What causes thick and greasy tongue coating? What does it relate to?

Nowadays, some people go to the doctor because of "getting hot". They often hear the Chinese medicine practitioners say: "Your tongue coating is very thick, and you have a lot of internal heat..." and so on. They take these words out of context and think that as long as the tongue coating is thick, you are "getting hot". Actually, it is not like that.

Thick tongue coating is related to the spleen and stomach

Chinese medicine practitioners explain that the most common symptom of thick and greasy tongue coating is not "getting angry" but "food stagnation". Therefore, the reason why Mr. Ji in the above case became more angry the more he tried to clear his fire was because he ate a lot of meat and fish and spicy, sweet and greasy food, which caused food to stagnate in the spleen and stomach. Blindly "reducing fire" instead hurt the spleen and stomach. The food stagnated in the spleen and stomach was not only not digested, but accumulated in the spleen and stomach and turned into damp-heat evil.

In some people's case, it is because of the loss of qi and blood after surgery, and the weak digestive function, which makes it impossible to digest, absorb and excrete normally, resulting in a thick and greasy tongue coating. Traditional Chinese medicine calls this situation "deficiency at the root and excess at the superficial level." This situation is more common in children with weak spleen and stomach, the elderly, and patients who have been ill for a long time or have just recovered from a serious illness. If you take heat-clearing and fire-purging medicines blindly, the originally weak spleen and stomach functions and even the entire body will suffer greater damage under the heavy blow of the bitter and cold properties of the heat-clearing and fire-purging medicines.

How to judge whether you are on fire?

A thick and greasy tongue coating does not rule out the possibility of getting a sore throat. If you want to know whether you have a sore throat, you can use this method to make a simple judgment.

From the perspective of traditional Chinese medicine, the true symptoms of "getting angry" are thick and greasy tongue coating, bitter taste in the mouth, bad breath, mouth ulcers, thirst, constipation in the lower abdomen, yellow or red urine, and burning sensation in the anus. At this time, the patient can take some "heat-reducing" medicine.

In short, thick tongue coating does not rule out the possibility of getting a fever, but other conditions such as qi and blood deficiency can also cause thick and greasy tongue coating. Therefore, if you find that you have a thick tongue coating, you cannot blindly take fire-clearing medicine.