This Micro-Habit That Can Change Your Life

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” - Will Durant

Every January 1st, millions of people around the world make resolutions to get healthier,
to get fitter, to make more money, etc. But 80% of resolutions fail by February.
Why? Because the foundational habits required to drive them towards their goals after the
first week of January aren’t there. In other words, without good habits, your odds of success
are stacked against you.

But can habits really change your life? Yes. And you can see the power of
consistency all around you. From Kobe Bryant who showed up to practice at 5 AM every day
to Warren Buffett who reads 500 pages a day, good habits can lead to massive success.

There’s a catch, though. Nobody, not even Warren Buffett, is born reading 500 pages a day.
Your key to success is micro-habits. Micro-habits are goal-related habits so small and quick
that you’d be embarrassed to tell your friends you couldn’t check it off your to-do list every day.
The significance of these micro-habits is negligible, but their psychological effects are powerful.
Consider it a mental hack. It’s telling yourself this:
This thing is important to me, I told myself I’d do it, and I did it.
If your goal is to get healthier, consider this micro-habit: tongue scraping.

Here’s a 6-step process that will take less than 60 seconds of your morning:

1) Wake Up
2) Check yourself in the mirror
3) Grab a scraper
4) Scrape up and down a few times to get all the yuck off
5) Rinse the scraper
6) Smile and enjoy your day

Follow these super easy steps and you’ll suddenly become someone who gets things done.
This feeling of accomplishment will help build momentum for you to accomplish bigger goals.

If you want to start tongue scraping but don’t want the extra responsibility of replacing yours
regularly, no problem. We do the work for you. Sign up for a monthly subscription
for just $1/month, and you can focus on building your micro-habits.

5 Things You Might Forget to Pack When You Travel (... Don't)

Packing for a trip is always a huge ordeal – just how are you supposed to fit your entire wardrobe, 5 pairs of shoes, 10 books, an ultra-fancy first-aid kit for every potential emergency situation, a laptop, a tablet, and extra batteries for your cellphone in that tiny suitcase?

While there’s no blog post or YouTube video with a perfect list of things you’ll absolutely positively need when you travel, here’s a list of 5 things you should pack first:

1) Passport

This is a no-brainer if you’re traveling out of the country, but carrying a passport is something you should consider even when you’re traveling domestically. You would never want to be stuck without a passport in the event that you need to take an impromptu trip out of the country, and it can also serve as a second form of identification if your first form is ever lost or stolen.

A word of precaution: Never carry your passport in the same pocket as your cellphone and wallet. Keep it in an inside pocket or in a bag that you can keep in front of you at all times.

2) Wet Wipes

Let’s face it -- flying is dirty business. Between the deep-cleanings that occur every month (or two), planes can become germ fests. With hundreds of people moving in and out of the confined spaces of a plane, you’ll most likely end up sitting in someone’s germs. Yuck. Take some wet wipes in your carry-on bag and make sure to wipe down your seat, your armrest, and definitely your tray table. 

3) Tongue Scraper

Traveling can expose your body to all sorts of new bacteria and toxins in the environment, drinks, and food. But before you go ahead and buy yourself a human-sized inflatable bubble on Amazon, there is an easier and cheaper way to help your body stay healthy: tongue scraping. 

Regular tongue scraping can help your body cleanse itself of toxins, stimulate your internal organs, and clean your taste buds to enhance your sense of taste. After all, there’s no fun in travel if you can’t enjoy all the delicious food, right?

4) Jacket

Even if you think you’re traveling to a warm location, a waterproof, windproof jacket is an item you’ll always want to include in your suitcase. Hot days can quickly become frigid nights, so you don’t want to be caught without a jacket to keep you dry and warm.

5) Condoms

Yup, you read that right. Condoms. They’re an often overlooked travel essential, but you’d be surprised at how hard it is to obtain condoms in some parts of the world. So be safe and always have a few condoms available because sometimes what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas. 

Packing for a trip doesn’t have to be an anxiety-inducing experience. If you find that you under-packed for this trip, keep a list of those items on your computer so you won’t forget them next time. Have fun and stay safe! 

Eating a lot of ass lately? You should scrape your tongue

The intestinal tract is filled with bacteria that are part of the digestive process; these do not pose any health threat. However, eating ass will expose you to any bad germs or infections harbored in your partner's intestinal tract or anal area. The CDC warns that "rimming carries a risk of transmission of STDs including hepatitis A. There is also risk of intestinal parasites, like cryptosporidiosis."

In addition, the CDC cautions that "immunocompromised persons are suggested to avoid performing this activity." So if you aren't in good health and have an immune deficiency (say from AIDS or chemotherapy), eating ass could put you at serious risk.

