[dropcap]Y[/dropcap]ou brush your teeth daily. It is as white as snow. However, you don’t clean your tongue because you always forget. This is not good as you may be at risk of some mouth diseases. Brushing your teeth is therefore as important as flossing your tongue. This is because bacteria are oftentimes lurking around the tongue and the only way you can get rid of them is to brush.
Here are 5 things that usually happens if you don’t clean your tongue.
Halitosis
Halitosis is also known as bad breath and it is one of the biggest consequences of not cleaning your tongue. When you don’t clean your tongue, the bacteria builds a house on it, lives there and if it stays longer than usual, it will give off a foul smell. If you have bad breath, you will discover that no one wants to talk to you.
Gum disease
When some people brush, their gum bleeds profusely. You would think they got punched or something. No, it is because they don’t brush their tongue. It is called Gingivitis and it makes your gum red, swollen, and quick to bleed.
Tooth loss
Since your gum is weak and susceptible to bacteria attack because you don’t brush your tongue, it may affect your tooth. You may slowly begin to lose it one after the other. To halt this, try as much as possible to regularly clean your tongue.
Dull taste buds
You will lose your sense of taste due to bacteria, dead skin and other food residues covering your tongue. As a result, your sense of taste will not sharp. Accordingly, when you take something sweet and you don’t feel the taste on your tongue, it may be due to not brushing your tongue.
Black Hairy Tongue
This is like the most advanced stage of a very dirty and unclean tongue. This occurs when the papillae (the small, nipple-like structures on the upper surface of the tongue that give the tongue its characteristic rough texture) is replete with leftover food and drinks {coffee}. The tongue becomes very dark if you don’t clean it. This is harmless, and it disappears after brushing the tongue. Regardless, you don’t want to be displaying a dark tongue to friends.
