Your dentist cares about more than just your teeth. When you visit your dentist in Massachusetts, they will assess the health of your teeth and the rest of your mouth, including your tongue.
Join your dentist in Massachusetts to learn more about your tongue. Here are seven interesting facts we bet you didn’t know!
- The average adult tongue is four inches long and divided into two sections. One section is your anterior tongue (the front) and takes up about two-thirds of the length. The other third is the posterior tongue, which sits at the back of your throat.
- Your tongue isn’t one big muscle. It’s actually eight different muscles. There are two types of muscles in your tongue: intrinsic and extrinsic. The intrinsic muscles are not attached to the bone, and you use them to guide the tip of your tongue and change its shape. The extrinsic muscles are attached to the bone and you use them to change your tongue’s position.
- How many taste buds you have varies a lot from person to person. You can have as few as 2,000 or more than 10,000, and each taste bud has 50-150 receptor cells.
We are always learning new things about our bodies and how best to care for them.
- We got taste buds wrong for a long time. We used to think that taste receptors for each of the five flavor categories (sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and savory) were on specific areas of the tongue. The truth is that taste receptors for all the flavors are all over your tongue as well as in your cheeks, palate, lips, and the back of your mouth.
- The tip of your tongue is the most sensitive part of your body. This sensitivity provides two important benefits. First, it makes things in your mouth feel larger than they are, so you can find dangerous or unwanted items in your food, such as dirt or hair. The sensitive tip of your tongue can also find any bits of food left behind or stuck between your teeth.
- Tongues have defensive cells that protect you against germs. Collectively, they are called the lingual tonsil located at the base of your tongue at the back of your mouth. The lingual tonsil, palatine tonsils, and adenoids all work together to defend your body against germs that enter through your mouth.
- Speaking of germs, there are a lot of bacteria on your tongue. Some of those bacteria are good, but others can cause problems such as halitosis (bad breath), tooth decay, or gum inflammation.