Brushing one’s teeth after every meal, and flossing once before hitting the bed at night, is one of the most essential rituals for an active and effective dental health regime. However, if you fail to take out time to brush your tongue, or worse, brush your teeth multiple times every day, you seriously need to learn about the dire consequences of failing to adopt the healthy habit of daily tongue brushing.
Our mouth is home to over 700 different bacterial species, and even though not of all these bacteria are harmful, most of them are capable of turning into deadly viruses. And once these bad bacteria are allowed to make home in one’s mouth, they coat up your tongue and begin multiplying their production on the surface of your tongue, and in the crevices lining your papillae.
They begin spreading towards your teeth to cause serious toothaches, small bumps and other seriously damaging ailments that are both, painful and embarrassing. Your taste buds can lose their ability to sense the delicious taste of your favourite means, or worse, tiny sores and bumps can emerge on the surface of your tongue, making it unbearable to eat or drink. And if you’re a regular coffee/tea drinker or a chain smoker, the consequences of not brushing your teeth will only worsen.
It’s extremely easy for the tongue to come in contact with bacteria and allow it to spread it to the rest of the mouth and teeth because the tongue is very much like a sponge, which absorbs and spreads everything it comes in contact with. Therefore, if you allow this bacteria to emerge and spread, it will cause serious mouth diseases and ailments.
So, if you don’t want to end up in the dentist’s clinic, with your mouth wide open and sterilized silver equipment being rammed down your throat, take a look at these horrid tongue conditions to encourage yourself to brush your tongue multiple times every day.
Here, take a look:
1. Unresponsive Taste Buds
When we don’t brush our tongue for prolonged periods of time, it gets covered up food particles, bacteria and dead skin cells, known as biofilm, which coat up our taste buds, and reduce our sense of taste. If your taste buds have been feeling overly dull and unresponsive, chances are that your tongue has been covered with biofilm and requires some gently scrubbing and rinsing to help make your meals delicious again.
2. Halitosis
If you’re constantly struggling with bad breadth problems, research reveals that it has A LOT to do with your negligence at brushing your tongue. You see, when we refrain from brushing our tongue for prolonged periods of time, bacteria settles on the surface of or tongue and expanding its growth beyond control and until the point where it has spread to your entire mouth.
Naturally, a mouth filled with bacteria is bound to reek of a horridly foil odour. Studies support the fact that the bugs and bacteria that cause this foul odour are always located at the back of your tongue, which is why dentists always stress the practices of brushing the back of one’s tongue to eliminate all the bugs and bacteria that might be residing down there.
3. Hairy & Black Tongue
Very few people have heard about or experienced this rare tongue condition, however, it’s extremely easy to acquire and very painful to live with. It can easily develop if your teeth and tongue is constantly getting stained with leftover food particles and remains of the drinks and meals that you devour, particularly nicotine, spinach and coffee.
Regardless of how many efforts we put in cleaning our teeth and making them spotless white, there will always be traces of tiny stains and food particles that will hide themselves and evade our toothbrush.
When the papillae on our tongue repeatedly gets stained from drink particles, like tea and coffee, along with the particles that we can’t brush away, the tongue begins to turn abnormally furry and black. The good news is, this condition is absolutely harmless, and it will vanish as soon as you start brushing your tongue regularly.
4. Yeast infection
A yeast infection that occurs within the mouth is called an oral rush, and it occurs when the bacteria levels present within your mouth reach an alarmingly uncontrollable rate. This usually happens when you don’t brush your tongue for a long period of time, as it allows the yeast to grow unchecked and beyond control.
A yeast infection can be spotted by the occurrence of white patches on the surface of your tongue. Doctors usually treat it with antifungal medicines, and if you want to prevent it, you must brush your tongue every single day.
5. Periodontal disease
When the bacteria accumulated on the surface of your tongue travels towards your teeth, if triggers several dental ailments, primarily gum inflammation, red gums or even gingivitis. If these dental ailments are allowed to grow unchecked and untreated, the inflammation tends to grow out into a severe periodontal disease.
A periodontal disease refers to the condition where the gums begin to pull away from the teeth, and the space they leave open gets infected. This excruciatingly painful condition can cause your teeth to fall out, and even worse is the fact that chronic periodontal inflammation alarmingly increases your risk for developing heart strokes, attacks, and even miscarriages.
If you feel scared and upset with all these scary dental ailments, just grab your toothbrush and start scrubbing your tongue because it’s never too late to start a good preventive care regime.
Brush it Right
In order to make sure your tongue is clean and bacteria-free, you must learn the right way of brushing it. Take your brush and start gently scrubbing your tongue from the back, and very lightly, bring it towards the front. Then, brush out each side one after the other, and if using toothpaste makes you feel uncomfortable, feel free to use none.
However, using toothpaste offers a good cleanse that will keep your tongue hydrated and clean. Be sure to repeat this tongue-cleaning strategy at least twice a day.
Tongue Tools
You can actually invest in tongue cleaning tools found at all local drug stores and pharmacy. These are called the tongue scrapers, which have been ideally designed to get rid of all bacteria, food remains and all kinds of gunk that may have retained itself on your tongue.
Even though a regular toothbrush can also do the trick, a fancy tongue scraper is a good pick if you want to make your tongue-cleaning regime much more effective and fun.
