You’ve probably heard the hype. Tongue scraping and cleaning your tongue daily are all the rage in oral hygiene circles, but for some reason, you have never heard of this exotic practice before. Many questions arise: How exactly does it affect oral health? Is it safe to scrape your tongue? Does it damage your taste buds? Is tongue scraping the magic solution to cure your bad breath problems? In this article, we will delve into the mysterious practice of tongue scraping and explore all of the myriad health benefits it can provide you.
In this article:
The History of Tongue Cleaning
Despite its relative obscurity in modern Western society, tongue scraping has had a long and storied history dating back to ancient times. Cleaning of the tongue has been practiced for centuries by a vast number of cultures and religions spanning Asia, Africa, Arabia, Europe, and parts of the Americas.
The ancient Romans considered tongue scrapers a crucial part of their hygiene toolkit. The natural practice of medicine in India, Ayurveda, has recommended the daily removal of toxic material from the tongue for thousands of years. Early Buddhist scriptures stress the importance of cleansing the mouth and tongue to ward off “evil” odors. Even Victorians in the 18th century included tongue scrapers in their toilet kits to refresh their mouths after meals.
Despite this rich history, scientific research has only recently brought to light in modern Western society the many extraordinary health benefits of tongue scraping which we will explore in this article.
The Benefits of Tongue Scraping
We brush our teeth twice a day. We are highly encouraged to floss daily and some of us go the extra mile and rinse our mouths with mouthwash. Yet, for some reason, most of us completely neglect that large, important muscle sitting in our mouths responsible for speech, digestion, and proper breathing: the tongue!
For thousands of years, the Ayurvedic practice of tongue scraping, Jihwa Prakshalana, has stressed the importance of daily removal of harmful toxins and bacteria from the tongue’s surface to promote overall health. Let us examine some of the beneficial outcomes of incorporating tongue cleaning into our daily routines.
Better taste perception
The tongue is the organ responsible for your sense of taste so it absolutely makes sense that taking care of it would improve how well you process taste sensations. The tongue is covered by thousands of taste buds that contain sensory cells that let you experience sweet, sour, salty, and bitter tastes. When our tongues become coated with a layer of food debris, it dampens our ability to fully process the entire spectrum of tastes.
According to a 2004 study on the impact of tongue cleaners, regular tongue scraping resulted in a significant reduction of tongue coating and noticeably increased taste sensation. This suggests that tongue cleaning can refresh your palate and allow you to experience stronger flavor profiles.
Remove Bacteria on the Tongue
The human mouth is a complex microbiome comprised of hundreds of different types of bacteria, fungi, and other microbes. These organisms coexist together in a delicate balance of beneficial and harmful microorganisms in your mouth and can be viewed as a microcosm for the general health of your body.
Beneficial oral bacteria promote a healthy environment in your mouth and help produce nitric oxide which is vital to stem cells in repairing and replacing damaged cells. Harmful bacteria and fungi, when left unchecked, can cause periodontal disease, tooth decay, oral thrush, plaque buildup, and other disastrous oral maladies.
Much like the balance between the light and dark sides of the force in the Star Wars universe, it is vitally important to our oral and general health that we maintain a natural balance between “good” and “bad” microbes in our mouths.
That is where tongue cleaning comes in. While it is impossible to permanently eliminate all “bad” bacteria and microbes from our mouths, it is vital for us to bring balance to our mouths by practicing daily oral hygiene.
Everyone knows that food debris gets lodged in and between our teeth when we eat and that the natural solution to this is brushing and flossing. But did you know that odor-causing anaerobic bacteria lives and thrives in the papillae of the tongue and are responsible for a plethora of oral disease?
Tongue scraping directly battles these ill effects by removing this “bad” bacteria, as well as food debris and dead cells, that accumulate on the tongue. A 2014 crossover study on the effects of tongue cleaning show that even after 3 days of tongue cleaning noticeably reduced the amount of bacteria coating the tongue.
