Tongue Scrapers – Are they really required?
Tongue Scrapers – Are they really required?
The mouth hosts more than 1 million different kinds of bacteria. Sounds gross?
Well, all of them aren’t bad. Some of them might even protect the mouth from certain diseases.
But what happens when we don’t clean our mouth regularly and properly?
The bad bacteria begin dividing and form colonies on all the surfaces of the mouth which includes teeth, implants, dentures and also the inside of the cheeks and the tongue.
The tongue, is generally self-cleansing, and cleans by itself during eating food and speaking. The saliva also helps in cleaning the tongue. Thus, a decreased salivary flow can result in the formation of more bacterial colonies on the tongue. The white layer on the surface of the tongue, generally seen in the morning after getting up are the colonies of bacteria that deposited overnight.
So, do you really need to clean your tongue?
Everyone has a different affinity to the formation of bacterial colonies on the tongue. This also depends on the kind of food you eat and general oral hygiene practices.
Scraping the tongue lightly every morning after brushing might be a good habit, as it would decrease the bacterial count in the mouth. There are results of decrease in bad breath also with the practice of cleaning the tongue regularly.
Overall, it could be a good practice that can be incorporated into your daily oral hygiene routine.
A note of caution: Although a good and recommended practice the scraping should be soft and not very rough. Scraping the tongue with lots of pressure could result in bleeding of the tongue.
