One of the most important but neglected daily care is tongue hygiene. Ayurveda – the ancient wisdom of health has advised regular tongue hygiene to maintain optimum digestion.
When
Ayurveda advises tongue scrapping daily empty stomach, after brushing of teeth.
With what
Tongue scrapper made of copper or steel are easily available and best to use.
How to Use A Tongue Scraper
• Hold the two ends of the tongue scraper in both hands.
• Extend the tongue and place the tongue scraper on the surface of the tongue, as far back as is comfortable.
• Gently pull the tongue scraper forward.
• Rinse the tongue scraper and repeat as necessary, usually 7-14 times.
Precautions
• Tongue scraper can trigger the gag reflex or, on occasion, vomiting. Using a tongue scraper gets easier with practice, but this uncomfortable side effect is easily avoided by relaxing the tongue or exhaling during use.
• Overly aggressively using a tongue scraper can temporarily damage the taste buds. Gentle strokes will remove the coating on the tongue without harming the underlying tissue.
Benefits
Tongue is of importance in the digestive system and is the primary organ of taste in the gustatory system. The tongue’s upper surface (dorsum) is covered by taste buds. Your taste buds number anywhere from 3,000 to 10,000 and can distinguish tastes. A dusty mirror cannot reflect image properly similarly an coated tongue is ineffective in sensing different taste.
Not keeping your tongue clean can get you bad breath. Why so? That’s because our mouth is the home of 600 different types of bacteria and a single saliva drop contains 1 million of those bacteria. Our entire tongue remains moist due to saliva. So, can you ever imagine the number of bacteria present on our tongue! !!! Bacteria on the tongue are one cause of bad breath, or halitosis. Scarping the tongue can reduce the amount of bacteria, which will be a temporary fix for bad breath.
The process of digestion commences in the mouth. wherein the saliva is mixed with food and starts dissolving it into smaller components. Healthy taste receptors on tongue will aid in this process better.
While we sleep, our body is busy removing the toxins from the system. The tongue is one of the organ through which the body eliminates these toxins from the digestive tract. A part of these toxins manifests itself as white deposits on the tongue. By gently scraping your tongue every morning you can cleanse it of toxins.
Keeping the tongue clean also normalizes digestion.
Scrapping the tongue protects the health of the teeth and mouth cavity. Tongue cleansing is recommended to people who suffer from frequent infections of ear, throat and nose.
The tongue cleanser not only cleans but also gently massages the tongue. This is important since according to the traditional Chinese medicine the tongue contains many acupuncture points.
The colour of tongue is an indicator of health to a doctor. A healthy tongue is a nice pink shade. As it is rightly said tongue is the mirror of your digestive system.