Cleaning Your Tongue: 10 Reasons Why It's Important

The importance of a clean mouth has always been stressed by health professional and dentists for decades. Brushing and flossing your teeth can help prevent cavities and gum disease while leaving your mouth with a pleasant and clean feeling. But often times, we neglect one of the most important facets of oral hygiene: the tongue. The tongue serves many purposes, from things like aiding in how we chew our food to perfecting pronunciation and speech. Unfortunately, however, a clean tongue often takes a backseat to the priority of healthy teeth and gums through brushing. A healthy and clean tongue has many benefits, though. From improving freshness of breath to an increase in overall dental and oral health and even your overall health, cleaning the tongue should be added to everybody’s oral health routine, just like brushing and flossing. 

With so many things to offer, here are 10 reasons why it’s important to keep a clean tongue:

1. Fresh Breath

One of the first and most notable effects a clean tongue can have on your mouth is the improvement of halitosis, commonly known as bad breath. Although brushing and flossing your teeth twice a day can help eliminate the bacteria that cause an unpleasant odour, cleaning your tongue can really make all the difference. Cleaning Your Tongue: 10 Reasons Why It's Important
The tongue acts much like a sponge does, soaking up the germs and bacteria in your mouth. It isn’t until the tongue is clean that bad breath can be banished. No amount of brushing, flossing or rinsing with mouth wash can completely take care of the smell, and because direct tongue cleaning is not often achieved, it is often not properly eradicated, providing a sense of self consciousness for suffers. But regular cleaning through the use of a tongue scraper can aid in bad breath removal and often times completely eliminate it, leaving you with a clean and healthy mouth.

2. Improved Taste

The tongue is often taken for granted. It serves so many purposes, one of the biggest of which we tend to forget about is taste. Taste is one of our 5 senses and one that’s used everyday and allows us to experience flavours and enjoy our food — something that many of use don’t take lightly. Cleaning Your Tongue: 10 Reasons Why It's Important
The average person had around 10,000 taste buds that are replaced roughly every two weeks. Spread out over the surface of the tongue, these taste buds allow humans the capability of recognizing 5 different tastes: sweet, bitter, sour, salty and umami. But when our tongues are not clean, these taste buds can become blocked and our sense of taste is greatly diminished. Food may not have a rich flavour that it once did, and we overcompensate by adding too much salt or sugar to our meals in order to match that desired taste. Through proper tongue cleaning, however, we are able to rejuvenate the surface of the tongue and prep our taste buds for their main duty and benefit from the many tastes and flavours there are to enjoy.





3. Better Gum Health

Gum health is usually chalked up to a rigorous flossing and brushing routine. Without proper flossing, our gums become sensitive and bleed easily when agrivated. Without proper oral hygiene, the same bacteria that effects your breath can have a nasty effect on your gums. Periodontal disease can do plenty of harm to your gums, such as increasing your risk gum recession and attachment loss. This can leave gums sore and infected while increasing the risk of your teeth becoming loose. Fortunately, gum disease is completely preventable and treatable in most cases. Cleaning Your Tongue: 10 Reasons Why It's Important
By including tongue cleaning and scraping with brushing and flossing, harmful bacteria can be eradicated from your mouth to leave gums feeling strong and firm with a healthy pink shade. 

4. Healthier Teeth

There are many common problems that affect tooth health. Cavities, tooth decay and tooth sensitivity are just some. Brushing can help with them all, but with a more comprehensive routine, it is possible to completely eliminate all tooth problems. Cleaning Your Tongue: 10 Reasons Why It's Important
Through tongue scraping and cleaning, bacteria like plaque and gingivitis, potential causes of tooth decay and the same bacteria that your toothpaste targets, can be wiped out and disarmed for a healthy and happy mouth. By cleaning your whole mouth, you can increase the chance of keeping all of your teeth healthy, even into old age.

