lips. Also, this can be a vital sign of oral cancer. When they appear on your lips, make sure you do a thorough check-up by your physician.
Many reasons can cause white bumps on your lips. But we are discussing only that are the most common ones
Fordyce Spot: these are small 1-2mm white bumps inside your lips that are visible sebaceous – oil making glands. As you grow older, these oil-producing glands get bigger. On average there can be 100 white bumps on the lips, the inner side of the lips.
Milia: Milia is the entrapped dead cells in the skin. These appeared like white spots on lips and common in babies. They can also appear on the face and lips as well.
Oral Thrush: if you ever had a fungal infection on the lips, you might have seen white spots there. This fungal infection can cause a white lesion on lips, gums, or tonsils. The most common fungus that causes oral thrush is Candida Albicans.
Herpes Simplex: if you have experienced white bumps or canker on the lips, it may be because of Oral Herpes. They appear as tiny sores and then blister and finally become fluid-filled spots on the lips.
Look for Medical Treatment
There is no need for medical assistance in most of the cases. But, if you have the following symptoms along with white spots on lips, you should seek medical help ASAP:
- If these bumps start hurting
- You experience bump bleeding
- Start feeling like something is stuck in your throat
- Neck swelling followed by jaw swelling
- Tongue numbness
- You feel pain when chewing something or try to swallow food
- You feel a fever and sore throat after appearing white spots on lips.
Diagnose & Treatment Guide
If you are experiencing one of the symptoms listed above, you should seek medical help. Your doctor might ask you for your medical history. He might conduct a detailed examination to analyze your white spots on the lips. He might check your throat, jaws, and face for any kind of pain and swelling. He will also look for lymph-node swelling.
Your doctor might ask you for tongue culture. This is done by swabbing your lips. After that, the laboratory specialist will check if any fungus, bacteria, or virus there that may be causing the white bumps. If your physician suspects of oral cancer, he might take a tissue sample for cancerous cells.
In most of these kinds of cases, the doctor diagnoses white spots on lips by visual examination. You might need to have a blood test to see whether the herpes virus is present.
White spots Treatment Options
First, you have to have a detailed checkup report to know the causes of the white bumps on lips. As, in most of cases, you don’t need any treatment to follow – like Fordyce spots don’t require any procedure to follow, they normalize itself over time. However, if you don’t like the appearance of these Fordyce white spots, you can get it removed. Your expert surgeon will do electrosurgery or laser treatment to remove them.
If the white spots on lips are caused by thrush, it can be treated with anti-fungal medicines. This medication can be a liquid solution that can be swallowed also. If you have oral herpes symptoms, you might need some anti-viral medications that can temporarily treat these white spot symptoms.
If you are diagnosed with oral cancer, then your doctor will decide the treatment to follow according to the condition’s severity. Its treatment might include removal of the defective lesion, chemotherapy, or radiation treatment to stop cancer from growing.
Care from Your side
You should avoid picking at them regardless of the white bump’s cause. If you do this, it might spread the infection. With your physician's permission, you can have ointment to treat symptoms of your white spots on lips. If you feel irritation you can apply the ointment with saltwater. Mix half a teaspoon of salt with warm water – one cup – do the swish in mouth and then spit out.
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