Terrible Tongue Symptoms (with Pics) What's Going On?

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https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxVMDJmAk3fAZzJVQ29wZHl1TjA

Can anyone classify this? Diet's been good, organic grapes, organic cheese, low starch, low heavy metal consumption etc, organic coffee with organic full fat milk.

Feeling sluggish, bit dizzy, face is kinda puffy, skin a bit kinda spongy. Had a couple of cheat meals last week, maybe that's it? Can it have an effect a week later?

Should add: I have this problem more often than not. Have occasional good spells with a crystal clear tongue, but for the life of me can't find any correlation with any dietary change.

Any suggestions? Antibiotics? Fast? Low fat? High fat?

Thanks guys. Just want to say, think this is a beautiful resource & community. Posted here before but just wanted to reiterate that. Feeling generous ;)
 

haidut

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https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxVMDJmAk3fAZzJVQ29wZHl1TjA

Can anyone classify this? Diet's been good, organic grapes, organic cheese, low starch, low heavy metal consumption etc, organic coffee with organic full fat milk.

Feeling sluggish, bit dizzy, face is kinda puffy, skin a bit kinda spongy. Had a couple of cheat meals last week, maybe that's it? Can it have an effect a week later?

Should add: I have this problem more often than not. Have occasional good spells with a crystal clear tongue, but for the life of me can't find any correlation with any dietary change.

Any suggestions? Antibiotics? Fast? Low fat? High fat?

Thanks guys. Just want to say, think this is a beautiful resource & community. Posted here before but just wanted to reiterate that. Feeling generous ;)

Do you also have spooned nails? Partially denuded tongue like that can be due to fungal infections, gut irritations, etc but if combined with spooned nails it is most commonly caused by iron deficiency? Have you had some iron panel tests recently? Serum iron alone is not enough. You also need ferritin, transferrin and iron saturation index. Checking ceruloplasmin also helps as it also has a role in iron transport into the cell.
 
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Thanks for a swift reply, Haidut. My nails are not spooned, but there's a general feeling of heaviness/slight bloating of my stomach. Discounting spooned nails, can you shed any more light on this?
 

haidut

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Thanks for a swift reply, Haidut. My nails are not spooned, but there's a general feeling of heaviness/slight bloating of my stomach. Discounting spooned nails, can you shed any more light on this?

Could be SIBO or some fungal overgrowth. Usually, digestive issues manifest cutaneously (skin) or on the tongue. The Chinese use the tongue health exclusively as a guide to liver/GI health. I would do the iron tests just in case as it is easy to remediate.
 
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Cheers. If an iron deficiency is the case, what would you recommend as a metabolism-friendly solution? I'm aware of conventional wisdom, but haven't seen iron deficiency remedied in the peat-o-sphere.
 

milk_lover

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Do you incorporate coconut oil in your diet? It's often good for gut problems. Increase salt usually helps with overall bloating and water retention in the face or stomach and I think salt also helps with digestion and bacteria.
 

milk_lover

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Cheers. If an iron deficiency is the case, what would you recommend as a metabolism-friendly solution? I'm aware of conventional wisdom, but haven't seen iron deficiency remedied in the peat-o-sphere.
Steak with OJ?
 

haidut

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Steak with OJ?

Yep, red meats like beef or lamb combined with some vitamin C containing foods/drinks like OJ. But if ferritin comes back low it can also be hypothyroidism which needs to be addressed as well. Ray has told people ferritin is commonly low in people with hypothyroidism and direct iron supplements are dangerous. So, food is better and thyroid should probably be supplemented as well.
 
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Thanks guys.

Haidut, I will go ahead with iron checks, just to be sure. Thanks.

Coconut oil is something I've recently run out of, and this is perhaps when my tongue symptoms flared up again... (Minor revelation there...) will check that out!

Meatbag, the whiteness cannot be brushed off. Brushing ruptures the white a little, but does not clear it. Would you assume a fungal infection as opposed to bacterial in this case?

I wouldn't say I have fungus elsewhere, but I have always (perhaps as consistently as the tongue) had very mild acne on my shoulders, but a crystal clear face. Also, there is often a mild odour from my toenails when I clip them. I've read that this is a fungal symptom?
 

Pet Peeve

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I used to be into chinese medicine which uses the tongue for diagnosis. The coating you have is not normal, it's too thick and it's yellowish to brown. This indicates a lot of (noxious) heat within a chinese medicine angle. As heat tends to rise you feel dizzy and your face puffs up. The missing patches of coating indicates that the heat is damaging fluids, making you dry. It's probably all in your stomach.

You need to avoid spices as they can heat the stomach, like clove, cinnamon etc. No fried and greasy foods. Coffee might not be a good idea in your present situation.

Of the peat supplements cascara would probably come closest to helping your particular situation (and I guess that you have sluggish bowel movements) though this one is probably the best remedy to take in small quantities for a short time: Herb Pharm, Coptis, Rhizome Without Rootlet, 1 fl oz (30 ml)

Bamboo shoots may help.

Try doing Peats emergency diet of two quarts milk and two quarts orange juice instead of what you're eating now.

