Cleaning your tongue: Why and how often you should brush your tongue

Author: Lino Wirag | Category: Cosmetics and Fashion | 02.12.2021

Photo: Shutterstock/Andrey_Popov

Some consider tongue cleaning superfluous, while others swear by daily scrubbing or scraping. How do you hold your tongue? We'll tell you why it's worth cleaning your tongue regularly - and how you can do it thoroughly and sustainably.

Anyone who has rubbed or grated their tongue thoroughly is often surprised at how unusually rosy their taste buds suddenly shine out of the mirror. Cleaning your tongue regularly not only creates a new inner appearance, but also prevents bad breath and helps keep your mouth and teeth healthy.

Of course, proper oral hygiene also includes proper dental care. Electric toothbrushes can make brushing your teeth easier. ÖKO-TEST therefore recently examined electric toothbrushes. Only a third of the products were convincing, and we also found environmentally harmful substances. More about this in the ePaper – just click on the following button:

Electric toothbrushes in the test: All products and results in the ePaper

The senses also benefit from tongue cleaning: once the tongue has been thoroughly cleaned, the taste buds suddenly gain new freedom and the sense of taste increases.

Clean tongue: help against bad breath

Unfortunately, the tongue with its folds, furrows and cracks can also develop into a playground for bacteria and fungi. Over time, a coating of dead mucous membrane cells, dry saliva and leftover food forms, especially in the back part of the tongue. Microorganisms such as bacteria are just as attracted to it as they are to poorly brushed teeth. Bad breath can result.

Dentists assume that in the majority of cases bad breath comes from the mouth and not from the stomach – where half of it comes from untreated coatings on the tongue. If such coatings are not caused by diseases, they are mainly found in the back third of the tongue.

Brush your tongue – right after your teeth

Therefore, it makes sense to clean the tongue regularly. Dentists even recommend brushing or scrubbing your tongue daily, preferably right after brushing your teeth. Not only can this eliminate bad breath, it also helps to reduce plaque build-up. After all, not only when brushing your teeth but also when brushing your tongue, bacteria are removed from the mouth before they can spread.

Drugstore tongue scrapers come in many shapes. (Photo: Shutterstock/wissanustock)

To clean your tongue, you can simply use your toothbrush: Many models have separate lamellas on the back of the brush head for this purpose. You can also find special tongue scrapers, scrapers or brushes in drugstores and online shops. Some models also combine scraper and brush in one instrument. The differences:

Stainless metal tongue scrapers are relatively sterile, easy to clean, and can be used for a very long time. They are therefore more sustainable than plastic tongue brushes, which, like toothbrushes, have to be replaced after a while: on the one hand for hygienic reasons, on the other hand because the cleaning effect of the bristles eventually wears off.

Cleaning the tongue: Toothbrush & spoon not optimal

You can also simply use your toothbrush to clean your tongue, gently scrub your tongue with the bristles or use the special fins on the back of the brush.

Toothpaste in the test: Bad grades for well-known brands

However, both methods are not ideal for thoroughly cleaning the tongue: On the one hand, the brush can loosen the tongue coating, but it cannot remove it as well as a scraper.

On the other hand, the toothbrush is relatively high compared to a tongue brush and therefore easily triggers a gag reflex when brushing if it comes too close to the uvula.

Instead of scrapers and brushes, you can use a simple metal household spoon to clean your tongue. However, the cleaning is not as thorough here as with a special instrument, since the surface of the spoon is not optimally curved for this purpose.

A metal tongue scraper is a durable and hygienic tongue cleaning device. (Photo: Shutterstock/Tim Townley)

Cleaning the tongue: How to proceed

New trend: toothpaste for the tongue

Some manufacturers now offer special tongue gels whose antibacterial effect is intended to prevent microorganisms from settling on the tongue again and causing bad breath. The gels are used for cleaning like a kind of "toothpaste for the tongue". A German study published in 2012 suggests that such products can help reduce bad breath.

Cosmetic mouthwashes also promise to have an antibacterial effect in the mouth and thus help against bad breath. ÖKO-TEST tested around 20 cosmetic mouthwashes against caries, plaque and/or gum problems - unfortunately not all active ingredients proved to be unproblematic. You can find out more about this in our ePaper:

Mouthwash test: All products and results in the ePaper

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