Nick NorwitzMD PhD, Oxford-Harvard | Metabolic Health Educator | “Stay Curious”

Tongue Scraping: The Simple Habit That Improves Blood Pressure and Circulation

6 Jul 2025 · 1 min

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1:09

In this segment, the speaker introduces tongue scraping, initially dismissing it as a gimmick, but then explains its potential health benefits through the lens of the oral microbiome. The oral microbiome is linked to other body microbiomes and systemic conditions, including neurodegenerative diseases. The key claim is that removing surface bacteria via tongue scraping reduces competition, allowing deeper, nitric‑oxide‑producing bacteria to thrive. Increased nitric oxide can dilate blood vessels, improve circulation, and potentially lower blood pressure, suggesting a simple habit that may support cardiovascular health.

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Tongue scraping. I thought this was a gimmick when I first heard about it, to be honest. But here's the deal: the oral microbiome, the community of microbes living in your mouth, is connected with the microbiome throughout the rest of the body—the gut microbiome, the skin microbiome—and has a real impact on your overall health, even affecting things like Alzheimer's disease. One thing tongue scraping may help with is the production of nitric nitric oxide via bacterial enzymes. Nitric oxide is a crucial cardiovascular signaling molecule. It promotes blood vessel dilation, improves circulation, and may help lower blood pressure. So how does tongue scraping play into this? Well, it removes bacteria from the surface of the tongue, reducing competition and allowing deeper-dwelling nitric oxide-producing bacteria in the crypts to thrive and flourish and produce more nitric oxide. In this way, it may help enhance nitric oxide production and support cardiovascular health, even lower blood pressure.