Canker Sores BEGONE!

Canker sores have a wide array of contributors which are often mistaken for causes. But eating lemons is not a surefire path to a canker sore. As we will explore, canker sores are increasingly understood as a T-cell-mediated inflammatory response in the oral mucosa, meaning that your immune system is overreacting to normal stimuli. This shows up strongly in behçet’s disease, celiac disease, and inflammatory bowel disease – but of course, you do not need to have one of these to get a canker sore!

Research also shows links between canker sores and oral streptococcus sanguinis overgrowth, reduced microbial diversity, and fungal involvement – especially in stubborn cases. In most cases, however, improving lymphatic drainage, addressing pH imbalance, and addressing nutritional deficiencies will cause canker sores to rapidly heal. Let us now explore all of this together.

What is a canker sore?

A canker sore is a small ulcer in your mouth. An “ulcer” just being a fancy term for a breakage of your skin. Sores inside your mouth feel different than sores outside your mouth – and you can’t use a bandage to protect them. Canker sores (or “aphthous ulcers”) can also be thought of as “shallow lesions” that develop on the inside of your cheeks, tongues and/or on your gums. Unlike cold sores, canker sores don’t occur on the surface of your lips and they aren’t contagious.

What causes canker sores?

Not everyone gets canker sores from drinking orange juice – because acidic foods are not the root cause. Historically, most research around canker sores focused on creating topical treatments and drugs to cure them – not on what causes them. Now, however, we have some more information on the cascade of events which leads to these painful, pesky oral sores. It is important to note that something can contribute to a canker sore forming without causing irritation at the time.

Canker Sore Causes:

• Immune activation (from gluten, dairy, cacao, benzoates, nuts, and/or sulfites).
• Injury within the mouth, such as biting one’s cheek or tongue (although this will often heal very quickly unless one or more of the other items on this list are at play!).
• Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, a common toothpaste ingredient, has been shown in studies to thin the mucosal barrier and increase ulcer frequency and severity. 
• L-lysine deficiency.
• L-glutamine deficiency. 
• Vitamin deficiencies, particularly B₁₂ (cobalamin) and B₉ (folate/folic acid), and zinc.
• Sensitivity or allergy to cinnamaldehyde which is found in cinnamon and cinnamon essential oil. 
• Emotional trauma related to verbalizing, speaking, being creative, or being authentic.

Canker Sores Irritators:

• Excessive consumption of acidic or spicy foods such as vinegar, hot peppers, ascorbic acid (synthetic vitamin C), and citrus.
• Excessive consumption of foods with enzymes that break down the lining of the mouth, namely kiwis and pineapples.
• Consumption of refined sugars, particularly in large quantities or when combined with acidic foods.
• Overload of stagnant lymph fluid stored in your cheeks and gums – often caused by toxic diet combined with a sedentary lifestyle.
• Dehydration from any combination of breathing dry air, not drinking enough water, and/or eating dehydrating foods such as nuts, cheese, certain fried foods (French fries, etc), meats, and excessively salty food (especially pure sodium-chloride).
• Stress and the hormonal imbalances that accompany stress.
• Low progesterone and high prostaglandins – as is often the case right before menstruation. 
• Oral pH imbalance caused through diet or stress.
• Autoimmune disorders.

Canker sores generally don’t require treatment – they’ll heal on their own . . . eventually. Meanwhile, they’re painful. But more than that, they indicate something isn’t right. If your body is mysteriously breaking out in open lesions, something is out of balance! 

While you have a canker sore you want to abstain from exacerbating foods such as oranges to some extent, and certainly from pineapples, but know that these are likely not the root cause unless they are specifically an inflammatory trigger for you. If you have mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), then certain foods high in histamine can trigger a wide variety of inflammatory symptoms – including canker sores.  

Preventing Canker sores

If you are reading this page, you are probably unsure why you get canker sores. Any symptom (from running nose to aching feet) can come from myriad sources, and canker sores are no exception. For this reason, you will likely want to employ many of the strategies on this page. Some of them may only work when synergistically combined with others.

Furthermore, emotional patterns create physical patterns. As most recently summarized in the masterpiece book, The Myth of Normal, our physical diseases manifest from our unresolved negative experiences. While this idea still feels radical to many people today, it is increasingly scientifically verified. However, this does not mean that going to talk therapy is going to heal your canker sores. What it does mean is that addressing a symptom in one way often leads to another symptom arising in a similar way, or even the same symptom returning even though you continue to use solutions which did work for years. 

With my clients, I have found that approaching a symptom from multiple angles actually begins to address unmet emotional needs. We can speculate as to why this is, but one simple explanation is that using a wide array of healing, nourishing modalities in your life is self-loving.

If you would like to be more proactive about healing emotionally and connecting with your subconscious, consider looking into the wide array of consciousness alchemy practices. 

Hydration 

Stay hydrated! And not just in your mouth. Signs of dehydration include: dry skin, constipation, canker sores (heh), fatigue, irritated eyes, bleeding sinuses, and headaches.

Drink at least a quart of water every twelve hours. Tea and coffee are not hydrating. Be sure you are actually drinking water.

If your lips, mouth, hands, or eyes are getting dry overnight, use a humidifier.

Address Constipation 

If you struggle with recurring constipation, I urge to you find solutions that work and incorporate them into your daily lifestyle. If you don’t poop on a single day, that’s constipation. A tremendous amount of conditions go back to bowel dysfunction – because if you are unable to eliminate toxins and absorb nutrients effectively, there will be spillover affects in every organ of your body.

Chronic constipation is more common than you likely realize. Daily poops are not actually proof that you are not constipated, as material can still be stuck in your colon and upper intestines whilst still allowing some material to pass through. Furthermore, diarrhea can be thought of as a subset of constipation, as this also generally involves some material being stuck while a watery slurry passes on through. This is common with small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO), and hypermobility disorders such as Ehler's Danlos (EDS), and hypermobility spectrum disorder (HSD) – the latter of which being a condition which has caused me constipation struggles since birth.

Improving colon transit is very individual. I have devised numerous different protocols over the years for a wide variety of clients. In some cases, increasing soluble fiber is enough: hydrated chia and flaxseeds. Lettuce and leafy greens in general tend to help as these are not only rich in fiber and water, but also alkaline minerals. Taking magnesium citrate daily can be used as a colon stimulant. For years, I took magnesium citrate in kombucha or sparkling water and called it my daily “mag-fizz”.

