Westchester NY Dentist With Facts that Roll off the Tongue
As a Westchester NY Dentist, Dr. Fu doesn’t only take care of your teeth- he treats and helps with the health of your whole mouth! Your oral cavity is a highly integrated system that aids in the essential tasks of speech and eating/swallowing, and if one small area is impacted- the whole thing can be. With that in mind, today we will be sharing with you a few interesting facts about the often overlooked, but never underused portions of your mouth known as the tongue and the taste buds!
- Different areas of the tongue sense different tastes. Various spots across the tongue sense sweet, sour, salty, bitter and savory all differently. The sides of the tongue are usually more sensitive and the back of the tongue is more reactive to a bitter sensation.
- The average human tongue is 3 inches long. It is measured from the tip to a piece of cartilage at the back of the tongue, called the epiglottis. Men usually have longer tongues than a woman, at 3.3 inches compared to 3.1. The record for the longest tongue in the world, which doesn’t actually belong to Gene Simmons, is held by an American man with a tongue that is 3.1 inches!\
- Your tongue is an amalgamation of different muscles- not just one! It has 8 different muscles altogether that intertwine and work together. It is also the only muscle that works away from the skeleton!
- Your tongue says a lot about your health. Either we or a physician can identify issues such as vitamin deficiencies, oral cancer, diabetes, yeast infections, scarlet fever and more just be looking at the appearance of your tongue.
- Average adult tongues have between 2000 and 4000 taste buds covering them. The cells within the taste bud responsible for how we perceive tastes can renew themselves every week!
For more information on how your tongue and taste buds play into your overall oral health, or to have us examine them for you, schedule an appointment with your Westchester NY dentist today by calling (914) 939-2132.