How are tonsil stones formed

Tonsil stones are a disease that causes headaches for many patients because their most obvious symptom is bad breath, which greatly affects the patients' normal life and work. Patients often spit out or cough out some millet-like things that emit an extremely unpleasant odor. This thing is stones formed by the accumulation of bacteria and food residues in the tonsils. The following will introduce to you how tonsil stones are formed.

1. Accumulation of food residues

Tonsils usually look like a pair of small, dimpled golf balls on either side of your throat. Friends with larger tonsils and deeper crypts will often have food residues accumulated inside. Because saliva contains digestive enzymes, the stuck food will be broken down, especially the starch and sugar in the food will be digested, and the remaining hard parts will remain in the tonsils, which does not look like what we eat.

2. Your own oral substances

In fact, the lumps you cough up are far more than just food residues. Tonsils also retain some other oral substances, such as bacteria, dead cells shed from the upper wall of the mouth, etc. Some of the cells contain small amounts of keratin, a substance also found in fingernails and rhino horns. Whatever these substances are, they are attacked by the white blood cells, and after the battle the crypts of the tonsils are littered with these lumps.

3. Not paying attention leads to continuous enlargement

Most people swallow the lumps when they are small and don't notice them growing bigger. In people with larger tonsils, food particles travel deeper into the crypts, where they continue to "grow." The enlarging lumps are called tonsil stones. When these tonsil stones are observed under a microscope, they are found to be a mixture of food particles, bacteria, some oral substances and white blood cells that are stacked and intertwined like pearls. Usually they are small particles located in the middle of the soft cheese-like tonsils. But sometimes, they can become larger and look like rough, rounded stones that are beige or gray. What’s more, they can become super large. Patients often have a history of repeated attacks of tonsil stones in their early years.

The above is an introduction to how tonsil stones are formed. It is very important to clean your mouth.