How To Get Rid of Vaper’s Tongue: Everything There Is To Know

There is a phenomenon in the vaping world that every vaper will experience. It's called vapers tongue, and once you get it, it won't be easy to enjoy your vape juice like you used to. But what can you do once it happens? Is it fixable? We will answer these questions and more in today's blog. 

Table of Contents:

1. What is Vaper’s Tongue?
2. How Your Tongue Works
3. Why Does Vaper’s Tongue Happen?
4. How To Fix Vapers Tongue
5. Conclusion

What is Vaper’s Tongue

Vaper's tongue refers to when your tongue can no longer taste the flavor of your vape. There are many reasons this happens, but fortunately, the vaper's tongue is temporary and can be quickly fixed. 

Some people say vapers tongue feels like a coating on the tongue that prevents you from tasting your vape juice, which is probably the most accurate description. It's also essential to know that while you might not be able to taste flavors, you'll still be able to blow plumes of smoke and will also be inhaling the same amount of nicotine. 

How Your Tongue Works

Before explaining why vaper’s tongue happens, we first have to understand how taste works. Your tongue contains thousands of taste buds (from 2000 to almost 10,000) that regenerate every two weeks (Jacewicz, 2017), and more importantly, it requires saliva to detect flavors. If there is no saliva, it could cause the taste buds to become numb and not work correctly. Since excessive vaping dries the mouth, it creates an environment that is not suitable for the taste buds to work correctly. 

We also detect flavors with our nose; in fact, the combination of tongue and nose (or flavor and aroma) allows us to detect flavors. If you have been vaping on a taste for too long, the vape’s aroma could have impacted your nose, which can no longer distinguish the flavor. 

Why Does Vaper’s Tongue Happen?

There are many reasons why vapers tongue happens. The most common, which we already went over, is vaping on the same flavor for too long. This dries the mouth, which we learned affects the ability of taste buds to detect flavors. We also learned that smelling the aroma of a single vape can accustom our nose to the smell until we can no longer distinguish it. Other reasons include:

• Numbed Taste Buds
• Dehydration
• Being Sick or Having a Stuffy Nose

Numbed Taste Buds

Another reason why you might experience vaper’s tongue is that you have recently eaten foods that might have numbed your taste buds. For example, extremely hot foods and sour foods can numb your tongue. Medications, alcohol, and if you recently stopped smoking, could also numb taste buds. But numb taste buds are only temporary since they heal in about two weeks, according to NPR (Jacewicz, 2017). 

Dehydration

Dehydration is often the culprit for vapers tongue; this is because, as we stated earlier, the tongue requires saliva to stimulate the taste buds and work properly. If your body is not adequately hydrated, you’ll have a more challenging time salivating (or creating saliva), leading to a dry mouth.

Being Sick or Having a Stuffy Nose

If you have a stuffy nose and are having a hard time smelling, this, as we learned earlier on the blog, could affect your sense of taste and give you a vaper’s tongue. Because the nose is used to detect the finer details of taste, you might experience a bit of the flavor but not the whole complexity and finer notes of the flavor. 

How To Fix Vaper’s Tongue

There are many ways to fix vapers tongue; the following are how you can solve this problem. You can drink more water, change the flavor, use a more pungent taste of vape juice, inhale fresh coffee beans, sucking on a lemon, use a tongue scraper, or wait until it goes away.

Drinking More Water

Often, vapers tongue occurs because you’re dehydrated or vaping for too long, which has dried out your mouth. By drinking water, you’ll jumpstart your taste buds and cleanse your palette while also hydrating yourself; this way, you kill two birds with one stone. 

Change the Vape Juice Flavor

If you’re still having a hard time tasting your vape juice, maybe it is time you change it for a new flavor. Changing your flavor will let your nose experience a fresh aroma while also giving your palette something new to try. After switching your vape for a few weeks, when you come back to your original vape juice, it should taste just as good as the first time.

Use a Stronger Flavor of Vape Juice

Another thing you can try to fix vaper’s tongue is more pronounced flavors like mint or menthol, which due to their strength, can jumpstart taste buds to be more alert, per se, to other flavors you might be vaping. 

Inhale Fresh Coffee Beans

A trick you can use that wine tasters and perfume makers swear by is inhaling fresh coffee beans. Although I am not 100% sure how it works, when one inhales fresh coffee, your nose and palate reset to detect new flavors once again. 

Sucking on A Lemon

Another trick that is supposed to reset your palette is sucking on a lemon. By sucking on a lemon, your lemons, tongue, and mouth are stimulated to create more saliva, making your taste buds work properly. 

Using a Tongue Scraper

By using a tongue scraper, you restore your taste buds and clean them. In case you don't have a tongue scraper, you can always use your toothbrush to clean your tongue and restore your palette. 

Waiting Until it Goes Away

Finally, you can always wait until the vaper's tongue goes away, which should take no less than two weeks, while your taste buds go through their regenerative process. 

Conclusion

Sooner or later, if you're a vaper, you'll experience vaper's tongue, but now that you have read our blog, you will know what to do when it happens. Remember that the leading cause of vaper's tongue is dehydration, so water and time are often the best recipes to defeat vaper's tongue. 

References

1. Jacewicz, N. J. (2017, May 5). Why Taste Buds Dull As We Age. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/05/05/526750174/why-taste-buds-dull-as-we-age