Dental expert reveals what causes 'weird' bumps on your tongue and what to do about them

A YouTuber and dental hygienist has opened up about an aspect of dental hygiene which may have bothered most of us.

While brushing our teeth, and while no one is looking, many of us may have stuck our tongue out and stared with a mixture of interest and slight revulsion at the bumps on our tongue.

Isn't it just odd to think that our tongue is just there in our head the whole time and we're not even aware of it.

I bet you just became weirdly aware of your tongue, didn't you?

That glimpse at the literally linguistic muscle, because the tongue's Latin name is 'lingua', might reveal lots of slightly disconcerting bumps and dimples.

But what exactly are all those bumps?

It's normal to have these bumps on your tongue (Norman Zeb/Getty)

Dental hygienist and YouTuber Teeth Talk Girl explained in a video that these bumps are called 'papillae' and are a normal part of our tongue's anatomy.

But the ones at the back of the tongue are particularly large, and these are called the 'circumvallate'.

She said: "If you happen to stick your tongue out and you've never seen them before you might be like 'what!', because you've never noticed them before and they just look larger and weirder than the rest of your papillae at the front part of your tongue.

"But they are all normal they are all lined up side by side along the back of the tongue, and the circumvallate themselves house hundreds of tastebuds, so it's good to have different sizes and types of tongue bumps."

However, there might sometimes be a problem with things looking particularly bumpy or unusual.

If a mark persists after two weeks it might be worth getting checked out (Pawel Wewiorski/Getty)

"These different papillae can sometimes get inflamed or infected causing them to stand out from the rest, and sometimes leading to soreness or even irritation," she explained.

"Most of these inflamed papillae situations are temporary and they heal within a week."

A common cause is if you're eating something hard or crunchy, like a tortilla chip, or you have the throughly unpleasant experience of biting your tongue.

Either of these things, the dental hygienist explained, could cause temporary inflammation and most of the time is not cause for concern, but there are exception.

She said: "If you do have a sore bump on your tongue that lasts longer than 14 days and it's only on one side of your tongue, then it's probably time to visit your dentist for an exam.

"Most irregular bumps are not concerning at all if you have the same thing on both sides of your tongue."

So if something looks irregular and doesn't go away after a couple of weeks, maybe go and get checked out.