Here's a rundown of some of the diseases you could be exposed to when eating ass:

• Hepatitis A: Hepatitis A is a virus spread through oral contact with the fecal matter of an infected person. It affects the liver and causes symptoms such as jaundice, fatigue, and nausea. It is not a chronic infection, unlike hepatitis C. Hepatitis A can be prevented with a vaccine given before or shortly after exposure.
   
• E. coli: This is a bacterial infection spread through oral contact with the fecal matter of an infected person. Its symptoms include diarrhea, vomiting, and intestinal bleeding.
   
• Intestinal parasites:
These are microbial organisms that cause intestinal diseases including cryptosporidiosis, dysentery, and giardiasis. Symptoms include diarrhea, fever, and stomach pain. Again, these are spread through oral contact with the fecal matter of an infected person.
 
• Bacterial infections: If a person contracts food poisoning, the bacteria that causes it, say salmonella for example, will be shed in their feces and could be transmitted through oral-anal contact. Symptoms include diarrhea and vomiting.
   
• Other STDs:
If the receiving partner has a rectal gonorrhea infection, it could be contracted by the active partner; gonorrhea can infect the mouth and throat. This means that theoretically a person with an oral gonorrhea infection could transmit it to the ass that they're eating. Other STDs that can be transmitted through oral-anal contact include syphilis and herpes, if either partner has an active lesion in their mouth or anal area.

A great way to prevent all of these things is by scraping your tongue! Check out www.ScrapeYourTongue.com and use the code BUTTSTUFF to get your first tongue scraper free.

Tongue scraping could prevent heart attacks

Research is beginning to see a connection between the health of the oral cavity and the cardiovascular system.






Several species of bacteria that cause periodontitis (gum infection) have been found in the atherosclerotic plaque in arteries of the heart and elsewhere. When the plaque builds up it can lead to a heart attack. 

Harvard University also believes that the toxins released by this oral bacteria could harm blood vessels or cause blood clots. In addition, any inflammation of the mouth, which can be caused by bacteria, can increase inflammation throughout the body, including in the arteries - increasing the risk of a heart attack or stroke. 

Daily Tongue Scraping is an easy way to reduce the bacteria, lower levels of inflammation, and possibly prevent any infection from taking place.

Get the best Tongue Scraper at www.ScrapeYourTongue.com.

5 Steps To Curing Your Hangover

1) Take an Advil - At the very least it can be a placebo and at the very best it can actually help cure the pain of your hangover. Keep one of these by your bed or in your back pocket (in case of away games).

2) Scrape your Tongue - You probably drank a mixture of different alcohol and sweet chasers that left a ton of residue on your tongue. You also undoubtable ate some late night food that has planted itself on your tongue. Gotta get rid of all that evil but scraping your tongue with a tongue scraper.

3) Drink a bottle of water - Hydration is key. You want to drink so you can pee all of those toxins out of your body. Drink a bottle of water and don't hold in that pee because you're too lazy to make it to the bathroom.

4) Take a poop - Another form of cleansing your system of the naughty things you may have put into your body. Take a seat and scroll though Instagram for a little. Take some time to think about the decisions you made last night and how you'll improve in the future.

5) Take a shower - shine your shoes, you got no time to lose. No, but seriously take a nice hot shower and you should be back to about 93% if you follow these steps in this order.

Things To Eat and Avoid Eating Based On Your Tongue

Your tongue is the mirror to all the organs of the body, and thus, a daily look at the tongue prior to scraping gives you a clue to your general health. We all have different shape, sizes, colors, and coatings to our tongues. Listed below are a few of the common tongues out there and how you should be treating them in regards to your diet.


Thick, Pale, Scalloped Edges

A pale tongue that is swollen with scalloped edges indicates dampness within the body.
This tongue is often associated with symptoms like loose stools, bloating, fatigue, cold, and excess worry.

What to eat: If this is what your tongue looks like, you should emphasize warming foods and herbs (such as soup, lamb, beef, leeks, nuts, fresh ginger, rosemary, and cinnamon.)
You can also incorporate moderate amounts of wild and basmati rice, corn, buckwheat, rye, and amaranth to drain dampness from your system.
What to avoid:  Foods that enhance cold in the body.
These are foods that are eaten straight from the refrigerator, greasy/fried/creamy foods, crunchy foods, cucumbers, ice-cream, bananas, cold drinks, clams, crab, grapefruit, watermelon, radishes, green tea, sour food, and raw vegetables.


