Taking Care of Your Tongue: Bad Breath and You
Most of us make a point of brushing our teeth when we get bad breath.
Many of us make a point of flossing more or maybe using an oral irrigation device to get plaque off the parts of our teeth below the gum line when we get bad breath.
Almost none of us clean our tongues when we get bad breath.
If you have ever noticed a sticky and foul-tasting substance on your tongue, bad breath is probably also present. The sticky film that can cover the tongue can glue billions of bad breath bacteria to the surfaces of our tongues.
It’s not hard to identify the biofilm of bad breath bacteria on our tongues. Just look in a mirror and stick out your tongue as you say “Ah.” If there is a white or gray or yellowish coating on your tongue, or it it looks “furry,” there is close to a 100% chance that you also have bad breath.
It is even possible to taste this nasty bad breath film. It usually takes sour but sulfurous, a little like overly aged pickled eggs or yogurt that has gone bad. Almost no one likes it, but chances are that you would be surprised at the number of people who view this film on the tongue as an ordinary thing.
Believe it or not, a tongue that tastes bad will make your breath smell horrible – and can even be a symptom of something more serious. It is in your best interest to keep your tongue as clean as possible, as I will show in this article.
The Anatomy of Your Tongue
Let us first look at the tongue itself. Did you know that the tongue is the only muscle in your body that is attached at only one end? It’s true, as is the fact that your tongue collects more bacteria than any other structure in your mouth. The tongue collects about 2/3 as many bacteria as your teeth and gums combined.
Covered in dozens of taste buds, your tongue is used not only in tasting but to help move saliva around in your mouth, which helps your mouth stay clean. Due to its size and central location, as well as its moist surface, your tongue collects an enormous amount of debris, bacteria, and mucus throughout the day. And due to its size and central location, your tongue is sensitive to changes in the physiology of your mouth.
The Physiology of Your Tongue
We tend to think of digestion as something that happens in the stomach and intestines and liver, but the fact is, digestion begins just as soon as food touches your tongue.
Your tongue rolls chewed food into a bolus for easy passage down your throat, missing your airways. It mixes saliva with your food to moisten it so it easier to swallow, but also so enzymes can begin breaking down carbohydrates while food is still in your mouth.
Lots of things can go wrong with your tongue:
Women who have particularly high levels of progesterone during the second half of their periods sometimes develop bumps on the front and sides of their tongue. These bumps accumulate the bacteria that cause morning breath.
Various species of yeast normally grow throughout the digestive tract, including the tongue. Sometimes antibiotic treatment or overuse of mouthwash can kill of the microorganisms that compete with yeast and cause a film of yeast to accumulate in the mouth and on the tongue. This film is usually white.
“Lie spots” (so called because ancient myth taught they were triggered by telling lies) can break out on the tongue when it is bitten or scratched. These lie spots can host bad breath bacteria.
White spots known as leukoplakia are common in smokers. They are sometimes pre-cancerous. And if they cause the breakdown of tissue, bad breath can result.
All of these kinds of inflammation and irritation break down tissue that can feed bad breath bacteria. If you have noticed a white substance on your tongue, then you have seen what is causing your chronic bad breath: bacteria. Specifically, the bacteria live in the substance that coats your tongue and produce volatile sulfur compounds, or VSCs. These compounds put off a pungent odor that definitely is not pleasing to you (or your spouse, significant other, or best friend, for that matter). To find a truly effective bad breath cure, you will have to neutralize or eliminate these compounds.
Tongue Cleaning 101
How do you accomplish this?
It’s really very simple. You scrape or brush the bacterial film off your tongue.
Please note that the purpose of tongue cleaning is not to scrape the tongue itself. It is only to scrape the bacterial film lying on your tongue. People can and do get serious infections by scraping the tongue raw. Bacteria that get into the tongue can even pass in the general circulation and cause bacterial infections in the heart.
To scrape your tongue, use a plastic tongue scraper (like an ice scraper, but don’t use an actual ice scraper to scrape your tongue) or your toothbrush. You want to scrape enough that it’s obvious that you have gotten rid of film on your tongue but you do not want even the slightest trace of bleeding from your tongue. If your tongue bleeds, or it hurts, stop. Injury to your tongue is counterproductive for controlling bad breath.
After you have finished getting as much of the sticky film as you can off your tongue, rinse your brush or scraper and set them aside to dry. You don’t want to put more bacteria back on your tongue after you have scraped them off.
Then you need to be patient. You want get rid of all the bacteria on your tongue in one scraping, and new bacteria are constantly arriving from your gums and teeth. It can take up to a month of scraping two or three times a week to get bad breath under control—but when you do, you can keep bad breath under control as long as you continue your routine of brushing three times a day, flossing once a day, and scraping two or three times a week.
