Enlarged uvula

I too have woken up with this , I drank and had a Mexican dip last night , this is the second time it's happened , too much of a coincidence , it must be something in the combination .

My brother is a doc and he told me it's because of snoring, dryness or food. He said just drink Ice water when it happens and an ibprofen and you'll be fine, Sure enough, I drink freezing cold water and take 2 Advil's every time and it's back to normal within an hour.

Cheers!

I agree with this statement. It's definitely an allergic reaction of some sort. I have been experiencing this at a rate of twice a year for the past 7-8 years. Usually a cortisone shot will take the swelling away within minutes. But only a doctor or ER can do this for you.
However, since its definitely a reaction to either, food, medicine, dehydration or who knows what, it's a message from our body saying that there's something going on and finding the actual cause is difficult.
My recommendation is, don't eat or consume alcohol late at night (right before you go to bed), as it apoears that most of us had this reaction when either of those took place.
Life threatening? Wouldn't say so. Only if it became so swollen that it completely blocked our airway and we were too drunk or drugged to actually wake up from it. Then yes, I can see the threat. Being overweight doesn't help either.
Either way it's a warning sign and we should definitely do something about it

Hi I hope this helps someone. This happens to me maybe 3-4 times a year and can be extremely uncomfortable. I find it happens on nights where I'm very tired or I drink too much and snore heavily. I have found anything cold will bring the swelling down fairly quickly. So ice water, slurpee, icecrean, etc

I don’t understand why people are getting so worked up about this. If you snore, yes occasionally you will wake up with a swollen uvula. Especially if you sleep on your back. It happens because the snoring is vibrating the uvula, it potentially gets irritated, and swells. Now if you don’t snore there are other causes that I have found out by experience, a lot of spicy or acidic food before bed can cause your uvula to swell. But this one is a cause as well, hasn’t happened to me in awhile because I stopped drinking, occaissionally I would drink a little too much and had to make myself throw up by sticking my finger in the back of my throat. Now the first couple times I couldn’t figure out why I was waking up with a swollen uvula, eventually I put 2 and 2 together and understood why.

I just woke up with the same thing . It literally caused me to gagg. I think I was snoring cause my mouth was dry. Right now ice and cold water are helping. (I took a zyrtec just in case)

This happens when I snore really hard! I don’t stress about it. It’s an occasional thing and it goes away.

This was a great blog to find for me. I was at a party and had a little to much to drink myself, or a lot too much is more truthful. As such, my lovely wife got me safely home but was unable to get me upstairs so she plunked me on the couch. I normally wear a CPAP but in this case was nowhere near it. When I woke up I had the worst sore throat and thought I had a phlegm ball in my throat, when I tried to hack it up I realized that it was my uvula and it was gagging me to almost panic state. It was raw and hanging all the way down to my tongue. I contemplated going to the Dr. several times but the more research I did I realized that I actually caused damage to my nostrils, throat and uvula from very hard snoring. This started on a Sunday morning and by Tuesday morning I noticed white patches of white skin forming, especially on the uvula, I originally thought it was strep and had an antibiotic from a prior note and stared taking it. Within a day or two I realized that it was more or less damaged skin, (scabs) forming from the damage but in your mouth it never dries. Let me say, this was one of the most painful things I have ever endured, it was like the worst case of strep that lasted about a week of severe pain, slowly subsided each day and took almost two weeks before I could even eat solid food as that just made it worse and set me back even more. Life was smoothies and protein shakes for a couple of weeks. Everything in my throat seemed to be sore from this and even my neck and voice hurt. There does not seem to be anything special anyone can do for this endure and conquer. I did have my own steroid dose pack and waited until day 6 to start, wish I had done so sooner as this made the biggest difference in the swelling and pain. I know a lot of folks have had different experiences especially with the steroids and I would have gone to the Dr. had I not already had my own meds. Ultimately, I had antibiotics to ward off infection and steroids to fend off the swelling and inflammation but nutrition is key. Since I could not eat solid food I went to the Vitamix to chug down plenty of veggies and fruits along with some protein shakes to help my body heal. It was extremely painful to swallow anything for over a week and then I could slowly start adding very smooth and bland food. Stay away from processed foods, this will only add to inflammation, (even choose high quality protein shakes, minimally processed). My uvula took a couple of weeks to return to almost normal and I am in high hopes that I’m time it returns to its old self and ceases to stop touching my tongue.

I have been having the same problem off and on for about 2 years. Only happens with large amounts of alcohol consumption and I've even narrowed it down to certain types of wine as beer and hard liquor never have this occur. I did all the test for allergies with the Dr and no diagnosis was ever made. Going to contact the wine companies for ingredient lists to find out if there's something different in their products.

Update: after about three weeks (21) days everything seems to have gone back to normal. Some of the white skin Started coming off after a couple of weeks and it seems like dead skin. Really was quite freaked out for a while. I just hope no long term damage has occurred.