This Man's Tongue Lost Its Taste Buds And Became Completely Smooth
While snooping around in the mouth of a patient, physicians in Singapore were is dealing with a surprising symptom: a silky smooth tongue, seemingly without any taste buds.
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, the 64 -year-old man came to the hospital saying he had been suffering from a painful tongue and burning sensations around his lips for six months. A physical examination revealed that the man had “an atrophic, erythematous tongue with loss of the lingual papillae, ” which is science-speak for an inflamed red tongue and a loss of taste buds.
His blood tests came back relatively normal, except for extremely low levels of vitamin B1 2. A vitamin B1 2 deficiency can occur for a number of reasons. It can occasionally start due to a lack of the vitamin in your diet, however, the most common cause is pernicious anemia, a condition where your immune system assaults healthy cells in your own stomach, avoiding your body from assimilating vitamin B12 from the food you feed. The doctors made a diagnosis of pernicious anemia by find high levels of autoantibodies( a kind of antibody that targets the body’s own proteins) in the man’s blood, which indicated his immune system was pushing an attack on his own proteins.
Vitamin B1 2 is involved in the metabolism of every cell of the human body and in the development of red blood cell. If you have a deficiency of this vitamin, then your body fights to induce enough healthy red blood cell. Typically, a deficiency in vitamin B12 will lead to headaches, weakness, weight loss, and chest pain.
A sore and inflamed tongue is also a surprisingly common red flag for the condition. It’s unclear why tongues appear to be so affected by the deficiency, however, it has been previously noted that the oral mucosa, the mucous membrane lining the inside of the mouth, is especially sensitive to a lack of vitamin B1 2. It appears that the smooth appearance of the tongue is actually a result of inflammation, which has blown up the tongue like a balloon and generated the impression that the bobbly taste buds have disappeared.
Fortunately, the man’s tongue is now back to normal, taste buds and all. However, due to his ailment, he has to receive monthly injections of vitamin B12 every month.
This Man's Tongue Lost Its Taste Buds And Became Completely Smooth
This Man's Tongue Lost Its Taste Buds And Became Completely Smooth
This Man's Tongue Lost Its Taste Buds And Became Completely Smooth
This Man's Tongue Lost Its Taste Buds And Became Completely Smooth
This Man's Tongue Lost Its Taste Buds And Became Completely Smooth