I'm curious what do people use during the day to increase saliva/moisture in their mouth besides water? I can only drink so much water at work and my rheumie recommended sour hard candies that are sugarless.
She offered a prescription for Salagen because my mouth was kind of dry when I saw her a few weeks ago. But I'm just not ready to add a new drug to my morning repertoire yet.
So I have been using sugarless sour jolly rancher hard candies but I'm getting very tired of them.
I use saliva sure, as well as lemon ginger herbal tea and mints.
I would not trade Salagen for the world though. Without it I wouldn't have any saliva.
Biotene
Dry mouth tones: http://www.chakraforce.com/Tonations.html#26.
I love Salagen, and wouldn't ever want to give it up. but for times when it's not working as well, I use Listerine Total Care mouthwash, which comes in different flavors now. It helps coat the mouth and keeps the dryness down longer than water does. I also use Mentadent toothpaste because it doesn't dry my mouth out like other toothpastes and it tastes good. I think biotene products taste awful, and the toothpaste doesn't foam up, and leaves my mouth feeling dirty (my personal opinion, not necessarily the views of Sjogren's World),
When my mouth is painfully dry, and nothing else works, I suck on ice, or on Edy's or Dole frozen Fruit Bars. They are 100% fruit juice and some have antioxidants if you like that kind of thing. Candies and gum (sugar free) are helpful, though I find the ones that have substitute sugar make my mouth dryer. Nothing really increases saliva like medications, but these are things that can help make dry mouth more tolerable. :)
Woofers
It's a very short-term solution but I found this sugar-free gum (with Xylitol listed as the first ingredient!) by Mentos called Cool Lemonade - it's a bit sour, so it really does seem to help produce more saliva than ordinary gum and I love lemonade so it works pretty well.
I've found I like a mint breath freshener but I've only found one local pharmacy that sells it.
I also get lozenges on prescription. They are called Salivix and I find them helpful.
Take care - Scottie :)