The weirdest tongue diagnosis (and what it means)

Do you ever look in the mirror and look at your tongue with this weird tongue coat and wonder what actually is on my tongue? Well, tongue diagnosis goes back several hundred years in traditional Chinese medicine. But the kind of specialized tongue diagnosis that you see today actually has very clear principles for what is on your tongue, why is it on your tongue, as well as what is the actual tongue body color and shape even indicate potentially about your internal organ function, especially your digestion. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hine, board licensed doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine and author of the health book Master the Day. So, let's jump in. So, when it comes to tongue diagnosis in traditional Chinese medicine, in general, the tongue is used to assess a few key things. Overall, it's a look at the person's general health because of the tongue's shape or color, coating, and even movement. Originally, the tongue was believed to reflect the state of the internal organs in general, but especially the digestive system. The tongue indicates, first of all, the digestive health. So typically when people are eating a really really heavy diet, like a standard American diet, the tongue coat generally gets pretty nasty. And what we say is that's due to effectively damp heat. Dampness is basically like a pathological byproduct of bad digestion. Usually you're seeing bacterial or fungal overgrowth on the tongue. And then the heat is really the inflammation aspect of it. So you commonly see this with like acid reflux and gallbladder issues. Overall, the coding is actually just one of the aspects of tongue diagnosis that are indicative of something going on a little bit deeper. So, let's go over some basics before we look at a sample tongue here. So, the first thing that we look at is really the overall tongue body. So, the tongue body color is what we call the indication of blood and chi circulation. Tongue body is sort of like the overall meat of the tongue. Is that color very pale and white or is the color deep crimson red? The pale color indicates what we call blood deficiency, chi deficiency, or cold. So, a classic pale tongue could be someone who has lots of food allergies and food sensitivities, very poor digestion, or a very, very cold diet like a vegan diet or a vegetarian diet with lots of raw vegetables. A red tongue often indicates what we call excess heat in the body. Pale and red are two sides of the spectrum, right? Red. It was most commonly seen in people who consume like lots of coffee, lots of heavy food, lots of greasy food, lots of animal products, and lots of spices. The tongue is basically a mirror of the face for a lot of people. If they have a red face with a lot of heat and warmth in it, they often will have a red tongue. They're not one to one, but they pretty clearly overlap and they pretty commonly correlate with certain illnesses. Now, a more purple tongue or bluish is something that we call blood stasis or poor circulation. You could almost view the tongue as a mirror of like someone who has rayods where they have bluish purple fingertips or someone who's losing circulation in their feet due to diabetes for example. This kind of thing concept is called blood stasis in traditional Chinese medicine. Now the second thing is what we call the tongue shape. If you imagine the tongue body it's like the meat of it. The tongue shape is sort of the actual outline of the tongue. Is it long and thin? Is it fat? Is it scalloped on the sides? Actually, I often have a swollen tongue. Looks like this. A swollen tongue, it's very, very wide in the mouth. Often indicates what we call dampness or what we call spleen and kidney young deficiency. Spleen deficiency is basically where people have very very poor digestion. Some genetic, some due to lifestyle and it tends to prompt and provoke a lot of fluid accumulation and retention. A fat tongue, you are literally seeing the chronic amount of fluid production in the digestive system. These people chronically tend to clear their throats for example and it's basically like a waterlogged piece of meat. A fat swollen tongue is a problem with fluid metabolism. The kidneys are one of the organs that deal with that like edema and the what we call the spleen which is like the pancreas, the stomach, your small intestine are the digestive root of that. Secondarily a swollen tongue you will often see scalloped marks. Literally, it's because the tongue is sitting there. It is so fat that is pressing against the teeth and like a waterlogged piece of meat, it is adjusting to the shape of the teeth. You commonly see this in food allergies, people who have bloating, people who tend towards having just a lot of chronic food baby like symptoms, right? This kind of gas and fluid problems. That's a very quintessentially diagnostic sort of tongue. Now, secondarily, you can see something that's opposite, a thin tongue. A thin tongue is what we call blood or yin deficiency. This is where the actual body fluids are being dried up. Like for example, a common kind of yin deficiency is like menopause. It's like the engine oil in the system is now running dry and the system is becoming overheated. So you see the thinness because the moisture is being stripped and you see the drying out of the tissues themselves uh that are also happening here as well. Now a worse version of that