Having a clean tongue is not only an important step towards eliminating bad breath, it is also crucial to your overall dental hygiene.
Most people think that brushing and flossing are enough to maintain a clean and healthy mouth, but in reality cleaning the tongue is another crucial step that is often skipped. The reality is, if you have a problem with bad breath you would probably do anything to solve it. If you have found that you are brushing twice a day and flossing but you still have bad breath, chances are it is being caused by bacteria and food particles that are getting stuck in the tongues crevices.
These food particles can actually rot in there, which is the LEADING cause of bad breath.
There are many different tongue cleaner methods, and each of them has pros and cons.
It is important that you do your research about the different tongue cleaner methods so that you are better able to choose the method that is best suited to your mouth care needs.
Different Methods of Cleaning the Tongue
There are quite a few methods that are used to clean the tongue, each coming with pros and cons.
It is up to you to determine which tongue cleaning method is best for you, although there are some methods that are proven to work much better than others. The first method that people often use to clean their tongue is to brush it with their toothbrush. What is good about this method is that you already have a toothbrush so you do not have to spend any extra money, and it is also easy and convenient to add into your mouth care routine.
The downside to this method is that the bristle of a toothbrush are not the right size to get all the way down into the crevices of your tongue, so some bacteria will be missed.
Another method that people often use is mouthwash.
Although there are some mouthwashes that are better for this than others, this method will usually only remove bacteria from the surface of the tongue and will not get the bacteria out of the crevices.
It usually only masks bad breath rather than eliminating it, so it is only a temporary solution. If you are looking for a more effective way to remove all of the bacteria from the tongue and get the freshest and cleanest mouth possible, there are products on the market that can accomplish this for you. These products are specially formulated to clean your tongue.
One example of a product like this is the Orabrush used in conjunction with tongue foam.
The company claims that this will effectively clean your tongue, removing all of the bacteria from it.
What Method Works Best?
Although anything is better than nothing, one of the ways mentioned above has been proven to work better than all of the others.
Using a special product that has been formulated especially for cleaning the tongue is the most effective way to achieve the freshest, cleanest mouth possible. The reason for this is that other methods are not specially designed to get down into the crevices of your tongue. While your tongue may seem like a smooth surface, in reality it is full of little crevices where food and bacteria can get stuck. Products like the Orabrush are specially designed after the brushes that surgeons use to clean their hands before surgery.
The makers of this product claim that it has bristles which are the perfect size to fit into these crevices and remove the bacteria, as well as a scraper which then removes the bacteria and food particles from the tongue.
Why is a Clean Tongue so Important?
Having a clean tongue is crucial to your overall dental hygiene for many reasons.
The most important reason is that bacteria which gets stuck in the crevices of the tongue are the cause of about 90% of cases of recurring bad breath. If you have found that no matter how many times you brush your teeth, your mouth still does not feel fresh and you still have bad breath, it is because you have not taken the time to clean your tongue properly and take care of that bacteria
Having bad breath is a huge stressor in social situations, and can even cause you to avoid talking to people that you would normally feel totally comfortable talking to because you are so self-conscious about your breath.
It needs to be taken care of!
Having a clean tongue is a crucial step to having a clean mouth and good dental hygiene is one of the simplest things you can do to maintain and improve good general health. Dentist have begun to recommend that everyone adds tongue cleaning into their regular mouth care routine.
If this bacteria is not removed from the tongue, it can also cause other potentially serious dental complications including bacterial and fungal infections.