Vaper’s Tongue: What Causes It and How To Get Rid of It Effectively
Have you faced an instance where one fine morning you woke up to take a drag of your favorite glazed donut vape only to taste nothing? It’s normal for your taste receptors to fail when you are sick and not register the flavor you’re vaping. However, there’s a more somewhat serious phenomenon that newly converted or longtime vapers have been dealing with for a while now.
While new vapers find themselves facing the issue less often, it’s a more ubiquitous issue with seasoned vapers. Since they have developed a taste or palate for a certain kind of flavor they are more likely to get a bland palate for hours or even weeks at the end, which gets frustrating as you can imagine. This phenomenon is more common than you think and is called Vaper’s tongue or Vaper’s Tongue. And the good news is that you need not fret about it.
Vaper’s Tongue, although very frustrating, is a temporary situation. There’s no need to run helter-skelter and start panicking if you’re experiencing a loss of taste of your vape flavor. Understanding the root cause of vaper’s tongue and knowing what to do will help you avoid it in the future. Let’s take a look at all there’s to know about this very common yet annoying condition.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Understanding Vaper’s Tongue
Did you know we have around 2,000 to 8,000 taste buds in our mouth and they regenerate every 10 days? Your gustatory sense or sense of taste in simpler terms requires saliva for the taste buds to keep working effectively.
Considering vaping requires so much mouth breathing, especially if you’re sub-ohming, you’ll likely have a dry mouth most often and that’s when the ability to taste ceases to exist. This is more common in new vapers who are vaping more frequently.
Another cause of vaper’s tongue is flavor fatigue, which is more common in seasoned vapers. This happens because your sense of smell or your olfactory sense tends to lose its perception of an aroma the longer it’s exposed to it.
And since your gustatory sense and olfactory sense work together for a full flavor perception. Moreover, it’s a known fact that smell makes up for up to 70 percent of the perceived flavor. And therefore, it’s best advised to rotate flavors and not vape one for a long time.
Last but not the least, there is research proving that smokers generally have smell and taste impairment at large. Therefore, if you’ve only recently started vaping or if you are transitioning by combining smoking and vaping, rest assured you won’t taste flavor fully.
How to Get Rid of a Vaper’s Tongue?
Now that we know what causes vaper’s tongue, let’s get to the reason why you are here in the first place. Getting rid of the vaper’s tongue requires some work but it’s possible. Here are five effective and easy ways to do so.
- Hydrate: Remember how we said dry mouth might result in loss of flavor? Staying hydrated is not only good for the body but also keeps your taste buds working properly. Drink more water, especially if you are a chain vaper or vape very often.
- Reduce caffeine or alcohol: Since most smokers are used to having a drag with a cuppa or a drink, it’s normal to do so while switching to vaping. However, beverages containing caffeine or alcohol can dry out the mouth on contact. Moreover, they are classified as diuretics, which means they cause frequent urination and thus dehydration. It’s best to reduce these two if you have recently switched.
- Keep switching between flavors: One of the best ways to avoid vaper’s tongue is by preventing flavor fatigue. This can be done by switching up your vaping habit a bit. Take a break from your ADV (all-day-vape) and move to a completely different flavor profile. For example, if you primarily vape fruity flavors, move to coffee or dessert and vice versa. The best would be to have two vapes with different flavor profiles and rotate between them. You can try reputed online sellers like https://www.rainbowvapes.co.uk/ for a wide range of flavor profiles from different brands.
- Try Menthol or unflavoured vape: These are two of the most effective ways to get rid of the vaper’s tongue. While strong menthol flavors can help reset your taste buds, an unflavoured base is similar to taking a break from vaping without actually doing it.
- Take longer vape breaks: If you are hitting your vape way too often than you should, your sense of smell and flavor are likely to be affected. The best way to cut back on your vaping frequency is by increasing the nicotine level.
Apart from these, some basic tricks include maintaining good oral hygiene and hydration, cleaning your tongue, and most importantly, stopping smoking completely. There you go! Now you know why you were not able to taste that glazed donut in the morning and what to do to be able to taste it again.