Tongues can have a physical connection to anxiety, depression, and insomnia. Your tongue should rest up against the roof of your mouth (your pallet), not at the floor of your mouth.
Anxiety can cause tingling or numbness in your tongue as well as other changes in your mouth. You may need to talk with a health professional if you have these signs. Anxiety may cause you to experience mental, emotional, and physical symptoms. This may include a tingling feeling, numbness, or swelling in your tongue.
Signs of your body undergoing excessive stress can show up on your tongue as unusual redness, sores, and ulcers. Also, if your tongue appears to have marks around the edges, that could signify consistently biting your tongue as a reaction to stress.
Tingling and numbness are among the most common symptoms of anxiety. While it is common to feel tingling in the hands or feet, it is also possible to notice these symptoms elsewhere, including the tongue. The medical community refers to a tingling of the tongue as psychogenic lingual paresthesia .
Anxiety tongue symptoms descriptions:
Your tongue might feel unusually tingly or tingling. Your tongue might feel like it is stretched or being stretched. Your tongue might also feel like it is numb, frozen, or like it has been anesthetized. Your tongue might also feel like it is itching or itchy.
Furthermore, muscles such as the masseter (mastication muscle) are activated during stress and several aspects of saliva are changed (e.g., cortisol levels, flow rates) [6]. As a result, any of these changes could potentially contribute to the increase of purple color in the tongue.
For example, a black and hairy looking tongue can signal poor oral hygiene, or diabetes. If your tongue is bright red like a strawberry, it could signal a deficiency in folic acid, vitamin B12, or iron. But, it could also mean you have strep throat, or a fever.
Treatment for tongue tingling that is due to anxiety involves treating the anxiety itself. This is typically done through psychotherapy (such as CBT or ACT), medications (such as SSRIs or SNRIs), or a combination of both. Stress management techniques can also be used to help manage anxiety symptoms.
If you are sure that you have anxiety and it's causing your tongue to feel like it's swollen, the only way to prevent that feeling is with a distraction. Essentially, you need to get your mind focused on something other than your tongue so that your tongue goes back to being a subconscious muscle.
Common causes of a numb or tingling tongue include allergic reactions, stroke, low blood sugar, multiple sclerosis, dental procedures, and nerve damage. Some of these conditions can quickly become life-threatening. If you experience signs of a stroke or a serious allergic reaction, seek immediate medical help.
As your body recovers from the active stress response, this sensation should subside and you should return to your normal self. Keep in mind that it can take up to 20 minutes or more for the body to recover from a major stress response. But this is normal and shouldn't be a cause for concern.
Oral anxiety is the stress effects on oral health. Stress or anxiety can impact your oral health; when you are stressed, your immune system is compromised, and while the cause of canker sores is not proven, there is some correlation or higher likelihood between lowered immune and those nasty painful canker sores.
An unhealthy tongue. If your tongue is a different colour than pink, or has large patches of white, brown, black, or another colour, this might indicate a specific health issue. Similarly, if you have large bumps or no bumps at all, you may also want to speak to a doctor.
Canker sores, lichen planus (shown here), thrush, and geographic tongue can cause pain. Some medications and infections can make your tongue sore, too. Sometimes pain in your tongue can be a sign of cancer, especially if you also have a lump or red or white patches. Bring those problems up with your doctor or dentist.
A pink tongue is healthy and normal. A red tongue may indicate heat in the body like a fever or a hormonal imbalance. A reddish purple tongue is a sign that there may be inflammation or an infection in the body. A pale pink tongue may be a sign of a vitamin deficiency, a weak immune system or a lack of energy.
Bruxism (tooth grinding): stress commonly triggers the grinding, clenching or gnashing of teeth during the night. It can lead to jaw disorders, headaches, chipped or damaged teeth and other dental problems. Dry mouth: anxiety and stress often result in a dry mouth, which has a negative impact on oral health.
Oral Lichen Planus: This oral autoimmune disease occurs when the immune system attacks the mucous membranes inside your mouth, according to The Mayo Clinic. It will appear as lacy white patches, sometimes accompanied by painful sores on the lining of the cheeks, tongue, and gums.
Oral manifestations such as lichen planus, ulcers, xerostomia, erosion and tongue abnormalities seem to be particularly prevalent among patients with chronic liver disease.
Rarely, yellow tongue may be a sign of jaundice, a yellowing of the eyes and skin, which sometimes indicates liver or gallbladder problems. Self-care is usually all that's needed to treat yellow tongue, unless it's related to another medical condition. Medical treatment for yellow tongue usually isn't necessary.
“Normal tongues are pale red with a pale white coating. Heart failure patients have a redder tongue with a yellow coating and the appearance changes as the disease becomes more advanced.”
A healthy tongue is pink in color. If your tongue color is white, yellow, orange, red, black, purple, gray, green or blue, it could mean you have an underlying health condition.
Nutritional deficiencies include iron, folate and vitamin B12 deficiency. B12 deficiency will also make the tongue sore and beefy-red in color. Glossitis, by causing swelling of the tongue, may also cause the tongue to appear smooth.
When someone is dehydrated, the tongue appears dry and typically has a white or white-to-yellowish coating. In some cases, the tongue can appear patchy or splotchy. If your tongue commonly sticks to the roof of your mouth, you are dehydrated!
A white tongue involves having a thick white film coating your tongue. The coating can cover your entire tongue's surface, the back part only or it might appear in patches. A white tongue can look alarming, but it's usually just a sign of trapped bacteria, debris (like food and sugar) or dead cells on your tongue.