If increasing magnesium is insufficient and/or fiber is not practical due to your particular digestive complaints, there we turn to high vitamin-C foods like bell peppers, kiwis, or vitamin C supplementation (from whole foods). Fruit, in general, helps many people stay regular: blueberries, bananas, and apples. If these do not work or are not optimal for your body, then Ayruvedic herbs can be utilized. 

Remember that this is all very individual. In my case, bananas do help me poop, but they are a canker sore trigger for me (likely due to causing an immune response)! Depending on which flora are imbalanced in your gut, prebiotic foods may be triggers in general. Side effects from bananas may be bloating or skin irritation. Plantains can be a powerful motility regulator, but for some people, these prebiotic foods can lead to inflammatory joint pain. Prunes (dried plums) are a common remedy for constipation, but these are very sweet and they can cause gas. If a food is giving you gas which is painful, especially foul-smelling, and especially abundant, then that food is making things worse rather than better and should be either omitted or reduced.

In addition to food, it is also worth looking at the emotional causes perpetuating any health condition. You can learn more about the emotional causes of constipation in this article.

Maintaining Oral pH Balance 

Since a thorough solution means keeping the pH balance in your mouth at a healthy 7 to 7.2, you’ll want to pay special attention to keeping your stress levels down. It’s been scientifically proven that negative moods lower the pH of the saliva. If your saliva’s pH gets below 5.5 you begin to lose minerals from your teeth, and this has also been associated with the generation of canker sores.

You can compensate for this by rinsing your mouth with an easy solution of water and baking soda. Just drop a pinch of baking soda in quarter-pint of water and then swish the solution in your mouth. If you do this every time you feel stressed and after meals, you’ve solved the pH problem in your mouth. Unfortunately, this doesn’t compensate for all the other devastating impacts of eating a demineralizing and demoralizing diet. While a rinse with baking soda is a great measure against acute problems (like removing bile from your mouth after vomiting), it isn’t something you should have to rely on multiple times each day. Also, if acidic saliva or tooth decay is a concern for you, you may be interested in: Raederle’s Teeth Remineralizing Master Class. 

Maintain Levels of B₁₂

Take a sub-lingual B₁₂ once per week. (I used to be opposed to supplements, but I changed my mind over time. To understand why read this other article of mine.)

Consume L-Glutamine

Consume foods rich in l-glutamine at least once every other day, such as red cabbage, spirulina, asparagus, and parsley.

Consume L-Lysine 

Consume foods rich in l-lysine at least once every other day, such as spirulina, parsley, spinach, leeks, horseradish, onions, and radishes. I found that I was not able to get enough lysine through food alone and began supplementing with it daily in 2022. This has resulted in myriad benefits, including being able to eat cinnamon in moderation without a canker sore immediately forming.

If you want a whole food source, I recommend ordering organic spirulina tablets right away; these are a fantastic source of l-lysine and other amino acids which help you rapidly repair your skin – including internal skin on the inside of your mouth, your stomach lining, and your intestinal lining. When I was introduced to spirulina tablets it felt like a miracle. I had tried incorporating spirulina powder into my diet, but the strong flavor only paired well in limited contexts and thus, I didn’t consume it regularly. Having the tablets on hand made it easy to take them daily and to up my intake if a canker sore started to develop.

Prior to 2018 (when I was introduced to spirulina tablets), I had tried “everything.” I had tried increasing my vegetable intake. I tried taking out all the fruits that were “causing” me canker sores (oranges, tomatoes, kiwis, pineapples, raspberries, etc). I tried eliminating everything tart and sweet and yet I would still would get canker sores whenever I was even a little stressed or a little dehydrated. In other words, any time I traveled or had a busy day! Ugh.

In 2018 I learned that spirulina is a concentrated source of l-glutamine, the most critical amino acid for repairing ulcers in the mouth and stomach. Cabbage is also a high source which is one of the reasons that raw, fresh cabbage juice on an empty stomach is a long-standing cure for stomach ulcers. Spirulina, however, is also a good source of a wide variety of trace minerals and co-factors for l-glutamine, and much easier to keep “on hand” than cabbage. In the past I’ve sneaked spirulina powder into desserts since it seemed to clash flavors with everything savory. I found I could sneak it into raw banana ice cream and similar recipes. However, daily consumption never stuck because I couldn’t find a way to consume the powder in enough recipes. Then, I discovered organic spirulina tablets. For years I was able to keep the continual recurring canker sores at bay with just four spirulina tablets a day. Spirulina gives me more energy and improves my digestion to.

Spirulina may not be all it takes for you to get rid of a chronic canker sore problem, so I suggest employing other strategies as well, like taking any refined sweeteners out of your diet. Refined sugar products (cane sugar, brown sugar, molasses, etc) rob your body of minerals, hurt your pancreas, imbalance your hormones, and ultimately cause you to age far more rapidly. When you can use fresh or dried fruits to sweeten foods just as well, there really is no excuse for including refined sugars in your diet. They’re an addiction, and science has proven them to be more addictive than heroin! 

Avoid Chewing on Yourself 

Break any habits of chewing on your lips or cheeks. Use self-hypnosis if you have this habit. Repeat this to yourself several times each day: “My teeth, jaw and tongue are relaxed in every mood and situation.”

Eat Consciously & Compensate Accordingly

Whenever you eat cinnamon, spicy foods, citrus, pineapple or kiwi, immediately stop eating if you notice any discomfort in your mouth. Stay alert for discomfort. Eating consciously can help with a wide array of human health complaints. Follow-up with water and a baking-soda rinse if discomfort occurs. Also, take extra spirulina tablets, lysine capsules, glutamine, and magnesium accordingly – as getting the nutritional support before you have an established sore is much more effective than taking it after it is already established.

Read Labels

You may already be aware that you are sensitive to cinnamon or cayenne. But have you read all the labels of your tea blends, your toothpaste, and your supplements? Many clients discover that they have foods or herbs which they are sensitive to in multiple areas of their diet. Individuals have differing levels of sensitivity to cinnamaldehyde, so assess if cinnamon is a factor for you through observing any changes you experience when entirely avoiding it versus consuming it regularly. But in order to test this, you really must check all your supplements and oral products. It may be hiding in your mouthwash, your nutritional gummies, your protein powder. If reading labels is exhausting and annoying, then try reading just one label per day. 

