Scrape. 

Have you tried tongue scraping yet, or heard of it?

This ancient practice has been getting a lot of attention lately; the dental care aisles are brimming with various tools to clean the gunk off your tongue.

Tongue Gunk 101

Overnight, as the body processes everything that was ingested that day, toxins begin to form and are visible as a coating on the tongue. Ewwwww.

Tongue toxins can appear as a thick, white, yellow or brown coating. (If you’re familiar with Ayurveda that would be Kapha, Pitta, and Vata. Because my undergrad was heavy on research work, I worked in a lab at UCLA to help pay for school and happened to help out with some super cool Ayurvedic studies. I’m no expert but it is an interest to me if you ever want to talk all things dosha. If you’re interested to know your dosha you can take a quiz.)

Scraping the coating off first thing in the morning prevents reabsorption of the toxins that your body worked so hard to expel. Seems like a no-brainer.

Tongue scraping is a great way to check in with your body each morning. Notice the colour of the coating as well as the quantity.

Quantity = a good indication as to whether or not your body was able to digest the food you consumed the previous day

Colour = dosha imbalance (don’t worry about this if you aren’t interested)

For example, you may notice that when you eat heavier foods (pizza, ice cream, peanut butter) you have a thicker coating on your tongue the next morning.

The coating is said to interfere with your ability to taste, create unhealthy cravings and make your breath less than fresh.

Some ancient healing arts consider the tongue a road map of the entire body with each section corresponding to a different organ. So scraping your tongue is like giving your internal organs a gentle massage.

(keep reading to see the road map)

Tongue Scraping 101

• Scrape your tongue first thing in the morning, before drinking water

• Use either a stainless steel or copper tongue scraper or if you’re just trying it on for size a spoon will do

• Stick your tongue out and allow it to be loose and heavy

• Work the tongue scraper from back to front 5-7 times rinsing the scraper after each round.

• Follow with brushing

Extra Special Credit: My favourite dental expert of all time recommends brushing the insides of your cheeks, lips and the roof of your mouth (incidentally this is part of your skull which is pretty cool) with a soft brush also to remove overnight build-up.

Extra Extra Special Credit: You can also Oil Pull post-scrape.

Quick Oil pulling 101 - Put a small spoonful of (usually) coconut oil in your mouth and swish it around for 5-10 minutes. Then spit it out into the garbage and brush. (I rinse with salt water first)

Why? It is said to pull toxins out of your mouth. Also, my dental hygienist swears that the whitest teeth belong to the oil-pulling fanatics.

Back to this week’s Adjustment Accelerator and which is simply tongue scraping (which takes less than a minute) and helps to reduce chemical stress to your Nervous System. Pretty good effort-to-reward ratio for my math.

After a few weeks of tongue scraping, you will notice a significant difference. Your mouth will feel fresher and your taste buds more alive.

Plus trust me once you start scraping your tongue you won’t stop because it’s pretty, pleasantly gross. I mean if you’re going to go to the effort don’t you want to see something nasty leaving your body? (Just me?)

Remember friends don’t let friends leave the house before scraping.

Since we’re decreasing chemical stress (go team) you’ll find a handout below for some natural swaps to further decrease the chemical load in your body.

Fewer chemicals in =

Fewer chemicals to be processed =

Happier Nervous System!