3 Tongue Health Facts to Keep You Strong
By Chris Brown
You speak with it. You eat with it. You use it to whistle and click. But do you ever think to give your tongue the self-care it needs? Keeping the important tongue organ healthy can mean much more than a clear speaking ability, it can lead to a healthier life overall.
Keeping Your Tongue in Shape Is a Thing
Just like the rest of you, your tongue can gain weight if you eat unhealthily. Since tongues contain a high percentage of fats, overall increased body fat similarly grows the tongue in volume. A "fat" tongue means a likelier chance of obstructed breathing during sleep, resulting in snoring and dangerous sleep apnea (where a person stops breathing mid-sleep). The fix for an unfit tongue is to reduce one's overall weight through healthy eating and exercise.
Taste Bud Health Means Healthy Eating
Each tongue contains between 2,000 and 4,000 taste buds that signal the brain with five different tastes designed to provide information about the foods we eat. Rather than regions, various flavors and taste sensors exists all over the tongue. Keeping one's taste in top shape influences your ability to stay healthy. Taste has evolved to help people identify old, spoiled, or dangerous foods. Without it, one may consume a food that causes health problems.
You can reset your taste buds by reducing your exposure to processed foods and certain ingredients. Particularly wheat, sugar, dairy, alcohol, and caffeine reduce the tongue's sensitivity. By taking a break from these foods, and varying the flavors of your diet, you can make your tongue into a more honed instrument.
The Tongue Is a Litmus Test for Health
The color and texture of the tongue can be indicative of certain health problems or vitamin deficiencies. Healthy tongues are normally pink in color and bumpy. However, color changes can indicate various types of infections. Certain infections or allergies turn a tongue red, while fungal infections can cause white patches to form, and blackness may signal that a bacterial overgrowth has taken hold (requiring antibacterial treatments). Similarly, other health concerns can be shown via the tongue's texture. Mineral deficiencies for example, especially with folic acid, iron, and B12, smoothen the tongue's texture.
Basically, if your tongue changes in color or texture, it may be an early warning sign of deficiency or disease that might mean it's time to visit your primary care doctor.
To learn more about your health, wellness and fitness, see your local chiropractor at The Joint Chiropractic in Boise, Idaho.