Absolutely! The real question is if it is actually beneficial - that answer is up for a little bit of debate. Personally, I feel that it definitely helps freshen up my mouth and keep it fresh through out the day - especially if I get to enjoy my coffee at home before leaving for work! 

What exactly does scraping your tongue aim to achieve? Well, on your tongue there are compounds known as volatile sulfur compounds (VSC), these are composed of hydrogen sulfide, methyl mercaptan and dimethyl sulfide. When you scrape, these VSC's are at some level removed off of your tongue and the importance of that is VSC's are tied to halitosis, which is a fancy way of saying bad breath. Increased VSC's have also been tied to erosive esophagogastroduodenal (esophagus, stomach, duodenum) mucosal layers as seen in H. pylori cases. Let's get this out of the way real quick - bad breath doesn't mean you have H. pylori however bad breath that you can't control might be a symptom of H. pylori.

Back to tongue scraping - I must be up front, the evidence isn't very strong but the "personal experience" evidence is undeniable for myself. I feel that my tongue feels nice, clean and fresh after a combination of brushing my teeth and scraping my tongue. 

In conclusion, there aren't many articles (as this isn't a wildly hot topic) supporting the "benefits" of scraping your tongue and once more, it really becomes a personal thing of how you feel. I think it might be worth giving it a try. See how you feel and go from there!

Recently I came across an article which focused on time restricted eating (TRE) and the effects it may have on anti-aging and anti-cancer as well. Through that article, I found myself reading another article with TRE being correlated to prevention of tumor growth.

What exactly is TRE? Time-Restricted Eating is a type of intermittent fasting where your focus isn't put on the "when I can't eat" 👎 but more so "when I can eat" 👍!  The benefit that I personally found of this diet was that you can start at your own comfortable pace. Give yourself an 8 hour window to start with, eat from 11am to 7pm (breakfast person, move it earlier in the day, favor those late night snacks, move it towards those night owl hours) then after a week try coming down to a 7 hour window, 6 hour window and work your way towards a 4 hour window of allowed eating time. I found for myself a 2pm to 6pm TRE works as I try not to eat after 6pm regardless. Sure, you can eat a little more freely, burgers and pizza if you'd like but striving for healthier options is always recommended - one step at a time! Another question that comes up with intermittent fasting/time-restricted eating is wether or not you can change the times day to day, depends who you ask. I believe those hours are like gym hours, if you typically work out 6pm-8pm but tomorrow decide 7pm-9pm - you won't be receiving less benefits although with diets a schedule seems to help, even if psychologically it keeps you on track!

Like most diets, we all start them to "lose weight" and discover benefits as time goes by and as more research is done into the diet patterns. One thing to keep in mind is that this diet and any diet is not necessarily "the best" way to diet - every body is different and what works for one person may not be the greatest for another. Many people have found success in calorie counting diets, ketogenic diets, paleo diets and so many others. The goal is to find the diet that works best for you and allows you to feel the healthiest you possibly can. Remember that, the goal is to be and feel healthy - not "lose the most weight."

*Quick side note - A TRE diet can allow you to combine diet forms, such as a calorie counting diet or ketogenic diet, where you only eat the calories or fats/proteins during the allocated hours of eating. Please be sure to consult with a dietician/nutritionist before making extreme changes to your diet - Google & YouTube are great but they don't hold all of the answers.

Below you can find attached research articles related to the topic above.