Home remedies · Mouth, teeth, eyes & feet
No home remedy here replaces treatment, and none is talked down. What has done good for generations does good — even if no one ever measured it. Where something is well studied, it says so. Where it is only experience, it says that too.
Once a day, best in the morning before brushing: set the tongue scraper as far back as you can and draw it forward with light pressure. Rinse it, repeat three to five times, until hardly anything comes off. The back of a spoon will do as well. Rinse the mouth afterwards.
The coating is not dirt but a layer of shed cells, food remnants and bacteria that settles between the papillae on the back of the tongue. There, in the rear third, most of the bad breath arises: bacteria break down proteins and release volatile sulphur compounds — the very substances one smells. The scraper works purely mechanically; it takes off the layer in which this happens. That is exactly why brushing alone does less than expected: the coating is not on the teeth.
Light pressure is enough. Anyone who scrubs injures the papillae, and the irritated tongue coats over faster afterwards. Too far back sets off the gag reflex — try once where the limit lies and start just in front of it. A coating that stays thick despite daily cleaning often has a cause behind it: a dry mouth, smoking, mouth breathing, medicines that reduce saliva.
With a white coating that will not wipe off, with red or raw areas, with a spot that stays for two weeks, with a burning tongue for no visible reason, with a coating alongside trouble swallowing or fever, and with bad breath that stays despite tooth and tongue care — then it usually does not lie in the mouth.
To the doctor or dentist: facial swelling with fever, toothache with trouble opening the mouth, a knocked-out tooth — that is an emergency with a short window. For the eye: sudden loss of vision, severe pain, flashes of light. Sore places in the mouth lasting beyond three weeks.