The tongue is an incredibly important muscle that helps you to chew and swallow food, taste (the average tongue has about 9,000 taste buds), and speak.
When it's healthy, your tongue should be slightly pink in color, moist, and fairly smooth.
However, if your tongue is dry, coated, discolored, or painful, it could indicate a problem such as low thyroid, or hypothyroidism.
A common problem is a thick tongue with "scalloping" (that's when your tongue swells, becoming too big for your mouth, leaving teeth marks around its edge).
As a matter of fact, hypothyroidism may be the most commonly missed diagnosis today.
According to world-renowned physician Dr. David Brownstein, "It's shocking, but 40 percent to 70 percent of Americans have a thyroid hormone deficiency called hypothyroidism, and both they and their doctors don't know it because the standard thyroid test is wildly inaccurate."
And to help people understand more about the relationship between their tongue and thyroid, among other telltale symptoms of thyroid disorder, Dr. Brownstein has put together this short video.
Your thyroid is a small gland located in the lower part of your neck, just below your Adam's apple.
Throughout the year, it makes about one teaspoon of thyroid hormone. And just this tiny amount is needed to drive the metabolic rate of every one of the trillions of cells in your body.
This hormone is vitally important to cell development, cell differentiation, and cell metabolism. It regulates fat, protein, and carbohydrate metabolism. It creates body heat and energy.
That's why, if left untreated, this thyroid deficiency can play a major contributing role in 59 separate diseases — some that are just troubling, others that can ruin your life, and a few that can actually kill you.
If you have any of the following symptoms, you may have a thyroid condition:
- Fatigue
- Brain fog
- Headaches
- Cold feet or hands
- Constipation
- Dry skin
- Body aches
- Weight gain
- Memory loss
- Hair loss
- High cholesterol
- Heart palpitations
- Low or high blood pressure
- Allergies
- Arthritis
- Cancer
- Heart Disease
- Diabetes
A thyroid deficiency can be at the root of all these symptoms and serious diseases, and it usually goes undetected and often untreated!
There are many ways to determine if you suffer from this disorder both at the physician's office and at home — and, of course, there's always your tongue.
David Brownstein, M.D., is a board-certified family physician, one of the foremost practitioners of holistic medicine, and editor of Dr. David Brownstein's Natural Way to Health newsletter. He is also the medical director of the Center for Holistic Medicine in West Bloomfield, Mich., and has lectured internationally to physicians and others about his success with natural hormones and nutritional therapies in his practice.
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