Your tongue is a strange and miraculous organ than allows you to eat, talk, and swallow. While the health of your tongue greatly contributes to both your dental health and overall health of your body, it’s a highly important organ that’s often taken for granted. To better understand how this one muscle can accomplish so much, below we compile fascinating facts and detail the anatomy of the human tongue.

Tongue Anatomy

Like any other organ, the brain sends neurons to the tongue to control its shape and movements which allow you to speak, breathe, eat, chew, and swallow. The average adult male tongue measures at an average of 3.3-inches long, whereas the average adult female tongue averages at 3.1-inches long. The front portion of your tongue, called the anterior tongue, consists of about two-thirds of its total length and the back portion, called the posterior tongue, sits near the back of your throat. Most of our tongues have between 2,000 and 4,000 taste buds that we are unable to see with the human eye. Additionally, our tongues have eight muscles, including the:

• Intrinsic Muscles: Primarily used while eating or talking, these muscles allow you to guide your tongue’s tip and change its direction. These intrinsic muscles uniquely aren’t attached to any bones.
• Extrinsic Muscles: Used to put power into your tongue’s movements, the extrinsic muscles are attached to bones in the back of your throat and allows you to change the position of your tongue in your mouth.

Tongue Facts

Keep reading to learn these fun tongue facts:

• The tongue is one of the strongest muscles in the human body and is able to exert a force of 100-times its weight.
• Similar to fingerprints, no two tongue-prints are alike!
• The appearance of your tongue can indicate underlying health conditions. For example, while tongues should have a thin white coating and be bump-free, abnormally red colors or painful sores could be a sign to visit your doctor.
• The Guinness Book of World Records has recorded the world’s longest tongue at 3.97-inches long.
• While the concept that tongues have compartmentalized taste bud zones for detecting different tastes is a myth, the back of the tongue is more sensitive to bitter tastes.
• Peoples’ tongues can accumulate fat when one gains weight, which is why obese individuals are more susceptible to sleep apnea caused by the larger tongue obstruction.
• Hydration plays a crucial role in how we taste foods, so a dry tongue with minimal saliva will make meals less delicious.
• The tongue can detect five tastes, being sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and, surprisingly, umami.
• Due to the heightened amount of saliva in the mouth and a supercharged blood supply, the human tongue has the ability to heal at incredibly quick speeds.

Clean Your Tongue for Optimal Oral Health

As stated above, the health of your tongue can be an indicator of both your oral health as well as the overall health of your body. Click here to learn the best practices when it comes to cleaning your tongue. Additionally, poor oral hygiene habits allow the acids produced by dental plaque to eat away at tooth enamel over time, which causes cavities. This slow buildup of sticky tartar eventually leads to gingivitis, resulting in red, swollen, and often bleeding gum tissue. If gingivitis is left untreated, the next step in this bacteria buildup is gum disease. Gum disease causes numerous serious health concerns like a receding gum line, bleeding gums, and even tooth loss. 

To prevent these numerous painful health complications, it’s important to practice affective oral health habits beforehand. Flossing is the only way to remove this tartar from between your teeth and keep plaque out of hard-to-reach places. Fortunately, GumChuck’s unique design does this better than any other flosser on the market. GumChucks’ design ensures a flossing experience that’s faster, easier, and more effective than competing flossers or traditional floss. Our two handles with disposable floss allow you to comfortably reach all your teeth, even those in the back, while wrapping the floss around each tooth. This creates the vital “C-Shape” necessary to get below the gum line and effectively clean each tooth.