Lymphatic Massage

Perform lymphatic self-massage on your face. You can use ecosia to look up videos on this. 

Lymphatic massage is something that came naturally to me as a child, long before I knew what it was called or what it was for. As someone with a hyperactive trigeminal (face) nerve since birth, I have always found facial massage highly beneficial. It helps reduce the frequency and severity of migraines, pimples, canker sores, sore throats, sinus infections, and ear infections. With the exception of migraines, these things all have one thing in common: stagnant lymph fluid in the face and throat. (The migraine bit has to do with the trigeminal nerve which spans your entire face. Thus, when you massage your face, you are doing lymph work and trigeminal nerve work at the same time.)

Reduce Stress

Reduce stress through regular exercise, taking breaks from computer work, deep breathing, reading relaxing fiction, meditation, journaling, and conversing with friends who uplift you. Everyone says we should reduce stress, but few people say how, so that is why I have chosen to open this section with specific suggestions. In particular, I have found it helpful to set an alarm for every half an hour while I am at my desk. When that alarm goes off, there is no particular agenda besides taking my eyes off the screen, checking in with my body, and addressing my bodily needs. This usually includes palming my eyes (trigeminal relaxation), using the bathroom, stretching my shoulders, and sometimes a brief visit to my yoga mat. If I have a cankersore at the time, this alarm can also serve as a reminder to drink water, to swish with baking-soda water, to spray the sore with silver, or to use CankerCare on the sore.

Consume Zinc

Consume foods rich in zinc at least every other day. Foods rich in zinc which are not dehydrating include alfalfa sprouts (be sure they’re organic), basil, broccoli raab, parsley, asparagus, cardamom, spinach, thyme, cilantro, dill, cauliflower, chard, arugula, sage, lettuce, peeled cucumber with seeds removed, and blackberries. 

Other foods rich in zinc – which may be dehydrating but still have good, noninflammatory properties and good mineral balance – include oysters, shrimp, hemp seeds, sesame seed (tahini), eggs (pasture-raised only!), and liver (from grass-fed cows or pasture-raised chickens). 

Foods rich in zinc which are only appropriate in moderate due to other issues with these foods include poppy seeds, pumpkin seeds, and pine nuts.

Bell peppers and goji berries are also relatively rich in zinc and vitamin C besides, but these are nightshades which can be a strong irritant and immune stimulant for some, so eat these with some caution if canker sores are a recurring issue for you. Most humans are at least a tiny bit sensitive to eating large amounts of nightshades (peppers, potatoes, eggplant, etc), especially if they are raw.

Peas, zucchini and lentil sprouts are also rich in zinc, but some clients seem to be reactive to their lectin content. All people are sensitive to lectins to some degree, which is why raw kidney beans are toxic to humans. Gluten is also a lectin, by the by. As always, dietary needs are very individual.

If you’re intolerant of gluten, have stomach ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome, acid reflux, arthritic pain, or chronic lethargy, then you may be interested in my article on eating a low-lectin diet: My First Three Weeks on the Plant Paradox Program.

If you’re looking to figure out what foods are rich in what substances in a reliable, easy way, I created my own mega-reference for my own personal use (because no tool out there met my exacting needs and impatience for learning accurately how foods compared to one another). The charts I created turned out to be so useful that I turned them into a book, The Ultimate Nutrition Reference. If you’re ready to understand foods as you never have before, get yourself a copy right now.

If you are looking to buy zinc as a supplement specifically for canker sore prevention, look for zinc carnosine, which is zinc bound to L-carnosine (a dipeptide involved in tissue repair). While regular zinc supports immune function broadly, zinc carnosine adheres to damaged tissue and releases zinc slowly at the site. Thus, it is specifically used in healing ulcers (both of the mouth and stomach).

Oral Probiotics

As I have mentioned elsewhere, I have found the fermented coconut water product known as Inner Eco to be very effective for many oral complaints, including reducing the occurrence of canker sores. You can also specifically look for chewables or lozenges which contain streptococcus salivarius K12 and/or lactobacillus reuteri. These are meant to colonize your mouth and throat, compete with harmful microbes, and modulate immune signaling locally.

Treating Canker Sores

Many common tips are actually really bad. Don’t suck on popsicles to numb them. Do not add sugar to a problem that is clearly exacerbated by sugar because it “feels good” in the short run. That is akin to the bad advice my mother received as a child from her doctor – ice-cream for a sore throat! Also, don’t use alum. Alum is a remedy that was going around in my childhood, but this sketchy product includes trace amounts of aluminum which is not a beneficial trace mineral. Okay, okay, enough about the bad ideas, and let us progress to good ones!

Water Floss 

For immediate treatment, I’ve found that a water flosser one of the most powerful interventions. I originally purchased my water flosser when I had a case of pericoronitis due to the gum flap that was still hanging out over my wisdom tooth. The water flosser is an amazing device; the horrible pain I had been experiencing was reduced even on the first use, and continued to diminish with each use and was entirely gone within a few days. I’ve found the water flosser to be similarly useful for canker sores.

A water flosser can mechanically break up the biofilms that bacteria have made to protect themselves, making this technique a powerful combination with any other topical treatment. It will also clean out other debris in the sore and help restore hydration to an area of your mouth which may be chronically dry.

To use a water flosser on a sore: set your flosser to the lowest setting, aim the stream of water at the sore. Slowing increase the setting so that the pain is where you can barely tolerate it. At first, this is usually speed three or four for me (out of ten). Hold the stream of water on the sore for a minimum of ten seconds. Repeat this several times a day. While this will hurt at first, relief is usually very rapid after the fact.

If you do not have a water flosser and do not wish to buy one, you can also use the stream of water in your shower. Of course, spit out the water afterward – in either case.

Silver 

In 2020 I discovered silver spray, which can be used to spray the canker sore to decrease bacterial imbalances in the area and in your mouth in general. This is something easy, odorless, and (nearly) flavorless which you can use during a long car ride or while on an airplane.  

Deglycyrrhizinated Licorice (DGL)

Ddeglycyrrhizinated licorice is, well, licorice – with the glycyrrhizin removed so it doesn’t raise your blood pressure. Taking this in capsule form may help some, but contact with your mouth will be most effective for rapid treatment. It will increase mucus production, promote skin repair, and have mild anti-inflammatory effects. I primarily recommend this to clients with stomach complaints, but it can be quite useful for the oral cavity as well. For oral treatment, get chewable tablets. For stomach upset, get capsules. You can open the capsules if you happen to already have some, but the flavor is earthy bitterness with tree root notes.

