What is the cause of tongue coating?

Tongue spotted disease, the name just sounds like a piebald disease that grows on the tongue. Most people know that there are four steps in the process of Chinese medicine diagnosis: observation, listening, questioning and palpation. Therefore, when Chinese medicine practitioners are treating patients, they will judge whether there is a possibility of disease in other parts of the body by observing the changes in a certain part of the body. The symptom of spots on the tongue is often related to our stomach and intestines, and may be caused by gastrointestinal discomfort.

The mottled tongue coating is related to gastrointestinal dysfunction, excessive fatigue, and lesion infection.

What to do if there are spots on the tongue?

Too white tongue coating: It is mostly a cold symptom, thin and slippery tongue coating is mostly due to exogenous wind-cold, thick, white and slippery tongue coating is mostly due to cold-dampness or cold phlegm.

Yellow tongue coating: It is usually seen in the course of febrile diseases, indicating that the struggle between evil and righteousness is very fierce, the disease has entered the interior, and the evil has turned into heat.

Black tongue coating: It is mainly caused by the proliferation and darkening of the filiform papillae/tou on the tongue. There are different shades of brown, gray, charred, and even pitch black. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that if a patient has this kind of tongue coating, the illness must be of a long duration and the disease is complex and serious.

The tongue coating is gray and white or gray, greasy, thin and slippery: It is mostly due to internal cold, with symptoms of weakness and fever/sexual illness, or long-term illness and indigestion.

The whole tongue is pale purple with blue: smooth and without coating, which is a positive symptom of typhoid fever.

Brown tongue coating: intestinal obstruction.

Mirror tongue: the tongue has no coating and is as smooth as a mirror. In mild cases, it indicates malnutrition, or lack of iron or vitamin B2 in the body; in severe cases, it means lack of body fluid and serious illness. If the patient has been ill for a long time and has a mirror-like tongue with crimson color, sepsis should also be prevented. If an elderly person's tongue is as smooth as a mirror and the two veins at the bottom of the tongue are thickened and elongated, it indicates cor pulmonale.

Penetrating tongue: There is a small blank space in the middle of the tongue coating, and the tongue coating has peeled off. Piercing tongue is a manifestation of damage to yin, and often indicates a lack of nutrition in the body. If children have peeling tongue coating, it indicates malnutrition, which is mainly caused by picky eating, resulting in a lack of certain nutrients in the body, causing partial peeling of the tongue coating. Such children have poor resistance and are prone to catching colds or fevers.