Do you have a burning sensation in the stomach? strong thirst for cold drinks? constant hunger?

Or anger problems? Yellowing of the white in the eyes?
 
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Pet Peeve, that's really interesting. I have experienced a strong thirst for cold drinks, and perhaps mild temper problems, but I put that down to my family situation. You're right; the colour is suspicious. I assumed it was coffee staining, but sometimes it's that colour in the morning, after a healthy brushing regime, which is kinda worrying.

So, you'd recommend going on a very simple fluid diet for now?

EDIT: And on second thoughts, have been experiencing mild stomach burning.
 

Pet Peeve

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Yes. Fluid diet and bamboo shoots every day (remember salt). Try to drop coffee and reintroduce it later to gauge how you respond to it. A bit of caffeine powder is ok instead. I really recommend you try the coptis I suggested in the link but I urge you to be careful with it, just a tiny bit for a few days - it needs to heal slowly.

Edit: There's a small possibility that your problem could become worse with what I have suggested. The reason is that your tongue could have two different kinds of contradicting explanations. My experience though is that the milk/oj diet fixes most things in the long run.
 
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UPDATE: Hey guys, thanks for all the insightful advice. I now have a pink clean comfortable tongue, and I feel great. Not bloated at all, very relaxed, positive, sleep and libido great. Had to try a few things but here's what worked for me.

- Cut out milk but ate more dairy, cheeses etc. Milk seemed to make my tongue feel agitated. This decision was intuitive.
- Less fluids - paying very close attention to how thirsty I felt. Only drinking when very thirsty.
- Only ate meat when I was craving it - I find this craving quite easy to define. It's quite obvious when I feel like meat.
- Aspirin, cascara, and carrot salad before bed every night. Benefits were obvious, woke up feeling relaxed and energetic and tongue looked better every morning.
- Niacinamide 500mg every other day / every 2 days, after reading about antifungal effects on this forum.
- Chewing VERY WELL. Never rushing food or swallowing anything until it's coated in saliva.
 

Amazoniac

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The only relation to the Chinese traditions is the basis in the I-Ching, with HD sharing much of the same old interpretations of the hexagrams of the wheel (with the exception of gate 54 line 4 and all the 5th lines), and has made hexagrams relevant again for modern humans.

Independent of that, HD charts, when drawn with the correct geometry, are body representations (see the Klinghardt video for exactly what these are, and the possible implications).
Are you aware of any reliable material regarding the interpretation of the tongue as a reflect of what's going on internally? The majority of stuff out there seem dubious..
 

Dopamine

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I have had the same problem for years. Dairy tends to make it worse. Coffee dyes it more brown. It goes away sometimes after certain meals... from saliva maybe? I don't really know what to do about it. I feel like it may be a lack of immune factors in saliva or something. Maybe digestion/gut problems. Maybe poor sleep and high stress.
 
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shepherdgirl

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Glad your tongue is doing better - I can't comment on the color but I wanted to mention that in the picture your tongue looks mildly "scalloped" - that is when there are indentations of the teeth along the edge of the tongue. I also have this problem, and after listening to one of Dr. Peat's radio shows I started to suspect it was myxedema (see quote below), although I am not positive that is what he is calling a "thick tongue". Maybe someone else might have an idea? Since I started Peating it is improved, and I think pregnenolone seems to be helping it as well.
Here is Peat's quote from a 1996 Gary Null interview on the thyroid as posted by burtlancast:

"In eastern Europe, the cabbage and turnip staple diets were major causes of cretinism and chronic goiter and myxedema. Myxedema is the name for one type of hypothyroidism that develops in adults, in which mucousy material forms in the tissues, makes the tongue thicken, the skin gets coarse and inelastic -- but variations of myxedema can cause a lot of strange diseases that are put down to genetic causes more often than hypothyroidism, but you can cure them, in sometimes a week or two, with the right dose of thyroid.

For example, certain types of mitral valve prolapses are just from an accumulation of a mucous-like material in the valve, making it thick and inefficient. Glaucoma in low thyroid involves a swelling and overproduction and increased thickness of the fluids in the eyeball. Some types of Graves' disease, which most doctors think of as hyperthyroidism -- but hypothyroidism, which causes the pituitary to become overactive -- hypothyroidism very predictably tends to cause bulging eyes, because the thyroid stimulating hormone from the pituitary causes a mucousy material to form in the area behind the eyeball, causing a protrusion of the eyeball."
 

Tarmander

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Wow, how did I not know about this spooning of the nails. Over the past year or so, as I have been doing B1 and Aspirin occassionally, my thumb and fore finger nail have flattened. They are not spooned, just not curved anymore but flat. I thought it was kind of manly to be honest. They look more like working man nails. Hmm, low iron? Really? I have been eating liver like it is going out of style for a few years. Very interesting.

So the tests would be:

Serum iron
ferritin,
transferrin
iron saturation index

I always feel like total balls after giving blood for at least a few days. Anyone know how zinc affects iron status?
 

PeatThemAll

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Could be an opportunistic overgrowth of Streptococcus pyogenes on an otherwise asymptomatic carrier.
 

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