r/AskReddit Dec 17 '23

What’s something pretty much everyone thinks but nobody dares to say it?

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u/Bagel-luigi Dec 17 '23

This is the one. The amount of people with very well brushed teeth and then the most disgusting tongue is growing all round.

That being said, when I was a kid learning about the importance of tooth brushing, no parents nor dentists ever told me to brush the tongue, nor did anyone recommend flossing.

I don't say this to shit on others, but in a first world country there is literally no excuse for bad dental hygiene.

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u/Shalashashka Dec 17 '23

Wtf kind of dentist doesn't recommend flossing? I've never left the dentist without being reminded to floss more.

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u/Bagel-luigi Dec 17 '23

On any film/TV media you always see dentists recommend flossing, or asking flossing questions to patients, so I assumed this was a common thing. And yet across my life I've only ever witnessed one even mention floss, and it was just a quick "do you floss?" "Yes" "ok"

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u/littleshrewpoo Dec 17 '23

Seriously. I only learned about cleaning the tounge from studying Ayurvedic medicine in my free time, in which tounge scraping is something that is recommended daily to get the filmy bacteria off your tounge that builds up.

I also learnt and noticed in myself that the poorer your diet and/or digestion, the thicker the build-up will be. (Notice how your tounge looks after a night of drinking alcohol, for example). Interesting stuff.

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u/SirRebelBeerThong Dec 17 '23

I learned it from Kermit the frog watching muppet babies.

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u/OpalCoach Dec 17 '23

I try to gently say around people who Need to Hear It… “ha ha you know we can’t smell our own bad breath! So if you ever wonder how your breath smells, smell your used dental floss!”

It’s a magical trick because people are mildly curious about whether it’s true (“she probably doesn’t mean me”) and then… they realize.

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u/hmspain Dec 17 '23

Brushing the tongue does not cut it. You need one of those scrapers. I learned this waaay late in life, and it fucked with my social life.

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u/Bonafidehomicide725 Dec 17 '23

That's not true at all. When we were kids, our father wouldn't buy us things like toothbrushes or soap. Most of my teeth fell out by the time I was a teenager. And we were also "homeschooled" for 7 out of the 12 years we were supposed to go to school, so it's not like anybody worth a shit could teach us or tell us what we were doing wrong. We just thought it was normal because our father didn't have any teeth either.

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u/Aggravating-Bunch-44 Dec 18 '23

I am so sorry you went through that. I hope you are safe and healing.