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Because so many patient's either scrape or brush their tongues - especially those seeking complementary medicine such as TCM, it is not uncommon to see clinically either a tongue with no coating, or a tongue with coating only in the root. These presentations - if as a result of scraping or brushing the tongue - do not indicate yin deficiency or damp heat in the lower jiao. It simply means the patient couldn't scrape the root of their tongue without gagging.

Also, if a patient has numerous thin cracks in the tongue with no apparent pattern, ask if they wore braces at some time in their life.