Why do Chinese medicine doctors need to observe the tongue?

When you go to a traditional Chinese medicine doctor, the doctor will often say, "Stick out your tongue and take a look", why? It turns out that the tongue is the most objective reflection of the body's internal situation. Once a disease occurs in the body, the tongue tends to change, and the doctor can diagnose the disease according to the "clues and traces" on the tongue. Therefore, tongue diagnosis, like pulse diagnosis, is an important basis for diagnosis of diseases and the use of medicine in traditional Chinese medicine.

So how do you look at the tongue? Doctors mainly observe the tongue moss and tongue texture. Tongue moss is a thin layer of material covering the surface of the tongue. Normal people's tongue moss is thin and white, known as thin white moss, and the tongue texture refers to the color of the tongue, which is usually reddish in normal people.

When you are sick, you can first see the change of the tongue coating, and then the change of the tongue texture. If the tongue coating becomes thicker and thinner, or if it changes from white to yellow, burnt yellow or even black, it means that the disease has become more serious, and similarly, when the tongue texture changes from light red to red, reddish-red, or even purple or blue-purple spots, it means that the disease is aggravated. It is important to note that in the elderly, due to hardening of the blood vessels and aging of the tissues, the tongue may also become blue and purple, which should be distinguished from the presence of disease. In addition, during the course of the disease, the tongue moss flakes off and the surface of the tongue is very smooth, like a mirror, indicating that the disease is very serious.

Depending on the part of the tongue that is abnormal, it can also be used as an aid to diagnose disease. The tip of the tongue often reflects the abnormalities of the heart and lungs, the middle of the tongue often reflects the abnormalities of the spleen and stomach, the sides of the tongue often reflect the abnormalities of the liver and gallbladder, and the root of the tongue often reflects the abnormalities of the kidney.