Have you ever had this experience while vaping, when suddenly your tongue just can’t tell the flavor of the e-juice? If so, then you have vapers tongue: a vaper loses the ability to taste vape juice suddenly and unexpectedly. Don’t panic! If you unfortunately come across this situation, it's only temporary.
Vapers tongue occurs sometimes with regular vaping, making the vapers feel like their tongue is coated with something so they can’t distinguish flavors, while the vapor and the nicotine absorption will not be affected. When losing tasting ability without warning, it could confuse us a lot and generate resistance to vaping. However, this phenomenon is universal and can be cured in some suitable ways, it’s important to learn the causes and what to do to avoid it, or heal it when happens.
Vaper’s tongue could be related to the reasons below:
-Dehydration
Physically, our taste depends on the taste buds distributed on the tongue, the number of taste buds for the normal person could be between 2000 to 8000. Some people may have more than 10,000 taste buds making them very sensitive to flavors.
Taste buds have a life cycle which normally lasts for 2 weeks, after which they regenerate and so maintain our ability to taste. However, no matter how old the taste bud is they require saliva to maintain their function. Excessive vaping could cause your tongue to fatigue, which leads to dry mouth and the poor function of the salivary glands. Without enough saliva to maintain a moist environment in our mouth we might lose our taste temporarily.
-Olfactory issue
The sense of olfaction, which is normally called smelling, could be another culprit to be blamed if you are suffering vaper’s tongue. It’s common that our sense of smell and taste work together to distinguish between tastes, to be more specific, your nose amounts for almost 70% of realizing flavors. Therefore, in addition to the basic tastes of sweet, salty, bitter, sour and umami are determined by the taste buds, the more detailed taste distinction is done by your sense of olfactory.
Another sense we learn from our daily life is when we are exposed for long periods in the same odor environment, our sense of smell will lose its ability temporarily. As the main method of identifying flavor is through smell, it’s not too hard to understand the reason why you might get a vaper’s tongue and couldn’t distinguish the flavor clearly after long periods of vaping.
-Smoking
Last but not least, smoking is a serious reason you might need to take into consideration. If you were a smoker not a long ago or you still smoke, your tasting and smelling ability could be affected negatively by it.
This symptom can be cured after you quit, normally it will take less than a month to recover, then you can get rid of vaper’s tongue and enjoy beautiful flavors again.
How to avoid vaper’s tongue.
As the main causes of vaper’s tongue are dehydration, olfactory fatigue and smoking, avoiding vaper’s tongue isn’t difficult.
- More water!
The phrase “Drink water regularly” can be related to any health topic, in this situation, it also applies heavily, so if you are a daily vaper drink more to keep your mouth moist and salivating!
-Reduce your caffeine and alcohol
Drinking less caffeine or alcohol can help as these two diuretic factors can accelerate the dehydration of your body, which can lead to dry mouth.
-Stop smoking
Traditional tobacco contains many ingredients that are detrimental to oral health (e-cigarettes are less common), quitting smoking is good for maintaining the functions of the mouth, which including the tasting ability.
- Don’t forget to clean your tongue!
As part of oral cleaning, it is also necessary to clean your tongue regularly, which not only reduces the damage to the taste buds caused by the bacteria from the food residue but also having a clean tongue can ensure you get a better vaping experience.
5 ways to help cure vaper’s tongue
- Inhaling the smell of fresh coffee beans or sucking on lemons
The same concept as – drinking wine can get you drunk but grapes can help the hangover, coffee can work in the same way. Too much caffeine intake could lead to a dry mouth but the smell of fresh coffee beans can somehow reset your olfactory ability so that your sense of smell will be back and help cure your vaper’s tongue.
So coffee beans are curing your olfactory, the sour juice from a fresh lemon will take care of your taste buds, the taste of sourness could stimulate the salivary glands to make saliva and then your vaper’s tongue should be all fixed up.
-Extending the time interval
The simplest (yet hardest for some) way to heal the vaper’s tongue, is to take a longer break when you realize you have it. Temporarily stop vaping until you get your taste sensations back. The length of the recovering period depends on individuals.
-Switch up the e-juice
Try something new! If you always vape mango, your taste buds might get off it before you realize. Try some other flavors, especially ones with a big difference in taste from your old one. Potentially two birds with one stone— Vaper’s tongue fixed and a new flavor of e-juice to your shopping list.
-Try an ice/frozen flavor (Menthol)
Menthol can stimulate your senses without smelling it or tasting it. With its strong flavor, mint flavors can help your taste buds rebuild their function.
- Unflavored juices
Give them a go, it’s a way to relax the use of the taste buds while still getting your nicotine and clouds. Unflavored e-juice is a low-cost choice that can be found in DIY shops, you can also find ones with nicotine if needed.
After understanding the causes of vaper’s tongue and the corresponding preventions and some effective treatment methods, hopefully, that helps everyone a little bit.
If the symptoms don’t alleviate after some time and after taking the relevant steps, do consider the possibility that it could be caused by something else and see your doctor to get some further treatment.
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