White tongue
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@PrinceMyshkin how’s your sleep? Do you wake in the night? Other than meeting nutritional requirements, saliva production, as well as all secretions in the body, is mediated by the tone of the nervous system. Activation of the sympathetic nervous system will shut off bodily secretions, starting in the mouth. Do you have any signs of high adrenaline, rapid hr, cold extremities?
Good things are immeasurably costly
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@skylark said in White tongue:
I think it’s got to do with saliva production and composition. I never scrape my tongue and it’s always clean & pink even with drinking 2l milk/day but if I have high dose cyproheptadine, which is known to lower saliva production as well as modify its composition, I get dry mouth and coating. I think the composition of the saliva is also modulated by stress hormones such as cortisol and estrogen and co-factors like cholesterol and vitamin A and of course thyroid.
This is it. Nose breathing is probably the best thing for saliva production, composition and stress hormone reduction.
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@PrinceMyshkin daily scraping, flossing the molars (waterpik even better), more carrot salad, and mastic gum keeps mine at bay
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@GuantanamO-Shea @CO3 any mastic gum recommendations? I tried Greco Gum once but it seems like a huge rip off.
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@sunandblood I’m good about breathing through my nose throughout the day but I do notice sometimes I’ll slip into mouth breathing at night. I don’t want to do the mouth taping thing - any advice for consistent nose breathing while sleeping?
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@skylark my sleep is good, sleep well through the night and only ever wake up once or twice but always fall right back to sleep. I’ve been really warm this winter since taking thyroid and my temps are pretty much always above 98. I don’t have any symptoms of high adrenaline.
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@PrinceMyshkin do you have sinus or any kind of nasal congestions? i had the same problems until i nuked my sinus with cyproheptadine.
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@wamantah no sinus issues, I’m generally breathing pretty clear
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@PrinceMyshkin Do you drink alcohol or eat starch?
I had a white tongue coating for years and treated it herbally according to traditional Chinese medicine. I never got long-term results until I started peating and quit alcohol. In the past it was always worse after a night a drinking. I find if I eat a lot of starch, during the holidays or something, it comes back.
"People need to start understanding that the system is systematically murdering them, and understanding that the situation is desperate, they need to see that solidarity with life, against capital, is their hope." RP
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Vitamin K2 is important for the oral microbiota, probably due to its effect on saliva pH. This is why it's also important for the dental health.
"It is not presently known how saliva is connected to K2, but it has been associated with increased inorganic phosphate, the buffering agent, which leads to decreasing counts of lactobacillus acidophilus⁵. This would be indicative of an increasing pH or less acid saliva since lactobacillus thrive at lower pH levels"
Southward K. A hypothetical role for vitamin K2 in the endocrine and exocrine aspects of dental caries. Med Hypotheses. 2015;84(3):276-280. doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2015.01.011
Good things are immeasurably costly
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You already mentioned this, but it's interesting how drinking excess water dries the mouth.
Water is a Newtonian fluid because the viscosity doesn’t change with increasing shear. In contrast, saliva, despite being composed of 99% water, is described as a non-Newtonian fluid because the viscosity decreases with increasing shear. In practice, this allows saliva to be easily spread on the oral surfaces as well as to be retained and not easily washed off oral surfaces. This is an important function for saliva because the oral mucosal surfaces are the main site for the interaction with the microorganisms in the mouth (Dewhirst et al. 2010). The highest shear rates in the mouth occur during eating and swallowing. These high shear rates aid in maintaining a constant flow of saliva from where it enters the mouth (ductal openings) to the back of the throat (for swallowing). The constant movement of saliva is important for the removal of bacteria, the pH buffering of saliva, and oral health generally.
Carpenter GH. The secretion, components, and properties of saliva. Annu Rev Food Sci Technol. 2013;4:267-276. doi:10.1146/annurev-food-030212-182700
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@PrinceMyshkin expand if you’re narrow
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@buckminster I do eat white rice and we’ll cooked potatoes on a weekly basis. This could definitely be a contributing factor but I have a hard time eliminating starch completely, potatoes digest very well and make me feel good.
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@skylark I do take kuinone sublingually, perhaps swishing it around mouth/teeth/gums could be therapeutic for oral health.
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@PrinceMyshkin Have some Greco Gum myself, and aside from being a bit expensive I think is pretty decent. Honestly I think it's less the gum specifically and more that it keeps antimicrobial substances in the mouth proper for a while and stimulates saliva production.
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@PrinceMyshkin It is a rip off! just find the cheapest option online. very little difference in quality, as anything called 'masticha' or 'mastic' gum must be harvested on the same island from the same type of tree.
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@PrinceMyshkin Oregano oil in a dropper, directly on tongue, couple times a day. It burns, but working for me
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Put a piece of (at least 90%) dark chocolate in your mouth and let it slowly melt, do not chew it. It will clear your tongue.
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@oliveoil anecdotally, this just seems to work, but feels more cosmetic than actually addressing the underlying issue? Or do you notice sustained relief? Curious what the mechanism of action would be from the chocolate!!
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I believe it to be a systemic issue, and for it to go away you can't approach it with a magic bullet that merely eliminates the present white substance for a day or two or even a week, only to see it come back.
In my case, I have seen my white tongue become less white but never reach the pinkness I see in my cats' tongues. I think it is fungal.
I think fungus has a propensity to spread into a thin net of a web, just like in when it is in soil. It covers the tongue, and it also covers the scalp (which I believe causes dandruff). I have them both, but notice when my scalp goes the seborrheic dermatitis - free, I also have less white tongue. And this always corresponds to the time when my wbc in my CBC (complete blood count) is lower, after I have taken some antibacterials (herbs, essential oils, or chemicals such as copper acetate) followed up by antifungals (turpentine essential oils). Without antifungals, taking antibiotics/antibacterials would somehow cause a higher amount of eosinophils in subsequent CBC tests that indicate a higher fungal (or fungal parasite) presence that would also result in my scalp becoming resurgent with seborrheic dermatitis popping left and right.
Moreover, I would find my platelet count go higher each time I see my eosinophils go down signifying a lower fungal load. I believe it's because platelets have an immune function in destroying fungus and is expended in the process.
The microbiome in my blood and its vessels have its own microbiome that is separate from that of the gut, but not altogether distinct like there is a Chinese wall between them.
I believe that the microbiome in my blood and vessels were infected when I developed periodontitis in my gums, and there was plenty of time for the periodontal bacteria to translocate to my blood vessels (years in fact) before periodontal infection went from stealth mode to being finally expressed as bleeding gums and loose teeth. By then the infection would see bacterial colonies lodged in the vessel walls, and over time this colony would morph into a microbiome that has more and more of a fungal component. The fungus would even morph into a fungal parasite that would enter red blood cells and feed on it's iron and cause red blood cells to hemolyze, and with having a food source, it would continue to multiply.
The higher the fungal presence internally in our system, the thicker and whiter the white tongue would be.
It was only after In began to actively reduce my fungal load, mainly to lower blood pressure, that I began to see my tongue become more pink as the white coating for thinner.
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