IN the Victorian era, the tongue took center stage in a doctor’s evaluation of the health of their patient. Indeed in 1871 the physician, Sir Thomas Watson, warned his medical students that, “A patient would think you careless, or ignorant of your craft , if you did not, at every visit, look at his tongue, as well as feel his pulse.”

In traditional Chinese medicine, they have put great importance on the tongue for over 2,000 years, believing that the colour, size, coating and markings of the tongue reflect the overall state of your blood, circulation and organ health.

Nowadays the routine inspection of the tongue by doctors has been elbowed off the top spot of the diagnostic podium.

However, the tongue persists in giving away the secrets of the body with a flamboyant display of colours.

The bright, red strawberry tongue appearance due to scarlet fever has been all over the news recently. We also have an array of white tongues. Take your pick from a long line of undesirables that are responsible, from thrush, lichen planus, syphilis and even some tongue cancers.

The tongue takes on a sombre spotted black appearance if your adrenal glands aren’t working properly. When this happens, you would be deemed to be suffering from Addison’s disease.

The adrenal glands are cutesy triangular blobs that sit above our kidneys and pump out hormones that help control our blood pressure, immune system and affect how we respond to stress.

Along with the black tongue of Addison’s disease, when your adrenal glands aren’t cooking on gas, you can suffer rapid weight loss, stomach pains, nausea, vomiting thin and brittle nails and patchy-looking skin.

The most common cause of unusual tongue color that we are most familiar with is the yellow hue. This is often due to poor oral care which has caused a build-up of dead skin and bacteria resulting in yellowy sludge and bad breath and more rarely from liver malfunction and jaundice.

If you peek in your mouth and see a purplish-blue tongue, then no time to dilly-dally, this could mean that your blood isn’t delivering enough oxygen around your body. The bluish color is known as cyanosis and may be down to a problem with your lungs or heart.