Key points to know:
- Burning mouth syndrome can be idiopathic (primary) or caused by something else, such as allergies, trauma, or infection (secondary).
- Some people with burning mouth syndrome have other symptoms, such as dry mouth and change in ability to taste things.
- More women than men develop burning mouth syndrome.
What Is Burning Mouth Syndrome?
The medical definition of BMS is that it is an idiopathic condition that causes a burning sensation in the oral mucosa. Your oral mucosa is the mucous membrane, the lining, inside your mouth. BMS can affect your tongue, gums, palate, inner cheek, and lips. Some people don’t have the strong burning pain, but may experience an unpleasant tingling instead.
Idiopathic is the medical way of saying that a condition popped up out of nowhere and, “we have no idea what caused it.” However, it’s only primary BMS that’s idiopathic. There is also secondary BMS and this occurs when there is an identifying factor, like an infection, dry mouth, or other issue.
The International Classification of Headache Disorders, 3rd edition (IHS) defines BMS as burning in the mouth an intraoral burning or unpleasant sensations without any obvious cause that happen every day for at least 2 hours over a period of no less than 3 months. This definition varies a bit between experts. The Merck Manual states: “Pain must occur on 50% of days, for > 2 hours per day (some authors omit this potentially unreliable criterion), for > 3 months.”
Glossodynia?
One website I found says that some people may call BMS glossodynia. The definition of glossodynia is pain in the tongue. If the BMS is restricted only to the tongue, this could be glossodynia, but if BMS is affecting other parts of the mouth, this isn’t glossodynia.
In 2021, 23 international experts completed surveys about the classification of BMS because there were questions about what burning mouth syndrome really is. The International Classification of Diseases, or ICD-11, proposed that BMS be renamed as burning mouth disorder, or BMD. If you’d like to read the paper, you can find it here.
It may seem picky to debate if it is BMS or BMD, but there are differences between syndromes and disorders, and there doesn’t seem to have been much movement on this since the paper was published.
There’s nothing to see here…
Despite the burning feeling on the lips, tongue, or elsewhere, the oral mucosa looks normal for most people with BMS. It doesn’t look burned, dry, have blisters or anything on it that could suggest there is a reason for the pain. Some people with BMS do have increased redness, white spots, and other visible issues, but this isn’t part of the BMS diagnosis.
Not just pain
Many people with BMS experience other problems with their mouth as well. Some people report having:
- Dysgeusia – a bad taste in your mouth, salty, metallic, or rancid
- Parageusia – distortion of taste
- Xerostomia – dry mouth, even if there isn’t a decrease in saliva production
Who gets burning mouth syndrome?
No one knows for sure how many people in the world have BMS but one research paper, published in 2022, did find some numbers. According to the researchers who combed through the medical literature looking for prevalence studies, there is an overall estimated BMS prevalence of between 1.73% and 7.72% of the population; 1.05% to 8.96% in Asia and 5.58% to 6.46% in Europe.
According to other research, it’s estimated that about 1 million people in the United States have BMS.
BMS affects many more females than males:
- Females: 1.15% to 11.28%
- Males: 0.38% to 3.75%
Age also plays a role in developing BMS. About 3.31% of people over 50 have the condition, compared with 1.92% under age 50. Postmenopausal women seem to make up the largest group of people who live with BMS.