What causes cracked tongue coating? Is it serious?

The reason why the tongue coating cracks is due to illness. If it is not treated in time, it will have a great impact on people's health. Once this phenomenon occurs, everyone should treat the cause of the disease.

1. Fissured tongue main diseases:

(1) Excessive heat damages the yin, often resulting in a red tongue with cracks;

(2) Blood deficiency, usually pale tongue with cracks.

(3) Spleen deficiency and dampness: The tongue is often pale, plump and tender, with teeth marks and cracks on the edges. The treatment is aimed at nourishing yin essence, invigorating qi and producing body fluid; tonifying the spleen and draining dampness; tonifying yin and purging fire; clearing heat and moistening dryness.

2. In addition, cracked tongue refers to the cracks in the tongue texture, and also refers to the cracks in the tongue coating. When making a diagnosis, one should judge based on the dryness or moisture of the coating. If it is cracked due to dryness, it indicates that the body fluids are damaged by heat from an exogenous disease, and the dryness and heat are severe. If the tongue coating is wet and cracked, it is mostly caused by qi deficiency.

3. Modern research believes that shallow cracks on the tongue are mainly caused by atrophy of the tongue mucosa, which causes the longitudinal or transverse lines of the tongue to show through the surface. Deep cracks on the tongue are more serious atrophic lesions of the tongue, which causes the tongue epithelium to lose its normal structure. Some papillae become flat and fuse, while others atrophy and break to form cracks, and thickened scar contraction can be seen underneath.

4. Treat according to symptoms. Those with excessive heat damaging the yin should be treated with clearing away heat, promoting fluid and moistening dryness; those with yin deficiency and excessive fire should be treated with nourishing yin and reducing fire; those with yin deficiency and fluid depletion should be treated with heavy doses of nourishing yin and promoting fluid or with products with blood and flesh (such as tortoise shell, turtle shell, etc.) to restore the exhausted yin; those with blood deficiency should be treated with blood supplementation; those with spleen deficiency and dampness should be treated with strengthening the spleen and removing dampness. In daily life, you should pay attention to eating less spicy food and diversify your food to avoid the deficiency of various vitamins and trace elements which may cause or aggravate fissured tongue.