Tongue Scraping, What It Is And How To Do It

If you’re looking for little ways to up your wellness routine without a lot of effort then tongue scraping might be for you.

While it sounds like an ancient form of torture, is actually an ancient form of self care. So if you have an extra minute in the morning here’s a little hack that can improve your oral health and even your digestion. 

What is Tongue Scraping 

Simply put tongue scraping is a self care modality used to clean the tongue. As the name suggests, you scrape the surface of your tongue using a “u” shaped metal or plastic device (this is the one I use). Running the tongue scraper along your tongue removes bacteria, build up and toxins. 

Why Tongue Scraping

While tongue scraping does cleanse the tongue it also benefits other areas of the body. Scraping the tongue removes bacteria and toxins so that they do not make their way back into the body through the digestive system. So it not only improves the health of your mouth but also the health of your gut! 

When to Scrape Your Tongue

The best time to scrape your tongue is in the morning when you wake up before you do anything else. Here’s why, at night while you sleep your body naturally goes through a detoxification process. One of the ways it does this is by bringing toxins to the surface of the tongue. 

So let’s say you wake up, drink water, drink coffee and eat breakfast without scraping your tongue. The bacteria and toxins that were sitting on your tongue overnight are then pushed back into your digestive system. Ewww. The goal is to remove the toxins through tongue scraping before you eat or drink anything. 

It’s The Little Things

It may sound a little weird and you might be thinking this is ridiculous why bother? The truth is every little thing counts when you’re improving the health of your body holistically. Will tongue scraping alone make you healthier? Maybe not, but when done in conjunction other simple yet very beneficial wellness routines like getting better sleep (here’s some tips on that) it has the potential to improve your health. When you weigh the risk reward I’d say the $10 and one extra minute a day are well worth it! 

Let me know if you’ve tried this or you plan to start anytime soon!

XOXO- Amanda