Home Remedy for Hand Foot & Mouth Disease

Here is my home remedy for hand foot & mouth disease using wild oregano oil. The best way I can answer the below question from one of my readers is by telling you a story of my own personal experience with hand, foot, and mouth disease when my son was 2 years old.

“Hi! I’m awaiting a Dr appointment for my son but I think he might have hand foot and mouth disease. He’s almost 19 months old. How do you recommend I use WOO for that at his age? I have the one I purchased from your website. Thanks so much!!”

Of course, I am not a doctor, and I would not advise anyone on how to treat their child. But I can tell you what I did, over 20 years ago, when my son contracted hand, foot, and mouth disease. This is a viral disease and is highly contagious among children. The worst symptom (fever, mouth sores, skin rash) is by far the blistering mouth sores. They were super painful for my son (who tends toward stoic) and he cried out in pain even when drinking water! Eating any kind of food was out of the question. Even milk hurt him too much to drink. He had large blistering sores all over his tongue and down into his throat.

Wild Oregano Oil for Hand Foot & Mouth Disease

Well, I already knew from my experience with mouth ulcers that wild oregano oil was likely to work. I explained all about it, and how spicy-hot it was to my son. And I put some on my own tongue to demonstrate. Then we tried a 7:1 dilution (7 drops organic olive oil to 1 drop commercial – not essential – wild oregano) so it wouldn’t ‘burn’ his mouth too much, but hopefully would be effective.* It was not.

I then explained to him that we could try full-strength wild oregano and that it would hurt like crazy for 2.5 minutes, but then the pain would completely disappear and I thought it would heal him enough to be able to eat and drink something. He was willing to give it a try. So I loaded up the dropper and quickly dripped wild oregano all over his tongue as he held his mouth open. I explained to him that he would need to swallow it, so it could treat the sores in his throat.

Well, he screamed bloody murder, tears were bucketing out his eyes, but he swallowed and swallowed as I counted down the two and a half minutes. Wild oregano in the mouth will stimulate a lot of saliva – so I needed to explain that to him beforehand and make sure he was prepared to swallow and not spit it out. I explained that if he tried to spit it out, it would just burn like crazy on his lips! And then his throat wouldn’t get any medicine and so eating or drinking would still be really difficult. Understanding and honesty are key when engaging our children in their own healing.

As we hit that 2.5 minute mark, his tears dried up, he blew his nose, and then we waited 15 minutes for the wild oregano to do its job of virus-killing. He tentatively swallowed some water and was thrilled that it didn’t hurt! He then asked for food, and I offered him porridge or Annie’s Mac ‘n Cheese – foods that I felt would go down easily and not aggravate the sores. He chose the mac ‘n cheese and happily ate a large bowl with no pain or issues whatsoever.

I can’t remember how long the effect lasted… perhaps a few hours… but when his mouth started to hurt again, and he couldn’t eat or drink without pain, he immediately asked for another treatment with wild oregano. Such a brave lad! But the healing relief was well worth the 2.5 minutes of excruciating pain to him. I let him direct the treatment frequency, and within a few days he was completely healed.

The first treatment was by far the most painful for him, each subsequent application hurt less and less. I suggested that the more it hurt, the more bad bugs were dying, so as his tongue healed the wild oregano didn’t have to kill so much. He seemed to like that explanation!

We used the same brand we sell here in the Shoppe – Joy of The Mountains.

*AND REMEMBER: Do not ever use ESSENTIAL oil of oregano or you can literally burn/damage skin and mucosal tissue. It must ALWAYS be diluted in a carrier oil, like organic olive oil, at 3:1 or 4:1. All the brands we sell have already been diluted like this and are ready for use, or to be diluted further, depending on the application.