Melatonin

We think of melatonin as a sleep hormone, but like all hormones (including neurotransmitters), it does a vast multitude of things. Melatonin serves as a mitochondrial repair molecule throughout your body. A generally safe range is 0.3 milligrams to 3 milligrams. While more is sometimes used in studies, higher amounts can backfire – especially in sensitive systems. Melatonin helps by reducing oxidative stress, modulating immune response, and by supporting tissue regeneration.

In addition to taking melatonin capsules for systemic benefit, you can also get it as an oral gel which is applied directly to the sore. This can promote faster healing while also reducing pain.

Bromelain

While eating 🍍 pineapples – a potent source of bromelain – is not advised when you have a canker sore, the bromelain itself may be quite helpful. Bromelain as an isolated enzyme reduces swelling and helps break down inflammatory proteins.

Vegetable Juice

Drink vegetable smoothies/juices that don’t contain anything acidic or overly sweet. This especially helps if you include cilantro, cabbage, parsley, kale, and/or spinach.

Water Swish

Sip water throughout the day and swish your mouth with every sip.

Baking Soda Solution 

Rinse your mouth with baking soda solution and/or hydrogen peroxide and/or aloe juice.

Salt Water 

Gargle with warm salt water. This is also great for sinus infections, sore throats, and ear infections.

Toothpaste

Brush your teeth with a mixture that does not include sodium lauryl sulfate. One of my favorites is Uncle Harry’s Toothpaste which has great flavor, texture, and results. Uncle Harry’s Toothpaste also has the benefit of being cinnamon-free. Another favorite of mine is The Dirt Toothpaste, particularly their cacao mint flavor. I have also sought options which are plastic-free and mint-free, and found the fabulous Dr Tungs Herbal Toothpowder Tabs.

Avoid Burns

Avoid burning your mouth with hot foods and hot drinks. However, warm green tea is usually helpful. You can refrigerate the tea bag after making and drinking the tea and then put the tea bag in your mouth on the sore for a minute at a time for even deeper relief.

Celery

Chew celery (gently). This tends to numb the sore while providing electrolyte balance to the mouth.
Brush your teeth consciously and don’t hit the sore. While using a water flosser directly on the sore is helpful, but brushing it is usually too abrasive. On the same note, avoid excessive abrasion from textured food (absolutely no chips or crackers).

Essential Oils (with Caution)

Apply a numbing, disinfecting substance or essential oil to the sore. Some great choices are silver, clove essential oil, or use an amazing blend like Quantum Health’s Canker Care. I personally use this product (since I discovered it in 2020) and wish it had been in my life earlier. It has ingredients that soothe and numb the sore, but also ingredients that help address common root causes of canker sores. Check out these ingredients: Aloe, Calendula, Myrrha, B₁₂, Dipotassium Glyrrhizinate (DGL, Licorice), Echinacea, Clove, Goldenseal, Lysine, Tea tree, Cajuputi, Peppermint, Propolis, and Zinc!

 

If you’re interested in learning more about healthy oral hygiene, read my extensive article called Cure Pericoronitis & Periodontitis Naturally. This article goes into a variety of unusual oral hygiene practices not mentioned in most readily available sources.

Wishing you healthy gums, tongue, cheeks, and psyche,

Raederle

The Consciousness Alchemist

Note: I originally drafted this article in January 2017. It was updated a lot in 2018, a little in 2020, and just went through an overhaul on May 5th 2026.

The Tripod Model of Illness

 

My body has always reacted intensely. In my infancy – light sensitivity like a lightning strike. In my childhood – years of exhaustion disproportionate to the energy I’ve expended. In my teens – sensitivities that make ordinary foods feel radioactive. In my twenties – hand inflammation that precluded typing or holding a book. In my thirties – migraines that arrive like weather systems.

I have chased mold spores, nutrient deficiencies, inflammatory triggers, and obscure biochemical pathways. Some interventions help. Some don’t. Patterns emerge, and I obsess over one pattern to the exclusion of another. I look for that one root thing I can blame. I seek a single cause when I’m better off with a unifying theory.

I’ve sought the one food. The one toxin. The one mistake. But what if illness is rarely – or never – about one thing at all? What if illness – like everything else, it seems – is an emergent phenomenon? I think it is, and I think I can finally spell it out for you – and for my future self who I don’t quite trust to remember this insight.

Childhood trauma creates a baseline allostatic load. This trauma load is a foundational level of stress and physical inflammation. The higher this baseline, the more likely we are to have allergies, mast-cell over-activation, hyper-active immune responses, sensory sensitivities, social anxiety, and also – everything else too.

Acute stress raises the stress load from its baseline. Acute stresses include physical exertion, interrupted sleep, emotional pain, and any form of malnourishment – including lacking physical touch, mental stimulation, and the ability to be authentic. While stress includes things that are non-emotional, “stress” is primarily a word for “emotional burden.”

Genetics create dispositions for how the stress load “pops out.” If we have genetic predispositions associated with insulin resistance or beta-cell dysfunction, then becoming diabetic is a possibility for how the stress turns into “disease.”

Environment and lifestyle create another axis for how stresses “pop out.” Even with the genes for it, you won’t manifest diabetes in particular without extraordinary levels of hormonal dysfunction wearing out your pancreas, or, more typically, dietary factors.

The first two factors – childhood trauma and acute stress – are two places on a timeline which affect the same axis: the emotional component. Thus, we have three axes which intersect to create every illness: emotions, genes, and environment. 

The emotional component, like the other two axes, can go deeply into negative spaces with intense traumas, but it can also have bolstering factors – like profoundly comforting relationships. Those bolstering factors can be so beneficial that they buffer negative factors along any of the three axes.

It feels strange to call the third one “environment” – because this breaks into two categories: that which you can control (your grocery selections, your sleep hygiene, etc) and that which you cannot (industrial pollution affecting water, foods, land, and air everywhere). Nonetheless, whether it’s mold growing in your home, fluoridated water, or selecting conventional produce laden with glyphosate – these are environmental factors upon your body.

