Keeping Your Tongue Healthy For a Complete Oral Care
When it comes to improving oral health, people believe brushing, and flossing their teeth twice a day is all that it takes, however, they don’t realize that they are neglecting a very important part of oral care, that is, tongue cleanliness. Tongue is the most forgotten place to clean in oral hygiene, as people tend to focus more on keeping their teeth clean.
It is true that keeping your teeth clean will protect you from dental problems such as tooth decay, plaque, gum diseases, etc but it is not enough to eradicate majority of harmful bacteria in the mouth. This is because tongue carries more harmful bacteria than teeth. Hence, cleaning your tongue is an extremely part of oral hygiene. Failure to keep the tongue clean can cause different tongue problems such as soreness, discoloration, taste change, swelling, crevice and bumps.
Benefits of Cleaning Tongue
There are many benefits of cleaning your tongue other than just eliminating bad breath such as:
- Germs from the atmosphere as well as from food and drinks tend to stuck on the jagged and uneven surface of the tongue. Brushing your teeth removes the bacteria from tooth enamel; however, if you don’t brush your tongue then the bacteria breeding on it can easily be transferred to teeth. Moreover, since the tongue’s surface has elevations and depressions, debris and bacteria can easily hide in the gaps that get piled up if not cleaned.
- Cleaning the tongue keeps your taste buds better exposed and fresh. This helps in enhancing your taste and hence, you would be able to enjoy your meals better.
- Our body is continuously trying to get rid of unwanted toxins while we sleep and since majority of bacteria hordes on the film of the tongue, it is important to clean your tongue properly so that our body does not reabsorb these toxins.
- Ever wondered why the doctor always asks you to show your tongue when you are sick? That is because your tongue serves to be the mirror reflection of the various internal organs of your body. Hence, keeping your tongue clean will keep the other organs of your body healthy, for example, scrapping the center of your tongue will keep your stomach healthy.
- Lastly, cleaning your tongue improves your overall dental health by keeping your teeth and gums healthy.
Tips for Keeping Your Tongue Clean
Since now, we have established that cleaning your tongue clean is extremely important part of oral care; following are some tips for keeping your tongue healthy:
- Use toothbrush to clean your tongue. Every time you brush your teeth, whether it is twice or thrice, make a point of cleaning your tongue as well.
- You can also use a tongue scrapper to clean the surface of your tongue by scrapping it back and forth and side to side. Don’t use it too harshly as it can damage your taste buds.
- Rinsing your tongue with mouthwash after scrapping, is a good way of keeping your tongue clean; it not only sterilizes your tongue but also removes bad breath.
- Avoid eating fruits such as black berries and cherries as they can damage the color of your tongue and drink a lot of water so that dehydration doesn’t affect the color of your tongue.
Tongue is plays an important role in eating, drinking and communicating with others and keeping it healthy is essential. Hence, for a complete oral health it is vital to keep your teeth as well as your tongue clean.
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