Traditional Chinese Medicine: Tongue Diagnostics

Video Transcript

"One of the more interesting diagnostic techniques in traditional Chinese medicine is the tongue diagnosis. So you can go and look in your mirror right now and take a look at your tongue and you probably don't really notice much. But for the acupuncturist, it gives us a huge idea of what's going on internally in you. We're going to look at things like the shape, the color, the coating, maybe even the underside what we call the sublingual veins. All of that is going to give us information about what's going on inside your body from both an energetic and even sometimes a physical standpoint. So, your acupuncturist maybe have you stick out your tongue and mention something about your liver and remember, it?s your energetic liver and not your real liver he is talking about. So when we look at a chart and we map out the tongue here, we notice that there is different organs that are portrayed on this chart. So towards the tip we have the heart, right behind that, the lung. On the sides we have the liver. In the center is your spleen, so that reflects our digestion. And towards the back is the kidney. Normally we want a nice, smooth tongue that's oval in shape. It'll be a slightly redder towards the top, but not significantly so. The coating should be thin and white. So anything other than that, will be giving the acupuncturist input as to what's going on energetically inside your system. So, ask them about what they're seeing, go and look at your own tongue. But one thing I often times caution people, don't look at your significant other's tongue, because you may not want to kiss them next time you see them. So remember to pay attention to your tongue and before you see your acupuncturist, be sure you don't brush your tongue because they need to see everything that's there."