Whether Tongue Tied or Used for Lashing, the Tongue Can Be a Window on Your Health

In this political season, some cynics suggest that if an elected officials lips are moving, he or she is lying. Buddha called one’s tongue “a sharp knife that kills without drawing blood.” Washington Irving, opined that one’s tongue is “the only edge tool that grows keener with constant use.”

Speaking more scientifically, your tongue comprises an extremely movable group of muscles with the ability to move in many directions. It can get stretch or shrink, get longer and shorter, go up and down, bend backwards, and round itself in to groves. All that, the National Center for Biotechnology Information explains, is essential for pronouncing the consonants “t (Third party),” “d (Democrat),” “l”(Liberal) or the rolling “r (Republican) even when there’s no election in the offing.

How well your tongue works may depend on how healthy it is. Dr Yanfang Ren, professor at the University of Rochester’s Eastman Institute for Oral Health, has been quoted as saying one way to judge that is by its color.

The tongue’s natural color ordinarily sits somewhere between pale pink and dark red, with a thin, white-ish layer of keratin (the protein that builds you hair and nails) on top. But that may shift from day to day depending on what you eat and drink. Think such common foods such as berries, beets, candy, and coffee all of which may cause temporary discolorations.

The phenomenon is so intriguing that science websites on both sides of the Big Pond–the Guardian from Britain and the homegrown WebMed–have documented it in vivid detail.

Start with the most startling. A bright red tongue, sometimes known as “strawberry tongue,” might be due to an allergic reaction or, more seriously, the appropriately named scarlet fever. If your red tongue is also smooth and painful, it might be a sign that your body doesn’t have enough vitamin B3. Red patches with a raised, white border (aka “geographic tongue,” because these spots tend to move around), is painless, benign, incurable, and common, at one time or another affecting as many as three in every ten of us humans Why is still a question. The National Institutes of Health Clinical Center dentist Jiwon Lim theorizes in the Guardian that it may be linked to stress or an autoimmune condition.

A yellowish tongue usually owes its unattractive color to a buildup of green debris most common among those who still smoke. Or, says Lim, it could be a plain and simple sign of poor oral hygrine. Your tongue may look darker after you take an antacid with bismuth, an element which helps to wipe out bacteria that upset your stomach but also stains the surface of the when it mixes with saliva.

Happily, the dark will disappear when the you stop taking the meds. More problematic is a tongue turned dark and maybe “hairy.” This happens when the tiny humps on the back of the tongue called papillae aren’t shed regularly and grow longer than usual, allowing them to trap bacteria and debris in the mouth, most likely occurring among patients with a compromised immune system that can’t fight off bacteria that congregate normally in the mouth.

Finally, creamy white spots might look harmless but they could be thrush, a fungal infection after you’ve been ill or when you’re taking a drug that disrupts the normal balance of bacteria in your mouth. If you see hard, flat, white areas that can’t be scraped away, they might be malignant which means it’s time to check with your dentist to check it out.