How does your tongue indicate bodily disorders

You might wonder why physicians are looking at your tongue. Right?

Tongue is one of the strongest muscular organs in our body. Apart from doing basic mechanical functions such as speaking, swallowing, our tongue serves as an indicator of our health. This is because the tongue is having an extensive anatomical relationship with most of our vital organs. In essence, doctors utilize your tongue as a source to get a clue regarding the amiss happening inside your body.

Despite every person’s tongue has distinct characteristics, a healthy tongue has some typical characters such as pink-colored with a white coating on the surface, and should have nodules along the surface.

When you notice abnormalities in your tongue’s shape, color, and coating, they might be the sign of deficiencies in your body. In this article, our dentists have explained this. Keep reading to know more.

Tongue Shape

  • Thin tongue – Thin tongue is an indicator of dehydration problems and certain life-threatening diseases that damage the internal organs excessively.
  • Puffy Tongue – It is identified with the rippled indentions that appear along the tongue’s sides whilst its notches are painful. This is a sign of malnutrition and at times, happens with serious illnesses like blood stagnation.

Tongue Color

  • Bright Red Tongue – The red-colored tongue indicates a rise in our body heat whilst it is also a sign of hormonal imbalance. If you notice a reddish appearance in the tongue tip alone, it may happen due to psychological stress.
  • Purple Tongue – This is a warning sign of inflammatory conditions in our body. Besides this, the purple-colored tongue indicates various problematic conditions like weak immune system, vitamin deficiency.
  • Pale Tongue – Mostly, pale-colored tongue occurs with anemia that lacks healthy red blood cells in our body. It also happens with shortage of blood and low energy levels.

Tongue Coating

  • Thick Coating – A thick tongue indicates poor gut health, intestinal problems, and digestive disorders. In simply, one or more organs in your digestive system are in distress which is exhibited with a thick coat on your tongue.
  • Yellow Tongue Coat – Infections such as Yeast bacterial overgrowth (Candida) in your body is the root cause of yellow tongue coat.
  • Cracks on the tongue – Cracks or Fissures over the tongue body is a common dental disorder but if you notice fault lines around the tongue’s centerline, it is a symptom of chronic stress and tension.
  • Thick White Coating – In general, white & black patches on the tongue happen with the accumulation of dead cells, bacteria in the bumps over the tongue surfaces. On the other hand, viral infectious conditions like common cold, flu are also responsible for such thick white coating on your tongue body.

Bottom line

Even though strange tongue appearances such as discolorations, abnormal shape, and coating happen with improper dental hygiene and dental disorders, various health problems also mimic the signs in the tongue as discussed here.

Therefore, Scrape your tongue regularly and take a look at the tongue’s color, shape, and coating by simply looking at the mirror. This is an affordable way to diagnose various bodily disorders at an early stage.