Cleaning Your Tongue For a Cleaner and Fresher Mouth
Most people already know the importance of brushing teeth twice a day. But, are you taking the extra 2 seconds for cleaning your tongue each time?
Some folks even go as far as brushing their teeth three to four times and flossing at least once. While both brushing and flossing are effective, they’re not exactly enough, especially when it comes to getting rid of bad breath.
To get rid of bad breath, you’ll want to make some necessary changes to how you brush your teeth, specifically, by including your tongue.
How To Brush Your Tongue
Once you’ve finished brushing your teeth, don’t forget to give your tongue a good scrape. You can use the bristles of your toothbrush for this. Although, if you’re lucky, your toothbrush has a built-in tongue scraper or cleaner on the back of its head. Then again, any one of the two does the job well enough and what’s really important here is that you clean your tongue.
The reason why you should clean your tongue is that it can trap food particles under a thin layer of mucus. This layer of food particles can build-up and eventually cause bad breath.
To clean your tongue, all you have to do is brush the top of your tongue gently, preferably starting at the back of the tongue and slowly working your way towards the opening of your mouth.
Why You Should Use a Tongue Scraper
While both the bristles and a tongue scraper do the jobs well enough, the latter cleans your tongue much more thoroughly. This is because the tongue scraper is able to peel the layer of food particles and debris from the tongue in a way that the bristles of a regular toothbrush just can’t.
Take some quick advice from your friendly local Greensboro dentist – When using the tongue scraper, make sure that you don’t exert too much force or effort. Else, you may find your tongue bleeding or feeling sore. Work slowly and gently, concentrating on the center of the tongue as it is where most of the odor-causing bacteria is located.
Don’t forget to clean the tongue scraper by rinsing it under warm water after each time you clean your tongue.
As for how often you should be cleaning your tongue, you should be doing so as often as you brush your teeth. Although, at a minimum, cleaning your tongue once in the morning and then again before you sleep should be enough. You can also try cleaning your tongue in the middle of the day if you notice your tongue feeling dry or if a foul taste suddenly starts to develop in your mouth.
Cleaning your tongue may be new to you, but it’s something worth a shot. Doing so can severely boost your oral hygiene, all the while preventing bad breath. You can also try to take things up a step further by using mouthwash to rid your mouth of any additional bacteria.
Sticking to a habit that’s more thorough than just simply brushing teeth is one way of making sure that your mouth feels much cleaner and fresher than ever before.
Give your tongue the attention it needs, before your bad breath catches the attention of someone else in a bad way.
If you’re suffering from bad breath with no known cause, contact Dr. Graham Farless, DDS at 336-282-2868 to schedule an appointment today. Or visit www.gsodentist.com for information regarding our practice.