Tongue Scraping

Do you regularly look at your tongue? If so, have you noticed how it changes from day to day? One day it might have wavy edges, and the next day it might be relatively even around the surface. Maybe it has a thick coating one morning, which is gone the next day. Then there are the more obvious problems of sore places on the tongue after eating or drinking hot foods or eating too many sweets.

In Ayurveda, the tongue has always been an important indicator of a person’s current state of health and strength of digestion. In addition to giving information about hydration, fever, infection, inflammation, and general health, the tongue gives information about the strength of digestion.

Try this experiment to see how quickly the tongue responds to the digestive system: don’t eat foods or drink cold fluids past dinner tonight, and look at your tongue first thing tomorrow morning to see if it has a coating. Notice its thickness and color. Then tomorrow night, eat a bowl of ice cream after dinner, and look at your tongue the following morning. It’s likely your tongue will have a thick coating since the ice cream can extinguish the digestive fire and interfere with proper digestion. This tongue coating is known as “ama” in Ayurveda — undigested metabolic waste. The recommendation is to scrape the tongue every morning so all this waste goes down the sink instead of down your throat and back into your body.

While there is a lot of recent research on tongue scraping as an intervention to improve health outcomes, such as halitosis (bad breath), respiratory function, and tongue strength for elderly people, Ayurveda has been teaching the practice for thousands of years. In addition to removing the ama from the tongue (and the body), tongue scraping leaves the breath fresher and supports a healthy digestive system.

There are many types of tongue scrapers these days, but the most common are stainless steel or copper, which are easy to clean. Use the scraper first thing in the morning by placing it on the back of the tongue and scraping forward; rinse and repeat 5-10 times. Be sure to scrape your tongue before you drink your first fluids; otherwise, the ama will end up back in your body.