My tongue is grim

[Mousedwight]

NC as very embarrassing.

My tongue is really gross. It has always had stuff on it, ever since a child but I thought it looked worse (or perhaps I started paying more attention to it) so I started using a scraper, it gets off so much gunk but it comes back so quickly. It's an unpleasant process and although it improves it, it's not totally pink. The middle bit especially is always yellow.

I've read it's bacteria. Has anyone else suffered this with? I don't know what else to try. My mouth often tastes not great too.

Like I said it's been like this childhood so it's not a short term illness type thing. My dentist has never mentioned it. I feel like the only one.

I put this down to tea and coffee, but I'm also a smoker. I brush my tongue and I bought a scraper years ago, because of this. I've sometimes scraped that much I've made it sore, trying to get it pink!
My dentist and hygienist have never passed comment either!
I don't remember having it as a child though.

I have this too. Not a smoker but like a cup of tea or two. If you Google it, they say stuff like “poor oral hygiene”. I clean my teeth with electric toothbrush at least twice a day, water pik floss each evening and use a tongue brush each morning. This keeps it at bay. Miss a couple of days and furry tongue is back. Again like you both, the dentist and hygienist have never commented. Maybe I’ll ask them next time. You’re not the only one though.

I get this, I think it's due to having certain kinds of bacteria in your oral microbiome. There is a test you can do to get this checked but I'm a bit sceptical because I'm not sure that you can actually do much about it even if you know if that makes sense?

But yes apparently we need a good balance of healthy mouth bacteria to counteract the bad ones, and a lot of the hardcore mouthwashes etc just target everything indiscriminately, so can actually make the problem worse.

I find what does help me is a combination of having a deep clean done at the dentist at least yearly if not twice a year (it's pricey, but dental insurance often covers it which helps spread the cost). Then in between this, some method of inter-dental cleaning, either floss or those tiny brush stick things or I have a water flosser as well, which I'll often do along the gum line. Sometimes I put a splash of hydrogen peroxide into the water flosser with the water if I feel like it's really bad.

When I have a lot of the gross stuff on my tongue I get a bad taste in my mouth, my gums get inflamed easily and I get tonsil stones. The thing that has the biggest effect is probably the deep cleaning with the hygienist.

Recently I've started chewing xylitol gum, in the hope that helps - apparently it reduces the specific kind of bad bacteria because it contains a sugar that they are attracted to but then can't digest so they die off. You can buy it on Amazon but beware it's very very toxic to dogs.

Oh, watch your sugar intake too - I find mine is worse when I drink a lot of fizzy drinks (I don't like the diet versions) when I consciously eat much less sugar, it gets better. The bacteria that cause this kind of thing feed on sugar, so that makes a lot of sense.

I use this brush and gel, find it much better than a scraper

amzn.eu/d/iz4qqGG