5. Improved Digestion

Though you may not know it, the first step of digestion actually occurs in the mouth. The release of saliva into our mouths helps to breakdown food particles and provides lubrication to aid in swallowing before it even reaches out stomach. Cleaning Your Tongue: 10 Reasons Why It's Important
But because it’s easy for the tongue to become burdened by bacteria, the blocked tastebuds don’t signal our bodies and salivary glands to produce the ever important saliva. By scraping the tongue, you can help to stimulate the production of saliva, which promotes healthy digestion and lessen a dry mouth.

6. Prevents Reabsorption of Toxins

One way that cleaning the tongue can have an overall improvement on your health is by eliminating the reabsorption of toxins. The tongue has the special ability to hold and absorb bacteria like a sponge. This is beneficial in instances of taking sublingual medicine under the tongue, for example. But when there is a build up of toxins and bacteria in the tongue, it can have negative effects and put a damper on your wellbeing. Cleaning Your Tongue: 10 Reasons Why It's Important
By cleaning the tongue regularly, it is possible to eliminate and dislodge the bacteria and prevent re-absorption, lessening the burden of harmful toxins on the body and its organs, such as the liver and kidneys.

7. Prevents Oral Thrush

Systemic infection in the body, known as candida, can have many detrimental effects on your everyday life. One of the ways that this infection can present itself is through oral thrush. Cleaning Your Tongue: 10 Reasons Why It's Important
Oral thrush is visible on the tongue, creating a white layer of film and fungus that not only leaves breath tasting bad, but indicates a more deep rooted issue within the body. Cleaning the tongue and effectively scraping the oral thrush away can clear away any bacteria and fungus, preventing the infection from spreading further while also providing the many other benefits listed above, such as improved breath and dental health.





8. Cardiovascular Health

A connection has recently emerged between the health of our hearts and the health of our mouths. It’s been shown in research that the bacteria and plaque found in our mouths has been found in the arteries of the heart, leaving scientists and doctors to wonder how the two are connected. Cleaning Your Tongue: 10 Reasons Why It's Important
This plaque is the same plaque that can lead to heart attacks and stroke, and the toxins from the bacteria can harm the blood vessels causing clots and inflammation. Reduction of bacteria through tongue scraping can lower the inflammation levels and possible prevent serious cardiovascular complications such as heart disease, heart attacks and stroke

9. Reduces Risk of Respiratory Infection

Much like oral thrush, clearing the bacteria away from the tongue can have positive effects on your lungs and your respiratory health. When bacteria and fungus is present on the tongue, the risk of inhalation of those harmful toxins is ever present and can produce undesired health effects, such as issues with breathing and lung infection. Cleaning Your Tongue: 10 Reasons Why It's Important
By cleaning the tongue, you can greatly reduce the risk of future lung infection for overall improved health and respiratory system.

10. Opens Meridian Channels

Ayurvedic medicine has taught us that the body is a whole. One ailment can be connected to or affect another and vice versa. Sometimes, the thing that affects us the most is the thing we least expect. Cleaning Your Tongue: 10 Reasons Why It's Important
In ancient medicine, the tongue has multiple connections to the rest of the body through meridians to other organs. Different places on the tongue affect different organs and parts of the body. Scraping the tongue can stimulate the corresponding organs in the body, increasing each function for a healthier whole being. 

Whether directly affecting the health of your mouth or increasing the function of your body as a whole, the benefits of tongue cleaning and scraping are abundant. From fresh breath to improved heart health, tongue scraping and cleaning is just as easy as it is important. Tongue scrapers can be found at most stores that carry both toothbrushes and floss. In a pinch, brushing the tongue several times over with a toothbrush can also help to eliminate bacteria and provide similar oral health benefits. To improve your health and wellbeing, including tongue scraping in your daily oral health routine alongside brushing, flossing and rinsing with a mouthwash can produce amazing benefits that will not go unnoticed by you and others



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1 comments:

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