If the tongue is not cleaned on regular basis, the risk of infection and diseases by germs and bacteria increases, leading to gum and dental issues. Tongue cleaning can help remove bacteria caused by lingering food particles that may otherwise reside in a baby's mouth for a long time.
Importance of Tongue Cleaning
To avoid bad breath and bacterial accumulations, it is essential to clean the tongue on a regular basis. This reduces the risk of oral infections and gum disease. Bacteria can thrive in your baby's sugary saliva if you leave breast milk or formula residues in their mouth for days.
Even before any teeth come out, there are certain oral health problems that babies are susceptible to. These are: oral thrush and recurrent mouth ulcers (canker sores). The risk of your baby developing both these problems can be reduced by cleaning their mouths regularly.
To clean your newborn's tongue, you should first wash your hands and then take a small piece of moist cloth or gauze around your finger and use it to gently rub the surface of the tongue in circular motions. A newborn's gums and tongue should be cleaned after every feeding.
Cleaning Your Baby's Tongue
After washing and drying your hands, dampen a clean piece of gauze with lukewarm water. Wrap it around your finger and gently wipe your child's tongue. If the residue comes off easily, your child likely has milk tongue and not thrush.
A milk diet often causes a white coated tongue. This is normal. It will go away after your baby starts eating solid foods. If white patches occur inside the lips or cheeks, call your child's doctor.
Cleaning your tongue helps prevent cavities. By brushing or scraping bacteria and toxins from the surface of the tongue, you're reducing the amount of plaque forming in the mouth which will help prevent it from accumulating on your teeth and causing tooth decay, cavities and gum disease.
If it only appears after feeding and can be wiped away without much difficulty, it's likely a milky tongue. However, if there are raised, white patches on the tongue, inner cheeks, and roof of mouth, and they're wiped to reveal raw and red skin, it may point to oral thrush.
Normally the body's natural defenses and good oral health care, such as daily brushing and flossing, keep bacteria under control. However, without proper oral hygiene, bacteria can reach levels that might lead to oral infections, such as tooth decay and gum disease.
Most people know that poor oral hygiene can have adverse effects on the mouth, leading to bad breath, gum disease, cavities, tooth abscesses and infections, and the loss of teeth.
Once your baby is about 3 months old, you can gently wipe your baby's gums using a damp, clean face washer or gauze twice a day. This helps your baby get ready for brushing when the first tooth appears. As soon as the first tooth appears, clean teeth using a soft infant toothbrush designed for children under 2 years.
Oral Care Before the Teeth Come In
Before your baby has teeth, you won't need to use a toothbrush, infant tongue cleaner, or toothpaste. Instead, a small piece of gauze or a washcloth soaked in a bit of water should suffice.
Tongue injuries are common in children. Your child may bite their tongue while playing or because of a fall, a seizure, a car crash, or another injury. A cut or tear to the tongue can bleed a lot. Small injuries may often heal on their own.
If you don't clean your tongue and maintain a good oral hygiene, then your tongue can even turn black in color with hairy texture. Your taste buds grow as your hair, when overgrowth occurs, bacteria accumulates in them giving them a black color and bad odor. It isn't a pretty sight to see and also unpleasant to smell.
Usually, white tongue is harmless and temporary. If white tongue is the only symptom you notice, you may be safe to wait and see if it goes away. If your white tongue doesn't return to a normal color after a few weeks, see your provider or dentist.
It helps us speak, chew and swallow. So, it is crucial to keep it clean just like our teeth. Apart from removing the white buildup, scraping can help to... Increase your sense of taste: Our tongue allows us to taste and feel textures in the mouth.
It is common for babies to have a buildup of milk on their tongues, and it is more common in newborns because they do not make as much saliva to wash off the milk. It is harmless, and you do not need to clean it off or try to prevent it from happening.
Milk will wipe off easily, leaving a healthy pink tongue underneath. Thrush, however, can result in white patches found on the tongue. It can look like cottage cheese or curdled milk, which is why it is sometimes hard to detect.
Is oral thrush painful for babies? Oral thrush can give some babies a sore mouth and make it painful or uncomfortable to feed, but many babies don't feel anything.
A build up of milk residue on your baby's tongue will not lead to thrush. Thrush is a fungal infection inside the baby's mouth, and is relatively common in newborns infants. Milk tongue is not a medical condition, and it rarely leads to other complications or issues.
Use a Scraper (Not a Toothbrush)
Toothbrushes, with their high profile, tend to be more likely to cause gagging. However, tongue scrapers or cleaners, with their lower profile, are easier to use. They allow you to get further back along your tongue without touching the sensitive roof of the mouth.
Oral thrush is a type of fungus infection, very common among babies. It appears as moist, milky-white patches in and around a child's mouth. Usually oral thrush is not serious and can sometimes even go unnoticed.