Geographic Tongue

When you wake up in the morning, or late at night, you might find a weird coating on your tongue that tends to give you bad breath. Now imagine Geographic Tongue (GT), which is a medical condition where the surface of the tongue is damaged in patterns that resemble an evolving map. This is because tiny papillae on the very surface are damaged by expanding inflammation. Any further causes are currently unknown. However, people who do have it say that it tends to get worse when they are under increased amounts of psychological stress. While it looks weird, this is actually harmless and is thought to affect two percent of the population. Many people panic, but it is important to realize that this is not indicative of any worse disease like oral cancer (they used to think GT was associated with things like diabetes and dermatitis). Because it is so rare, it is usually lumped in and associated with diseases like psoriasis.

It happens the way a forest fire occurs, once it has started, it moves along to fresh areas until it has taken as much as it can. This is known as an excitable media dynamic, however GT is a chronic condition that will keeping happening over time.

Taking a dynamical systems approach to GT enabled us to classify the severity of the condition, based on the patterns observed on the tongue of a GT patient. Typically GT-affected tongues fall into two main categories. The first corresponds to oblate patterns that expands and merges with other growing oblate regions. In this case, like with forest fires, the tongue is gradually affected but then subsequently heals. Another more “exotic” form of the condition involves patterns consisting of open-ended tips, most notably spirals, which can evolve into the recovering regions of the tongue.

As the spiral pattern evolves, its arm rotates and continuously affects recovering regions. This self-sustaining characteristic might hinder the tongue from healing and so cause a more acute condition, which will linger for longer periods of time before the tongue is completely healed.

There is no given cure for GT as of now, because it’s not really a huge problem. People who have it may have a burning sensation on the tongue, and there are a few treatments for that, but they haven’t been very effective so far.

5 thoughts on “Geographic Tongue

  1. Emily Rothermel says:

    Ewwwww Sar. Nothing like your blog posts at 10 in the morning to make me upchuck a little in my mouth. Thanks for that….

  2. That is so interesting! I had never heard of a Geographic Tongue before! I like your analogy with the forest fire. And it’s quite rare that you find such a rare and exotic chronic condition that keeps recurring, has few if any effective treatments, and yet is innocuous. Does brushing the tongue act as a precaution? Guess, we’ll find out in the near future. Great post!

  3. cvk5271 says:

    I had a friend in middle school who had GT (though we were 11 and none of us knew what it was called) who would show it off because gross things were obviously cool to adolescent boys. It’s cool to actually read about GT from a more intellectual perspective now.

  4. David Fanelli says:

    Is this the stuff that you had that one time?

    Also, it’s kind of interesting how there aren’t that many bad symptoms. It’s especially interesting to see how it acts in spreading and what not. It makes you wonder how evolution led to this.

    On a more important note, I brush my tongue when I brush my teeth. 10/10 dental hygiene points for me.

  5. Justin Cooper says:

    Cool blog, I always knew what GT was, a really gross thing to have happen but I never knew what it was classified and really was.

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