There are so many times in my life when I’ve chased purely physical solutions for weeks, months – or even years – and had minimal results. Whether I was trying to resolve migraines that cropped up, debilitating inflammatory joint pain, or eye strain – these problems always responded at least a little to my new lifestyle and dietary protocols and interventions. Yet when solutions elude even the most diligent, researched approaches, I’d find myself asking questions like: what am I repressing? What am I avoiding? How does this symptom mirror my emotional distress? 

In my early twenties I asked, “Is my throat closing up and chronically sore because of the words I’m not speaking?”

In my late twenties I asked, “Are my connective tissues breaking down because of a lack of connection in my life?”

Last week I asked, “Are my migraines obliterating my life because I’ve obliterated my emotional truth?”

From there, I had a breakthrough. I put on the music I was afraid of and let myself be sucked completely into my emotions. I collapsed on the bathroom floor and sobbed. It wasn’t a sweet and quiet cry, but the sort of cry that causes someone a few rooms away to come find out if you’ve broken a bone. That “epic cry” really did relieve my migraine – despite the fact that the environmental trigger (soy) was still part of my life. 

And why am I sensitive to soy in the first place? This, once again, would be an intersection of my genetics (high sensitivity genes), my trauma (childhood experiences with food, illness, and loneliness), and my environmental factors. 

All of these factors continue to be relevant, and yet, I’ve repeatedly observed huge emotional releases shifting even the most stubborn chronic pain. Previously I’ve experienced it with inflammatory joint pain, which was so bad I couldn’t walk. I’ve experienced fevers rising and breaking after days of persistence – and finally, it’s “the big cry” that shifts things.

I’m suspecting now that “the big cry” does more than remove a hair’s breadth off the allostatic trauma load. If that was all it took to eliminate these big illness patterns, then one big cry should resolve the issue more-or-less permanently (unless environmental factors or acute emotional burdens became worse). I have two theories for why the big release creates a big relief – often a full remission of symptoms for at least a day, if not three days, before relapse.

My first theory is best explained through an analogy: let’s say your trauma load is a backpack that weighs two-hundred pounds. It’s enormous, and it’s doubling you over with practically crippling force. And yet, it’s so constant that you hardly notice it anymore. It’s just “how things are” for you. But the big cry happens and now four ounces are lifted from that backpack. You’re still carrying two-hundred pounds, but that four ounces is really noticeable at first, because after constancy that may have been going on for months – or decades – there is finally a change. So the relief feels enormous. Then you equalize again, and the symptoms return.

My second theory is that the relief itself has more physiological temporary impact via neurotransmitters and parasympathetic activation. In other words, “the big cry” might be akin to taking anti-depressant drugs in a way. Perhaps it causes a rush of oxytocin and/or alters serotonergic signaling. Thus, for the next few hours or days, via hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal modulation of stress hormones, inflammation in your entire body is reduced – alleviating symptoms.

Honestly, I just realized these two theories are the same theory. The first is the emotional cause, and that leads to the physiological change at the brain level, which then leads to the physiological change across the body.

This three-axes theory (emotions, genes, environment) explains why people can get “so far” with one method (like purely working on their environmental factors through eliminating as many toxins from their home and diet as possible), but then eventually succumb to disease, and then either die of it – or have a miraculous recovery due to a huge emotional shift (like deciding to stop being a people-pleaser and finally chase their dreams). 

This also explains why many people with complex chronic conditions appear to have no genetic contributors – because stress and environment can do their work without them. Genes are almost always only affecting the expression of an illness – not causing it. (There are single-gene conditions, but these affect far less than one percent of the population.) But hardly anyone wants to hear that their health is a combination of emotional and environmental factors because it feels too much like victim-blaming and nobody needs yet more shame heaped on them. The shame is already the mountain that’s making most of us unwell in the first place! 

Hence, we have to find a way to face the truth without heaping blame on anybody – including ourselves. Besides, there isn’t anyone to blame anyway. So your parents abused or neglected you? Well, they did that because of their upbringing. And your grandparents did what they did because of their upbringing. So your society oppressed you? Well, all the individuals in that society did that because of their upbringing. And if we go back up the generational chains we’ll find wars – but those weren’t the start of things going wrong, but giant climaxes of horror that were born from horror in the upbringing of the people “most responsible.” What we’ll find, if we keep going back, is natural disasters taking away entire families – particularly if these tragedies happen while a child is developing secure attachments and then loses them. Those wounds will be passed on with each generation, and without the social technology known as healing, they just keep getting passed on.

Many shamans, doctors, and writers have come to understand healing and what it means and how it’s done – but it’s a gargantuan task. We don’t just carry the allostatic load from our own childhood, but imprints from the worst traumas in our ancestors going back many generations. While we only have some preliminary studies evidencing the reality of inter-generational trauma in mice, we have countless anecdotes of people accessing memories of traumas that happened to their ancestors and only finding relief after facing those traumas.

Nonetheless, it’s really not the horrors that our great-grandparents may have faced that make healing quite so challenging. It’s the cultural programming that tells us not even to begin. How often do we hear a character in a show or movie say, “Don’t cry.” We’re still in the dark ages when it comes to emotional intelligence. We might as well be saying, “Don’t heal.” Or, “Hold onto this pain forever.” Or even, “Hold onto this pain until it turns into cancer and kills you.” Suddenly the phrase “don’t cry” goes from innocent to insidious.

We’re also taught that emotions themselves are dangerous. We link jealousy to the murder of one’s partner. We link anger to setting a house (or city) on fire. We link shock and grief to suicide. Yet the emotions were never the problem. Ironically, our meta-emotions about the emotions – our fear and shame around having them and expressing them – are what make emotions turn into dangerous behaviors. If we learned to feel our fear, anger, grief, jealousy, envy, and panic when we were still toddlers – as we’re meant to – and we were given co-regulatory containment for these emotions back then, back when the stakes were still small, we’d learn critical life skills like: how to listen to our emotions, how to decipher their meaning, how to communicate about what we’re feeling, and how to responsibly address the root cause of the feeling.

Instead, we’re often forced to grapple with these emotions as adults, having never experienced co-regulation or containment. We often have no idea what it would mean to manage these emotions responsibly. And now, as adults, we have a lot more power than we did at two. Instead of throwing a sippy-cup against a carpet, we’re now very capable of breaking every dish in the kitchen with our anger – and injuring more than the dishes in the process. Now, with all this power in our hands, we can’t afford to just let our emotions “run rampant.” And if we did, we’d be labeled unstable, ill, immature, and unfit for society. So the cultural norm and mantra is repress, repress, repress.

