Do you scrub your tongue when brushing your teeth? If not, you are missing a crucial part of dental hygiene. Like your teeth, your tongue can be a breeding ground for harmful bacteria if you don't brush it regularly.

Thanks to food leftovers, the bacteria in your mouth don't only thrive on the teeth and gum but also on the tongue. Your tongue also has numerous cracks where the bacteria can hide. While most advertisements about oral hygiene won't mention brushing your tongue, dentists recommend brushing your tongue to remove these bacteria.

Below are some reasons why you should brush your tongue.

Fresh Breath

Your tongue surface has microscopic crevices that trap food particles. These food particles attract harmful bacteria that produce odors, leading to bad breath. If you don't remove these bacteria, the bad breath grows worse each day, possibly leading to embarrassment and anxiety in public.

Instead of buying fresh mints and mouthwash to cover your stinky breath, you can fully regain your fresh breath by scraping or brushing your tongue to remove the harmful bacteria.

Improve Your Dental Health

Since your tongue is part of your mouth, any bacteria left on its surface can easily spread to other parts of the mouth. So, if you brush your teeth twice daily but never brush your tongue, some bacteria on your tongue will find their way to your teeth's surface and cause cavities. These bacteria can also spread to your gums and cause periodontal disease.

Regain Your Sense of Taste

If you don't brush your tongue regularly, you'll gradually lose your sense of taste as more bacteria accumulate on your tongue's service. You have thousands of taste buds on your tongue, but they may fail to pick up flavors if the bacteria in your mouth form a plaque coating over the tongue. To remove the plaque and expose more taste bugs, you should brush your tongue every time you brush your teeth.

Reduce Your Risk of Oral Thrush

Oral thrush or oral candidiasis happens when the fungi candida accumulates inside your mouth, causing a yeast infection. Though this condition is uncommon among healthy people, a person with weakened immunity can easily get the infection, especially if they have poor oral hygiene. Therefore, to prevent oral thrush, you should brush your tongue to maintain good oral health, especially when taking antibiotics.

Avoid Black Hairy Tongue

If you don't brush your tongue regularly, the papillae on the surface of your tongue won't shed their dead skin cells, leading to a black tongue with hair-like features. Though not harmless, a black hairy tongue is unattractive. You can also have a metallic taste in your mouth and a bad breath.

Improve Your Overall Health

Good oral hygiene can help prevent numerous health conditions, thus improving your well-being. For example, brushing your tongue regularly will eliminate the bacteria that cause periodontal disease and cavities. If ignored, oral conditions, such as periodontal disease and cavities, can become severe infections, like an abscess, and spread to other body parts.

Now that you know the importance of brushing your tongue, you should include it in your daily oral hygiene routine, either by brushing or scrubbing. Like your teeth, your tongue can be a hiding spot for millions of harmful bacteria if not regularly cleaned. However, due to a lack of enough emphasis on the importance of a clean tongue, some people may fail to brush their tongues, even after strictly brushing their teeth twice every day. Failure to clean your tongue leads to a buildup of bacteria that later spread to other areas of the mouth through your saliva.

At New England Dental Health Services PC, we are dedicated to offering relaxing dental services to our clients. Visit any of our two locations to experience our personalized services.