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Drooling, or excessive salivation, can be caused by a variety of factors. It can have quite trivial reasons, such as seeing a tasty dish, eating something sour or spicy, but it can also be caused by very serious medical conditions or a side effect of taking certain medications.
What is drooling?
Excessive salivation is a symptom, or rather a physiological phenomenon, not a disease. When drooling, the salivary glands produce too much fluid, i.e. saliva. The cause of this condition may be excessive appetite, but also a life-threatening condition.
The causes of drooling
Drooling can be caused by eating acidic or spicy foods or drinking alcohol.
The more serious and life-threatening causes of drooling are as follows:
- oral diseases such as aphthous ulcers, i.e. painful ulcers that irritate the oral mucosa, causing excessive salivation, necrotizing ulcerative stomatitis, specifically the mucosa of the mouth and tongue, stomatitis herpes, phlegmon of the bottom of the mouth oral and oral malignant tumors such as cheek cancer, tongue cancer or cancer of the floor of the mouth
- pharyngitis such as epiglottitis, peritonsillar abscess, retropharyngeal abscess and malignant neoplastic changes in the throat,
- oesophageal conditions such as gastroesophageal reflux disease and esophageal cancer
- the presence of a foreign body in the esophagus – this is usually severe drooling with difficulty breathing, a stinging pain in the throat and difficulty swallowing,
- various types of food poisoning, including poisoning by plants, fruits, mushrooms and chemicals,
- nervous system diseases such as cerebral palsy, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis – drooling occurs due to paralysis of the facial muscles and the resulting difficulty in swallowing,
- Wilson’s disease – a rare genetic disease involving a disorder of copper metabolism,
- mononucleosis (drooling is accompanied by a runny nose, sore throat, enlarged lymph nodes, enlarged tonsils, abdominal pain and enlarged spleen),
- Chickenpox,
- rabies – drooling occurs in the advanced stage of the disease and has a very poor prognosis,
- foot-and-mouth disease,
- taking certain medications, such as antipsychotics and medications to improve appetite, and parasympathomimetic medications such as pilocarpine and nicotine.
Drooling also occurs in children during teething, and it can also accompany morning sickness in pregnancy. Scientists do not know the exact cause of the increased salivation in pregnancy, but it is quite common. Hormones are most likely responsible for the drooling during pregnancy.
Methods of treating drooling
As mentioned above, drooling is not a disease, but a physiological phenomenon or a symptom of various diseases. Treatment for drooling depends on its cause.