This repression practice didn’t manifest as the same illnesses a couple hundred years ago – but we had less acute stresses (emotional or psychic burdens) bombarding us before telephones and television. We also had fewer environmental burdens before refined sugar, hydrogenated oils, microplastics, and glyphosate were just “normal” parts of every meal of the day. We also used to have a much stronger social network when “entertainment” meant weekly gatherings to play cards rather than scrolling on our devices.

Maybe I can finally stop trying to isolate the cause between “emotions” and “foods” in my life. It’s hard. I was raised with the western notion of scientific thinking – reductionist methodology and linear causality models. Isolate factors. It’s a mental discipline which serves me well, making me even more attached to it. But the problem with “isolating” a cause is that it is virtually always false. There’s no one person “to blame” for any particular outcome. The issues are always systemic.

If we look at illness as an intersection of emotional load, genetic predisposition, and environmental burden, then healing must also occur at that intersection. We cannot biohack our way out of unprocessed grief. We cannot cry our way out of industrial toxins. And, sadly, we don’t seem to be able to meditate our way out of single-gene disorders. But we can reduce load where we can. We can buffer where we can. We can stop adding shame to systems already under strain. Healing is not about finding the one cause. It is about reducing total burden.

If we’re going to be agents of positive change, we have to confront some very ugly and uncomfortable subjects. Violent activity isn’t the choice of one person – it’s the symptom of a sick society. Those of us who pride ourselves on being conscientious and responsible are still part of the systems we inhabit, and we’d do well to ask ourselves how our culture contributes to the despair and violence we see. 

No matter how virtuous we are, we’d do well to ask ourselves how we are contributing to teens shooting other kids at school. Did we tell those teens, “Don’t cry.”? Did we write that into our movie script, or say that to our friend? No snowflake in an avalanche feels responsible because not a single one of us alone is “to blame.” It’s about having responsibility: response ability. Are we able to respond in such a way as to start creating a positive change? Can we face the truth of our own traumas, stresses, and environmental contributions? Are we brave enough to do it without having anyone to blame?

Instead of asking, “What is to blame?” we begin asking, “Where is the load?” Instead of isolating one variable, we look at the system. Instead of throwing up our hands in defeat and saying, “It’s just my bad genes,” or, “It’s the whole society at fault – what can I do?” we can just take the step in front of us. Some days it may mean removing a trigger-food from my diet, and other days it may mean crying about that time I was slapped because I was upset. One day it may mean testing my bedroom for mold residue, and on a different day it’ll be telling my parents how much I love them – with the full force of forgiveness behind it.

As within, so without. As without, so within. The problems we face as a culture, a country, a society are systemic – and so are the illnesses we carry in our bodies. And empowerment only ever lives in this moment. In this moment I can sit up straighter. In this moment I can breathe deeper. In this moment I can offer my writing to the world as an authentic expression of the best I have to offer. In a future moment, I’ll say something kind to a stranger. In a future moment, I’ll eat a healthy meal. In a future moment, I’ll cry me a river and it will carry me downstream. That’s healing. That’s the best we can do. That’s enough.

— Raederle Phoenix

Related past essay: Reaching the Breaking Point: How Emotions Become Illness (2017)

Care, Feminism, and the Market Logic We’ve Normalized

Calling Home-Makers “Abhorrent” Isn’t Progressive

How Market Logic Hijacked Feminist Language

I’m Concerned About my Fellows on the Left

I have always been on the left – the true left – by which I mean mutual aid, material equity, skepticism of power, and respect for lived labor. (We’re not talking about merely being in the American Overton Window Left here.) Yet I’ve always been uncomfortable with much of the feminist content I’ve encountered. In particular, I’ve noticed a recurring habit of moralizing a person’s choice to pursue a career versus choosing to be a home-maker, as though one path is inherently enlightened and the other inherently suspect. This moralization doesn’t just distort individual choice – it quietly reshapes what kinds of lives are considered respectable, intelligent, or even morally permissible within left-leaning spaces.

Recently, I had been enjoying educational content from a YouTube creator whose work thoughtfully dismantles patriarchal assumptions baked into our culture. Over the course of several videos, I developed genuine respect for her perspective and analytical rigor. That is precisely why I was so taken aback by a video addressing “trad wives” – a term I was not previously familiar with. “Trad,” as it turns out, is shorthand for “traditional.”

The video opened by displaying a comment made on someone else’s so-called “trad wife content.” The comment read:

“You left your dreams, ambitions, and career for the sake of your husband’s dreams. The trad-wife life is abhorrent.”

This comment is not a fringe insult; it’s a crystallized expression of a worldview that equates human worth with career participation and treats domestic devotion as a kind of moral failure. After the comment appeared on the screen, I waited through the entire twenty-minute video for some kind of centrist explanation (by which I mean true centrist – where we use our intellect to analyze what truths may be found from any and all sides of an issue). Surely, I thought, this woman – whose work I had come to admire – would dig into the nuance here. But she didn’t.

As the video ended, the comment remained unexamined.

I’ll examine it a little here, because I feel it’s vital to ask what kind of feminism we are actually advancing when this premise goes unchallenged. The above comment isn’t merely insulting; it assumes a massive amount about anyone choosing to be a home-maker. The author doesn’t just assign the moral judgment of “abhorrent” – but also minimizes the value of devotion to one’s relationship, home, and family in the process. The comment author puts “a career” on a pedestal – as if humans are merely economic cogs who may not have dreams or ambitions outside the workplace.

Ultimately, I left a comment of my own, which read, in part: “I’ve loved almost everything about every episode I’ve watched. This one, however, gave me pause. I was genuinely frustrated that no follow-up was given to the comments shown at the beginning of the video. Those were not mild or neutral remarks; they were inflammatory. Displaying them and then declining to address them directly feels like an oversight, especially given the subject matter. When a topic carries moral weight, silence can read as tacit agreement.”

I’m very concerned that the narrative of the “abhorrent trad wife” is coming from a market-aligned, liberal feminism that quietly accepts capitalism as a given and then asks, “How can women succeed inside it?” Success, under that framework, is legible only if it looks like wages, careers, independence-through-income, and status recognized by institutions. What I am arguing for sits at the intersection of socialism’s critique of commodification and care-feminism’s insistence that relational labor is not peripheral to justice, but foundational to it.