Thin, Red, Pointy, Dry

This tongue presentation is often associated with what we call “deficiency heat” in Chinese medicine.
Symptoms associated with this tongue often resemble  menopause, including hot-flashes, night-sweats, insomnia, ringing in the ears, and dry skin and lips.

What to eat: To nourish yourself, incorporate berries and seeds, naturally sweet foods (like honey, yams, and squash,) congee, spelt, quinoa, rice, sour foods, parsley, and sea vegetables.
What to avoid: If this is what your tongue looks like, and you’re experiencing similar symptoms, you’re going to want to avoid salty foods, as well as overly pungent or spicy foods, fried foods, sugar, and alcohol.


Red Tongue-Body, Yellow Greasy Coating

This kind of tongue indicates heat, and is associated with symptoms such as irritability, rashes or pimples, easy sweating, thirst, and dry constipation.

What to eat: Instead of foods that add heat to the body, incorporate more fish, steamed vegetables, salads, seaweed, millet, wild rice, and fruit into your diet.
Also, it might be wise to bitter foods and herbs like dandelion, burdock root, and lettuce to drain the heat in your system.
What to avoid: If this is what your tongue looks like you should avoid spicy, rich, and greasy foods, alcohol, sugar, and limit your meat consumption.


Quivery Tongue with a Red Tip

Both a quivery tongue as well as a red-tipped tongue are symptoms associated with stress, adrenal fatigue, depression, and insomnia.

What to do: If this is what your tongue looks like you need to take extra time to take care of yourself. It would be wise to begin some sort of practice into your before-bed-routine, such as qigong, gentle yoga, or meditation. You might also find herbal teas with passionflower, chamomile, lemon-balm, or California poppy to be beneficial.

Larry David's take on Tongue Scraping

Larry once said that the only thing he ultimately got out of his failed marriage was that Sheryl taught him about tongue scraping:


(Season 8 Episode 2) 


Larry also said. "The other thing was, I'm obsessed with oral hygiene. I floss constantly and she was really getting quite tired of it. I would floss in front of her and she'd be like, 'Don't floss in front of me anymore.' I was like, 'Oh, OK.' And I'm like, 'Tongue scraping, would that be OK?' Then we went out for dinner, she went to the bathroom and I tried to sneak a floss in. She caught me mid-floss. And that was it."

I have learned a surprising amount about Dental hygiene from Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David. Tongue scraping is awesome. 

Head to ScrapeYourTongue where you can find the best tongue scraper on the market. Add this important step to your daily hygiene efforts and you won't regret it!

Why Everyone Should Consider Tongue Scraping (Huffington Post)

Claire McCormick, a Beauty & wellness enthusiast, book nerd, proud mama, and writer for the Huffington post. Wrote this piece on Tongue Scraping on July 28, 2016...

"There’s been a flurry of articles recently about the ancient Ayurvedic practice of oil pulling. Everyone from fashion blogs to CNN have been extolling the benefits oil pulling and recommending the best oil types with which to swish. Perhaps it is our newfound collective obsession with holistic living (of which organic oils are an integral part) that had oil pulling become so on-trend. Not that I’m knocking it — I’ve tried it and found it beneficial... albeit gross.

An Alternative to Oil Pulling

There is, however, another Ayurvedic practice that has not received the same love and attention that oil pulling has, but that has proven benefits to which I can personally attest. I’m writing this to set that record straight and shed some light on... tongue scraping.

Tongue Scraping? Sounds Painful...

It’s not. It is a quick, simple and extremely inexpensive practice (all you need is a $7 tongue cleaner!) that reaps many benefits. I call tongue scraping the “unsung hero of oral health.” I have been enthusiastically tongue scraping for years now, and I don’t see how anyone could try tongue scraping once, see the gunk you remove from your tongue, and not become an enthusiast as well. I therefore urge you to go out and start scraping today.

How About a Professional Opinion?

Kim Shamoun, a veteran registered dental hygienist and fellow tongue scraping zealot, says, “I can’t live without tongue scraping. Without a doubt, it should be a part of our daily oral hygiene regimen. I stress to my patients, friends, family and strangers alike how important it really is. A tongue scraper is the one thing I would want with me on a deserted island... forget the lipstick!”

Why Else Would I Do Something that Sounds Like Medieval Torture?

We all know about, and to some extent suffer from, morning breath. (Am I the only one that performs a huge eye roll when movie lovebirds play kissy face immediately upon waking? No one is doing that IRL. Get a grip, directors.)