is what's a cracked tongue. If you see a cracked tongue or a geographic tongue, this is like a piece of meat that's been dried out for so long that now it's actually fishering. You have varying grades of excess moisture in the system like the fat swollen tongue and then varying grades of dryness. So each of these are the spectrum of where the body type is, what the digestive system is like and also they're just genetic inborn constitution here. So take a look at this tongue here. When you look at it, let's take it from the top with what we discussed. The first thing is just the tongue body color. So the tongue body color here is obviously on the paler side, right? If you imagine like a color palette, is this closer to white, gray, or closer to crimson red? Obviously, it's closer to the white and the gray. White color is what we call deficiency and what we call cold. It's an underfunctioning of the system and it's typically in this case we know the woman is vegetarian. She eats what we call a cooler temperature diet. So overall pale, which means her diet is primarily on the cooler side, which is generally a healthier diet overall by far. Then we also see there's a little bit of scalloping on the sides there, right? Can you see that? Like very very gentle scalloping that's going on. And that scalloping again is what we call due to spleen cheat deficiency. So this is often someone who has excessive fluid retention due to either a too cold or sweet diet. Cold is like lots of raw smoothies and green juices. Sweet would be like lots of actual sweets and sugar. Or it could be someone who just genetically has very weak digestion. And so throughout their life, they've often complained of bloating and gas and loose stools uh and that kind of thing as well. So the scalloping here is a manifestation of typically of what we see with food allergies. This tongue overall pretty unremarkable. It's not like a a horrendous tongue to look at. It's not very pathological. It's not very indicative of much. Probably has some degree of digestive problems, not major ones. She probably eats an overall pretty healthy and clean diet. Tongue color to be equal. And that's sort of an overview of body and color and shape and the zones of the tongues. Now, tongue diagnosis is just one of the key diagnostic principles in traditional Chinese medicine. The others I've actually put together here in a free email series that's just called the lost science of healing. It's the first link below this video or you can go to drlexheim.com/quiz and it not only will we will send you a free root cause quiz, but you'll also get a 7-day email series after on healing principles of traditional Chinese medicine. It's sort of like my introduction to healing with traditional Chinese medicine email series. So, I'd highly recommend downloading that quiz because we actually go through the exact step-by-step principles of figuring out which organ your symptoms are coming from. So, I'd highly recommend going to drill.com/quiz or click the link below and you'll also get the 7-day email series on the lost science of healing. If you've ever gotten sick, the tongue coating is often the first thing that you will notice changes. So you may notice like a thicker white tongue coat, you may notice a thicker yellow tongue coat, and you may just notice that in general the tongue coat is getting a little weird and it's actually changing quite a lot. So the tongue coat really reflects what's going on with certain pathological factors. You know, the white tongue coat, a thick white tongue coat often is issues with bacterial and fungal overgrowth like oral thrush or candida. So that is something that can happen as well on the tongue and it is very obvious and very specific. You may also notice it just from bacterial overgrowth or just dead cells. Like for example, sometimes when you get a cold, you will notice a a cold or a viral infection, a pretty distinct tongue coat that's going on in your mouth that's resulting from the the current infection. So the white tongue coat we say is due to cold and damp. And the yellow tongue coat is what we call from damp heat. Damp heat is often what you see like for example with upper GI issues like acid reflux. This is when there's both a bacterial issue going on, gut dispiosis, chronic stomach issues, as well as an inflammatory aspect with heat. When there's the heat aspect, you tend to see more yellow and more redness either both in the complexion as well as in the tongue. And this is obviously a pretty good indicator that there is high cholesterol, they're moving towards high blood pressure and so on. So, this is an overview of tongue diagnosis, what it means, and what it looks like. And don't forget guys, this is one of about five or seven principles of healing with traditional Chinese medicine. The others I put into this free root cause quiz and a 7-day email series, the lost science of healing. So that's the first link below the video, drill.com/quiz. And don't forget, I also work with a limited number of new patients onetoone via tele medicine and in person in my clinic in Los Angeles. So if you want to work with me, just go ahead go to drlexheind.com/cl. So, if you do want a custom compounded herbal formula and you want really targeted advice that can help, I would just reach out that way as that's going to be the the fastest approach to healing. And don't forget, I have another great video on Chinese medicine diagnosis right there.