Counter Evidence? Exhibit: My Mother

If the claim is that choosing domestic life is inherently diminishing, then my mother’s life stands as a direct counterexample. Thus, my counter-argument to the “abhorrent trad wife” is found in my upbringing – which sits uncomfortably outside many contemporary assumptions. I was raised by parents old enough to be my grandparents – landing my parents firmly in the boomer generation. My mother had me at forty-two; I am now thirty-seven. I admired my stay-at-home, home-maker mother deeply, and I still do.

My mother, in her younger years, had a certifiable genius-level intelligence quotient, and yet she loved being a stay-at-home mom. She occasionally worked on the side – becoming a tax consultant for H&R Block, doing accounting for a female friend who was a lawyer, and other similar work – but her primary devotion was to her home, her family, and her community. Before marrying my father, she had been abandoned by her first husband in her twenties and raised two boys as a single mother. She had done secretarial work, aided by her phenomenal touch-typing skills. (Skills she taught me at age eleven; I am touch-typing now at my desk as I write this).

My mother was far from lacking competence or self-sufficiency. She could change a tire as a teenager. Despite being born in 1947, she came from a family culture that combined traditional female roles with a profound respect for female intelligence.

My grandmother – old enough to easily be my great-grandmother or older – had a college degree. My mother earned a 4.0 in calculus and tutored other students in math.

Today, Mom is seventy-nine and still married to Dad, who is sixty-nine and retired. They play board games together. My mother acts as a social fulcrum in her neighborhood, serving her community in dozens of ways. She gives rides to people without cars. She teaches board games to elderly and younger folks alike. She assists a disabled friend in numerous ways, including matchmaking – connecting people who can help one another and even negotiating fair arrangements for shared services. She has assisted many people with their addiction problems, as well as money-management problems. She is a mutual-aid powerhouse. She hires local people who have trouble finding work to do odd jobs around the house. My parents are not wealthy; they are simply redistributing what they have within an economically oppressed neighborhood. If mutual aid, community resilience, and informal care networks are leftist virtues, then this is what they look like when practiced daily.

At no point – ever – did my mother lack an identity because she was a stay-at-home mom for my entire upbringing. On the contrary, every time she considered taking a job, she lamented all the ways it would pull her away from me, from Dad, from her sons (my half-brothers), from her community, and from her hobbies. She reads fiction novels. She watches science-fiction movies. She sews clothing, including elaborate Renaissance costumes.

Does this sound (or look) like the sort of person you imagine when a phrase like “trad wife” is thrown around? The “trad wife” label collapses complexity into caricature, and in doing so erases the very intelligence and self-direction it claims to defend.

The two years of my childhood that I was home-schooled were, without exaggeration, the best two years of my childhood. The education Mom gave me was far superior to anything I encountered in magnet schools, a Waldorf school, a religious school, or various public schools. She taught me phonetics, cursive writing, touch-typing, and how to navigate a computer – long before any of this was introduced in formal schooling. She taught me algebra in fourth grade – which is when it was taught when she was a child – while the public school system wanted to wait seven more years (i.e. high-school).

I am profoundly grateful to have had my intelligent, multi-faceted mother.

Was Mom “traditional?” Not in any shallow or caricatured sense. Mom built computers. She fixed plumbing. She redid the insulation in our house – and then installed drywall, plaster, and paint. She rewired electrical systems in our ancient home. Mom wields power-tools with skill and taught me to use a drill and a circular saw before I was ten. She did not confine herself to being “a proper woman” by any restrictive standard.

And yet, Mom did hold traditional values around roles. Her roles were home-maker, community networker, and parent. My father’s roles were income-earner and parent. Because Dad performed the vital task of earning money, Mom gave him choice cuts of meat from whatever animal she prepared for dinner. She deferred certain categories of decision-making to him. Meanwhile, he never interfered with how she arranged – or overhauled, remodeled, and reinvented – the kitchen. These values around who-made-which sort of decisions were passed on from their own parents. 

We Need Home-Makers & Care-Takers

A society that cannot value care work without monetizing it will eventually find itself starved of care altogether. Beyond ideology, there is also a pragmatic reality: this world desperately needs more attentive, nurturing parents who actually talk to their children. 

The most extraordinary gift of my childhood was having two educated adults who spoke to me at an adult level every single day. Can you imagine the intellectual acceleration this provided? I have since come to understand that this practice – being spoken to as a thinking person – is perhaps the greatest privilege I have ever received. And I received it, in large part, because my mother was a stay-at-home mom. My own intelligence, agency, and self-directed life isn’t an accident; it was the direct result of time, presence, and cognitive investment that was only possible because someone (Mom) was structurally allowed to prioritize care.

As you can imagine, the idea that all women want a career, and must have one in order to have character, intelligence, societal value, safety, or authenticity, sits very poorly with me.

My parents had roles. Just like roles at work. A role does not define the totality of a person. In fact, Mom already held three roles: mother, wife, and community-builder. Being a traditional wife does not automatically or inherently mean sitting at home shopping, fussing about cleanliness, giving oneself manicures, and reading magazines – at least one of which my mother never did at all.

Being a stay-at-home spouse – of any gender – should not be moralized. It is an important, functional role, and many people have filled it throughout history without being abused, neglected, or erased. If we use the worst experiences of house-spouses to condemn the entire role, then we should also ban cars – because cars are dangerous and people die in car accidents every day.

The American history of a female house-spouse is a tiny sliver of global history concerning domestic roles. It is not inherently pathological. It is deeply uncomfortable, as someone on the political left myself, to watch those “on my side” demonize something that was a healthy, stabilizing, and enriching force in my own life.

Abuse is the Problem; Roles Aren’t

Conflating abuse with the presence of roles is a profound analytical mistake – and one that ultimately leaves abuse harder to name, not easier.

I’m not blind to the reality that many women enter into marriages and are then saddled with the expectation that they should have no aspirations, hobbies, or interests beyond the walls of their home – but that’s abuse. I wouldn’t consider that the fault of marriage or domestic roles. 

I’ve read A Thousand Splendid Suns where a woman in an arranged marriage is horrifically abused, and watched the series MAID, where a young woman suffers from domestic abuse and has difficulty escaping with her young daughter to look after. These kinds of reprehensible situations happen – with shocking regularity. But shifting this trend means creating avenues for people to escape abuse. 