Well it just so happens that tongue scraping is one of the best defenses against halitosis, period! And if you scrape regularly, especially before bed, your morning breath will be drastically reduced. Why? Think about it: It’s called “oral hygiene.” So you brush your teeth, you floss your gums, but that big plush carpet that sits on the bottom of your mouth gets ignored. Doesn’t make much sense, does it? Actually, the soft, spongy, bumpy texture of the tongue is the perfect little breeding ground for bacteria! What you scrape off your tongue is this bacteria along with various other toxins (ick). This bacteria is odor-causing, so the less bacteria, the less smell.

How Else Does a Dirty Mouth Affect Overall Health?

Taste. Housing our taste buds is the tongue’s best-known role. But when your tongue is coated in gunk, your taste buds have no chance to fully enjoy that wild mushroom risotto, molten chocolate cake or any other delicious morsel. And decreased taste actually leads to decreased...

Digestion. We all know that digestion begins in the mouth; saliva is filled with enzymes that start breaking down food. And, you know, there’s that chewing thing as well. The cleaner the mouth, the better you can taste your food (i.e., the more “mouth-watering” it is) the better your digestion is!

Plaque. The more soft plaque you have on your tongue, the more hard plaque will form on your teeth. This leads to — yup — bad breath, but also tooth decay! As an aside, every time I go for my biannual teeth cleaning, my dentist compliments me on my at-home oral care. She’s actually told me “There’s really no plaque here for me to clean.” Thank you, tongue scraping!

Overall health. According to the Mayo Clinic (just one of many sources on this subject), oral bacteria and poor oral hygiene are linked to several other diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease and even infertility. At less than a minute a day, tongue scraping is the ultimate ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure!

You Might Be Saying...

You may read this and say (perhaps a bit smugly), “I do clean my tongue, with my toothbrush!” Well, your heart’s in the right place, but you’ve got the wrong tool in your hand. “An ordinary toothbrush is not recommended; it does not remove the micro-organisms from the tongue properly” says Shamoun. Just as the malleable surface of your multi-bristled toothbrush is optimal for cleaning the hard surface of your teeth, you need a solid surface (like a stainless steel tongue scraper) to really clean the squishy surface of your tongue. A U-shaped tongue scraper is where it’s at. I really like super-stylish Amano metal tongue cleaners; Shamoun recommends Breath Rx.

A Tongue Scraping How-to Guide

As I said, it is quick and simple, though timing does matter. Ideally, you want to tongue scrape as soon upon waking as possible, before you’ve eaten anything, drank anything or brushed your teeth. Just open wide (you don’t want to hit your teeth with the scraper), stick your tongue out and, starting from the back, glide the scraper over your entire tongue. Rinse it after each scrape. Do this at least five times, and/or until your scrapes come up clean, meaning you’ve gotten all the gunk off! You may want to do it in the bathroom mirror over the sink at first, so you can make sure you are getting to the back of your tongue. Then, once you’re familiar with the feeling of that, you can do it sans mirror.

“The most posterior portion of the tongue collects the most buildup, so you really have to make sure you reach far back. The frequency should be a regular basis, morning and evening,” advises Shamoun."

Follow Claire McCormack on Twitter: www.twitter.com/clairemcmack

You smoke? Here's how you can prevent the Black Hairy Tongue condition

Sounds f*cking ridiculous right? but yes, there is a condition called the Black Hairy Tongue. Even if you only smoke 'like once in a while when I'm drunk' you can still develop this condition which causes the tongue to become yellow, green, black, or brown, and give the appearance of being hairy. Basically you'll look like this Panda:



Which is actually pretty cool, so maybe you should keep smoking and not cleaning your tongue. But if you do want to prevent such a condition then you should probably scrape that nasty bacteria that builds up on your tongue from smoking. Dollar Fresh Squad offers you the best tongue scraper on the market. When you join the squad a fresh one is sent to you each month for just $1 (+$2 S+H).

Obviously I put a picture of what a Black Hairy Tongue looks like. Scroll all the way down if you wish...
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Cure hangovers with this simple trick

We've all been there. Drink all night and regret all of our decisions in the morning because of the pain and lack of motivation to do anything. It's fine sometimes, but other times we actually have stuff to do and can't let that hangover sit. Let me introduce you to the Tongue Scraper from ScrapeYourTongue.com

All that alcohol and other bad decisions (late night food & licking strangers) builds up some awful bacteria on your tongue. This bacteria can cause bad breath, sore throats, and even sinus infections. 

Using a Tongue Scraper, like the one that ScrapeYourTongue.com offers, is an easy way to scrape that nasty stuff off of your tongue and potentially cure your hangover entirely. Try it out - it's only $1

* Drink Responsibly!*