Do you clean or scrape your tongue? Do you know that there are benefits to scraping your tongue and that this has been in practice for seven thousand years? Ancient civilizations would scrape their tongues!
Take a moment to look at your tongue right now. Grab a mirror and stick your tongue out. Is your tongue pink? Is it white? Is it yellow? What do you see? A healthy tongue is a pink color, similar to the color of the insides of your cheeks. In ayurvedic – or Ancient Indian – medicine, different conclusions are drawn based on the color of your tongue.
For example, if your tongue is white, this could be because of a fungal infection.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the word “Ayurveda”, it is based on ancient Indian writings and is one of the world’s oldest medical systems. It is still practiced regularly in India and around the world today.
Just like plaque and bacteria build up in between our teeth and gums, they can also build up between the taste buds on our tongue. For this reason alone, cleaning the tongue should be a part of your oral hygiene routine, right along with brushing and flossing your teeth. If you’re not cleaning your tongue currently, I highly encourage you to start doing so. Additionally, if you’re cleaning your tongue regularly, your taste buds will be able to do their job better – so things will taste better – more savory, more sweet, more sour, and more spicy, and more umami!
If your tongue is not cleaned, bacteria and toxins can accumulate on the tongue and in ayurvedic medicine, it is believed that these toxins that build up will then contribute to weakened immunity throughout the entire body. Removing bacteria and toxins will also help to reduce or eliminate bad breath!
Personally, I scrape or clean my tongue every single day. I feel it if I don’t – I feel buildup on my tongue if I don’t scrape it and to me, that feels really gross! I even bought my 7 year old daughter a little tongue scraper which she uses a few times a week. Again, I’d highly recommend you try it out.
I do want to stress that this is more gentle than it sounds! The tongue cleaners are not sharp. The reason I say the word “scrape” is because you do have to apply a little pressure as you use it.
Which tongue scraper should you use and why? There are plastic tongue scrapers and metal ones. In my opinion – and according to ayurvedic medicine – the best tongue scraper to use is a copper one because copper has antimicrobial properties. “Antimicrobial” means to kill organisms or stop their growth – which goes along with what we’re trying to accomplish by cleaning the tongue in the first place – removing bacteria. Just like back in the day, there used to be copper door handles to reduce the spread of bacteria. Ancient civilizations also used copper containers to store water and copper cups to drink from.
I’ve linked the copper tongue cleaners that I like below. They come in a pack of 5 so they’re good for families. I’ve also linked single copper tongue cleaners, so take your pick. If you do get the family pack, you may want to all take a look at each other’s tongues before you clean them for the first time! You might be surprised at what you see!
So that’s really it my friends!
Remember, my friends, you can never have TMI about TMJ! Thank you!
Copper Tongue Scrapers 5 Pack:
Copper Tongue Scraper:
