The sometimes disregarded dental hygiene practice of tongue washing will be discussed in this article, along with the significant contribution tongue cleaning makes to improved oral and overall health.
It’s crucial to maintain a healthy oral flora by being competent conductors of the symphony of bacteria in our mouths, as we frequently stress that dental health is closely linked to overall health. Establishing and preserving a healthy microbial balance at the start of the digestive tract—our mouth—is, in essence, a crucial step in navigating the route to higher whole-body health.
Let’s begin by discussing the importance of tongue washing in any holistic oral hygiene regimen and its potential effects on our overall health.
Researchers have discovered that the mouth could serve as a holding ground for bacteria that might inflame the stomach.
What makes this so crucial?
Hippocrates once remarked, “All disease begins in the gut,” some 2,500 years ago. Therefore, the body cannot be healthy if the gut is ill.
Common oral bacteria may exacerbate and prolong intestinal inflammation, according to research. If untreated, this may lead to or at least exacerbate Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, inflammatory bowel disease, and leaky gut.
The mouth is where it all starts.
In actuality, the mouth is where the digestive tract starts.
Food is broken down into smaller pieces by the mouth and combined with saliva, which contains digestive enzymes. The masticated food then passes down the throat and into the stomach. Following the digestion of the food by the stomach, spleen, and pancreas, the small intestine receives the nutrients from the digested food, and the colon (long intestine) removes any leftover food waste.
The important thing to remember is that 80% of our immune system is located in the digestive tract, and the mouth is where the entire system starts.
For this reason, using holistic dental health techniques like oil pulling can greatly support the development of a healthy gut microbiota.
You see, we use our saliva to consume a lot of oral microorganisms every day. Saliva washing the digestive tract is undoubtedly beneficial to our general health if the mouth is healthy and has a balanced oral flora.
However, everything “downstream” may suffer from this unbalanced mouth ecosystem if the mouth is out of balance and “thug bugs” are in charge.
For instance, an overabundance of the oral bacterium Klebsiella may ultimately result in digestive issues. Keep in mind that the germs go through the remainder of our digestive system when we swallow. According to research, some test participants experienced a severe inflammatory immunological reaction when Klebsiella bacteria overpopulated their guts.
What does this have to do with tongue cleaning?
Klebsiella are facultative anaerobic bacteria, to be precise. This indicates that although they may survive in settings with normal oxygen levels, they really flourish in low-oxygen settings.
And where in the mouth is the most prevalent low-oxygen environment?
Yes. Infrequent tongue cleaning produces a low-oxygen environment that is conducive to the growth of bacteria such as Klebsiella. Actually, our tongues are home to the vast majority of the microorganisms in our mouths.
Maintaining thin biofilms in the mouth is the first tactic for regulating our oral flora, as we have already discussed.
Low oxygen levels produced by thick biofilms allow nasty germs like Klebsiella to proliferate.
On the other hand, maintaining thin biofilms on our tongue and teeth through dental care practices produces an oxygen-rich environment that deters nasty bugs while simultaneously promoting the growth of beneficial microorganisms.
How to keep the tongue clean
Although it’s really easy, tongue cleaning is a bit more complicated than simply brushing your tongue.
The first step is to eliminate the low-oxygen environment by getting the “gunk” (biofilm) from our tongue. Furthermore, brushing the tongue just doesn’t get rid of the debris.
For the first stage, we recommend using a tongue cleanser, an oral hygiene instrument that has been utilized for generations in the “Ayurvedic” branch of traditional Indian medicine.
Reach as far back on your tongue as feels comfortable using your tongue cleaner (or spoon, with the bowl pointing down) towards your tongue. Next, move your instrument along your tongue from the rear, close to your throat, to the front, toward the tip, while applying little pressure. After that, rinse the debris from your spoon or tongue cleaner.
Please go ahead and do this now if you haven’t already.
When you see how much biofilm comes off a tongue that hasn’t been scraped frequently, you’ll never stop cleaning your tongue.
After three or four fast scrapes, rinse and spit. In addition to making your tongue healthier, many people discover that this improves their capacity to detect delicate food flavors.