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Friday, January 25, 2008

Oral Hygiene Care


Look closely and take your time. Can you guess what this is?

Wrong! Try again.

Still not sure? Well, technically it's a cheese knife sitting on my kitchen counter. However, it hasn't been used for cheese in years.

Its usual home is my bathroom drawer, and I use it religiously every morning to clean my tongue. At first it was gross and I wasn't sure I could scrap off all that crap that formed in my mouth while I innocently slept through the night.

But the alternative--leaving it there to be swallowed back down or worse yet rubbed onto my honey's tongue (your welcome for the visual)--was far worse than scraping it out and washing it down the sink.

I first heard about tongue scraping in an Ayurvedic text. The idea is that ama--icky stuff that your body is eliminating--rises to your tongues surface. To aid in the removal of this goo, you have to clean it off. Using a tooth brush sounds good on paper, but I have found there is still a lot left over. I've never had the balls to clean my tongue prior to brushing. Trust me, it's gross enough to do after brushing.

An added benefit to tongue scraping is fresher breath--which my 13 year old thanks me for!

Finally, why the cheese knife? Pretty simple really, the shape is perfect. It has a diagonal end somehow the shape of it makes the cleaning process thorough and easy. I've tried using a "professional" scraper that took two hands--they make better ones now. How is needing two hands convenient? It was awfully difficult to see past my hands and into my mouth! Also, a spoon can work; the shape is nowhere as useful as my precious cheese knife though. The spoon just didn't clean off as much goo.

Now before you go into your kitchen and grab a serrated sharp knife and wonder why there's blood all over the bathroom floor..... my wonderful "knife" is for soft cheese and is firm, but not sharp.

Enjoy the wonderful world of hygiene!


Kris
http://www.totalhealthyoga.com/
http://www.totalhealthyogaclasses.blogspot.com/

Today is the first day of the rest of your life!

2 comments:

@MuseLaura said...

Gross, but helpful, post! :-) I am a firm believer in tongue scraping too and can attest to its usefulness. (Have you posted about netying yet?)

Kris said...

No I haven't posted anything regarding the neti pot. I realize that it helps thousand--perhaps millions--of people, but I developed a soar in my nose that lasted over a year. Longer story, but that's the gist of it.