Combined with brushing, flossing, and other recommended oral hygiene techniques, cleaning your tongue can help root out and eliminate any potential hiding places in your mouth for harmful microbes.
Helps Get Rid of Bad Breath
The back of your tongue is a difficult place to reach with your toothbrush during your daily oral hygiene routine. Unfortunately, it is also the perfect, oxygen-deficient place for anaerobic bacteria like mutans streptococci and lactobacilli to thrive and produce unpleasant, smelly sulfur compounds that lead to halitosis (bad breath) and gingivitis. These types of bacteria hide in the papillae at the back of the tongue and interact with food particles to contribute to bad breath.
A Brazilian study on halitosis, revealed that tongue scraping, in combination with brushing and mouthwash, could effectively remove the bacteria at the back of the tongue and consequently improve breath issues.
Another 2004 study showed that the unique shape of specific tongue cleaners were much more efficient at removing bacteria than simply using a toothbrush.
Improved oral hygiene
While the sticky film of bacteria known as plaque is commonly known to build up on your teeth and gums, it can also accumulate on your tongue and similarly degrade the quality of your oral health.
This coated or “hairy” tongue acts as a safe haven in the mouth for the same bacteria that cause gum disease and cavities. Removing this bacterial film on the tongue not only helps prevent dental and gum disease but also promotes faster healing of oral injuries.
Better Digestion
A randomized crossover study in 2018 postulated that tongue scraping benefits included noticeable improvements in digestion and bowel movements. In the study, a group of adults aged 20-60 started incorporating tongue cleaning into their daily routines for a period of 4 weeks. After the study period, the test subjects reported numerous positive improvements to body condition and digestive ability.
The researchers suggested that this result was due to how tongue scraping has a direct connection to how satisfied you feel after eating. By scraping off the coating on your taste buds, your sense of taste will increase and you will be able to fully appreciate the food you consume.
This leads to you only eat the necessary amount to achieve the feeling of fullness. Without an excess amount of food to tax your digestive system, there will be less of a likelihood that some of your food goes undigested and negatively impacts proper digestion.
Improve Overall Health
Oral hygiene is inextricably linked to the total overall health of your body. If harmful bacteria is allowed to build up in your mouth and then swallowed, it will continuously strain your immune system. The ingested toxins and bacteria act to suppress your immune system by overloading and overworking it to fight off the constant flow of bad microbes entering your gastrointestinal tract.
Thus, routine brushing, flossing, and tongue scraping is vital in minimizing the bacterial load that your body and immune system need to deal with on a daily basis.
Is Scraping Your Tongue Safe?
Like any other activity, tongue scraping is absolutely a safe activity as long as you do it properly. Let’s address some of the concerns people may have about cleaning your tongue:
- Taste bud damage: As long as you are employing firm yet gentle pressure when tongue scraping and not aggressively rubbing on your tongue, there should be no danger of damaging your taste buds. Your taste buds can only benefit from the tongue bacteria being removed from them.
- Tongue lacerations: It is important to make sure your tongue scraper does not have any sharp or rough edges that can potentially cut your tongue. When choosing a tongue scraper, you want to find one that has an even edge that is smooth enough to safely glide along the surface of your tongue.
- Gag reflex: Given how far back on the tongue you need to place the tongue scraper to effectively clean it, some people may experience gagging when tongue scraping for the first time. It is important to ease yourself into the practice and gauge your own, comfortable sweet spot on your tongue to initiate the tongue scraping process.
The Benefits Speak For Themselves
At this point in the article, it should be abundantly clear how beneficial to your health cleaning your tongue can be. With rising health care costs and a plethora of health concerns piling up in modern society, every little action we can take to improve our overall health can prove to be priceless.
A complete oral cleaning routine consisting of brushing, flossing, rinsing, and tongue scraping is cornerstone to your overall health efforts. It is never too late to add a healthy habit to your daily morning ritual and take advantage of all the potential benefits scraping your tongue can offer!