Preventing stories like these from continuing means shifting how we perceive marriage – and even the idea of “ownership.” We say that a rancher “owns” their cows – and this ownership should mean they are a steward and caretaker, not someone with get-out-of-jail-free card for abuse. Even if marriage still means ownership of women to some people, that still shouldn’t be an excuse for abuse. Ownership without accountability is domination; ownership with responsibility is stewardship – and confusing the two has left a long legacy of fallacious arguments.

Preventing someone from having an identity or life outside of submission is abuse. Full stop. It doesn’t matter what gender or role they are performing. If someone is prevented from their own pursuit of happiness, that is abuse.

Roles Need Not be Gender-Assigned

If the roles themselves were the problem, gender-flipping them would also be somehow bad, unworkable, or open the floodgates of abuse. But truly, the only abuse this seems to encourage is the constant shame that strangers heap on stay-at-home-anybodys of any gender.

I have lived on both sides. I have been the breadwinner for my own stay-at-home husband for six years of our now sixteen-year marriage. He is disabled, and caring for the home is what he can do well. He is excellent with furniture, creative arrangements, carpentry, computer work, and more. He is my emotional support in this world. He handles laundry, compost, cooking, and driving – because driving is a horrific chore I deeply dislike. He doesn’t drive because I’ve “been conditioned” to believe that women shouldn’t drive. Mom did almost all the driving growing up and still does more than half in Dad’s retirement. My husband drives for me because I hate driving; that’s partnership, not blind conformation to assigned roles.

My household is anything but traditional. And yet, I still believe that having household members whose primary responsibility is caring for the household is immensely beneficial to everyone living within it. 

I was a happier child during the years when Mom wasn’t working – but instead available to pick me up from school, talk with me about our respective days, and slow-cook a nutritious meal for our little family. I have been a happier adult at times when at least one household member was able to caretake the home, making sure things are orderly, ergonomic, and pleasing to the best of their ability. My experience is that having someone perform this role makes for a happier home – and it need not come pre-packaged with patriarchal baggage, marriage, or notions of submission.

Choice is not liberated by symmetry; it’s liberated by alignment between capacity, desire, and circumstance.

I Abandoned My Dreams

Can we please stop tearing down the incredible people who devote themselves to their families, their children, and their communities? It belittles these individuals – who are sometimes quite heroic – to lump them all together as people who were just “programmed with patriarchy” or people who lead "abhorrent lives” that involve abandoning their dreams.

This is the part of the conversation that is often neglected: In truth, I abandoned my dreams. My greatest dream the first twenty years of my life was that I would be a home-making, stay-at-home mother like my mother was before me. I cherished this dream, and thought about it every day of my childhood, teens, and early adult life. 

In my teens and early twenties I developed lesson-plans for home-schooling. My whole childhood I thought about what I wished to teach my daughters. Reading books like The Continuum Concept deepened my understanding of how child development actually works. To this day, at thirty-seven, I still enjoy content about child-rearing and human development. 

I abandoned my deeper dreams for dedicating more of my life to work. This wasn’t a private failure of imagination or perseverance; it was a structural narrowing of what was economically plausible. I didn’t want to abandon my notions of motherhood and homeschooling – but the people at the economic top have made it much less affordable to even be a stay-at-home parent . . . Or even a parent at all.

As usual, the right-wing is shooting themselves in the foot because today’s young people can’t economically afford to maintain the old scripts. But those scripts weren’t a hundred-percent bad. If we remove the assumption of abuse from concepts of ownership, marriage, and roles, then performing roles is no longer abhorrent at all. It’s merely efficient.

Reimagining Feminism

Whatever your political leaning, and whatever your upbringing, I can confidently say this: care, devotion, and domestic labor are not the enemy.

A feminism that cannot distinguish between chosen roles and coerced submission has lost its analytical compass. A left that cannot recognize care work unless it is monetized, professionalized, or performed in opposition to family life has quietly absorbed the very economic logic it once set out to dismantle. When we reduce human worth to market participation, we do not liberate people – we simply conscript them into a different hierarchy.

It is very troubling that abuse persists within domestic arrangements – and it must be identified and confronted – but it is perhaps just as troubling that we increasingly treat care itself as suspect. We have begun to speak as though love, presence, patience, and long-term investment in others are only virtuous if they can be itemized on a résumé. That is not progress. That is alienation wearing the costume of liberation.

The real danger is not roles. The real danger is silence in the face of coercion, shame masquerading as moral clarity, and a politics so afraid of past harms that it refuses to discern present realities. The real societal problem is turning a blind eye to abuse – and this happens in the workplace too, not just as home. Abuse also happens in households where both parties have careers. Stripping people of their agency, dignity, self-esteem and freedoms can happen everywhere – even to wealthy celebrities who are being puppeteered by family members and/or producers.

We must not turn our backs on the quiet, unglamorous labor that makes human life possible in the first place: caretaking our families and homes. If we cannot defend care without apology, if we cannot honor devotion without immediately scanning for pathology, then we have not escaped patriarchy – we have merely rebranded its contempt for softness in more progressive language.

The future I want to fight for is one where liberation is measured not by how fully we contort ourselves to fit the market, but by how freely we are allowed to shape our lives around care, meaning, and mutual responsibility. A future where feminism defends a woman’s right to pursue a career and her right to leave one; a man’s right to provide and his right to nurture; and anyone’s right to organize their life according to their capacities, values, and circumstances – without shame, coercion, or ideological suspicion.

In that future, care work is visible, honored, and structurally supported, whether it happens in homes, communities, or professions. Parenting, elder care, domestic labor, and emotional stewardship are understood not as personal indulgences or moral regressions, but as essential contributions to a functioning society. Liberation looks like having real choices – choices made possible by economic conditions that allow people to slow down, to tend to one another, and to opt out of arrangements that diminish them.

This is a feminism that is not bowing to capitalism, not embarrassed by dependency, and not hostile to devotion. A feminism that recognizes that dignity does not come from sameness, but from agency. Liberation and equity don’t stem from symmetry, but from alignment with reality. I dream of a feminism mature enough to say: abuse must be addressed everywhere it exists – and care must be protected, respected, and cultivated.

That is the future I want to fight for. One where freedom does not mean standing alone, but being supported well enough to choose how you belong.