What does a normal tongue coating look like?

Traditional Chinese medicine has been passed down from ancient times to the present day, and the diagnostic objects of choice are either the pulse or the tongue coating. Doctors can learn about the patient's condition from the weakness of the pulse, and can also see the patient's internal imbalance from the tongue coating. The relationship between pulse, tongue coating and disease has since been established. But do you know what kind of tongue coating is considered normal? If you don’t know, just follow my instructions!

The tongue is closely related to the internal organs of the human body. By observing the changes in the tongue, we can understand the coldness, heat, deficiency and excess of the internal organs' lesions, and can measure the depth and severity of the disease. Therefore, Chinese medicine attaches great importance to observing the tongue, which is called tongue diagnosis.

A normal person's tongue is soft, flexible, light pink in color, and full of vitality, which is called a light pink tongue. If the tongue becomes unresponsive, it indicates a serious condition; if the red color of the tongue becomes lighter, it reflects insufficient Qi and blood; if the red color of the tongue deepens, it is a manifestation of heat syndrome; if petechiae appear on the tongue, which are common signs of blood stasis syndrome; if the tongue is pale and swollen, and has tooth marks, it reflects that the disease is of a deficiency-cold nature; if the tongue is thin, dark red, and cracked, it is a manifestation of Yin deficiency and heat.

The surface of a normal person's tongue is covered with a thin layer of white moss, which is moderately dry and wet. Traditional Chinese medicine calls it normal tongue coating, also called thin white coating. In the initial stage of an exogenous disease, the tongue coating is thinner for superficial symptoms, while in internal symptoms involving viscera, the tongue coating may be thicker. The tongue coating of cold diseases is mostly white, while the tongue coating of hot diseases is mostly yellow, but sometimes black. A dry tongue coating indicates a loss of body fluid, while a smooth tongue coating indicates undigested dampness.

In recent years, foreign countries have also attached great importance to the study of the relationship between the tongue and diseases. For example, a German scholar discovered that patients with cirrhosis often have a swollen and congested tongue that is blue-red in color, which is called "liver tongue." Tongue ulcers are common in leukemia, people with hypothyroidism often have an enlarged tongue, patients with congenital heart disease have a cyanotic tongue, patients with severe obstructive jaundice sometimes have yellow pigmentation on the edges of the tongue, and patients in the late stage of uremia sometimes have white frost-like urea crystals on the tongue.

I didn’t expect that tongue diagnosis could be so effective and attract attention from abroad. I believe everyone already knows what a normal tongue coating looks like. In our daily lives, we can observe our tongue coating and diagnose any abnormal conditions in our bodies.