Vaper’s Tongue: What Is It? How Do I Get Rid of It?

It’s a very annoying situation when you suddenly find it impossible to taste your favourite e-liquid or experience a numbness of the tongue when vaping. If you’ve never experienced that before, you may even find it a bit frightening. 

The good news, though, is that you have nothing to worry about. What you’re experiencing is vaper’s tongue. It’s actually a common phenomenon among vapers because vaping is an activity that keeps your sense of taste in a heightened state of activity all day, every day. After a while, your brain simply stops processing the information. Vaper’s tongue can come on so slowly that you hardly even notice it until you realize one day that your favourite e-liquid suddenly isn’t doing anything for you at all.

Some people who experience vaper’s tongue find that the condition makes it difficult to taste an individual e-liquid. Others, however, report that vaper’s tongue makes them numb to all flavours. People report that vaper’s tongue tends to resolve itself in about one to three days, but there are some tricks that you can potentially use to speed the process along.

What causes vaper’s tongue?

Quitting smoking

Believe it or not, one of the most common causes of vaper’s tongue is quitting smoking. As you already know, cigarette smoking dulls your sense of taste and makes it difficult to enjoy your favourite foods and drinks to the fullest. When you quit smoking, your taste buds eventually come around and return to their correct level of sensitivity. Suddenly, everything tastes more wonderful than it has in years. You’re drinking more, eating more and – of course – vaping like crazy. Eventually, you reach a point of sensory overload. 

Dehydration 

The two most plentiful ingredients in any e-liquid are propylene glycol and vegetable glycerine, and both of those ingredients have the ability to draw in moisture and trap it. When you switch to vaping, you need to increase your water intake. If you don’t, you could end up becoming dehydrated. If that happens, you may feel a sort of film on your tongue that makes it difficult for you to taste your e-liquid.

Illness

Having a case of vaper’s tongue isn’t at all unusual if you also happen to have a case of cold or flu. Remember – if your sense of taste already isn’t functioning optimally, you’re going to have trouble tasting your e-liquid as well. This is also true if you take any medication that affects your sense of taste.

Changing e-liquid flavour too often – or not often enough

When you get right down to it, vaper’s tongue is basically a condition of olfactory overload. Have you ever shopped for perfume? If you have, you probably experienced olfactory overload in that situation as well. After you smell a few perfumes in quick succession, all of them begin to smell the same.

Likewise, you may experience vaper’s tongue if you use nothing but the same e-liquid all of the time without ever switching to something else. In that case, you experience a different type of sensory overload; you simply become numb to the flavour that you’re tasting all of the time.

We’ll discuss some simple solutions for the above situations in a moment, but before we do that, it’s important to remember that vaper’s tongue doesn’t always have a simple explanation, but it will go away on its own if you give it a little time. 

Solutions for vaper’s tongue

Change your vaping patterns

If you’re experiencing vaper’s tongue because of your vaping patterns, you simply need to change those patterns to resolve the issue. If you’ve lost the ability to taste your e-liquid because you’re switching flavours constantly, then it’s in your best interest to pick one flavour and stick with it for a while. Once your sense of taste comes back, try vaping just one or two flavours a day and rotating through your favourite e-liquids throughout the week.

If sticking with one flavour and never changing things up is the cause of your vaper’s tongue, switch to a different e-liquid for at least a few days. When you return to your usual e-liquid, you should find that the flavour once again tastes vivid and bold.

Another easy way to resolve vaper’s tongue is by switching to an unflavoured e-liquid temporarily. Flavourless e-liquid tends to be very inexpensive, and why bother wasting an expensive premium e-liquid if you can’t taste it anyway? Switching to unflavoured e-liquid is an excellent way to reset the palate.

Mind Your Hydration Level and Oral Hygiene

The next step in resolving vaper’s tongue is making sure that your palate is in good shape. As we mentioned above, it’s always an excellent idea to increase your water intake when vaping because of the potential for dehydration. Brushing your teeth – and your tongue – can also help to rekindle your sense of taste.

Cleanse your palate

Professional tasters of products that are fundamentally similar but have subtle differences – wines, for instance – routinely encounter olfactory fatigue on the job and need to employ palate cleansers to prevent that from happening. Many different foods and drinks can be effective palate cleansers; you simply need to select something that’s strongly flavoured but doesn’t taste anything at all like your e-liquid. Black coffee, tea and club soda with a bit of lemon or lime can all help to get your palate back into tip-top shape.

Take a break from vaping

If vaper’s tongue has made vaping unenjoyable for you – and you’re not willing to wait for the situation to resolve itself – we have two solutions that remove flavour from the equation entirely. The first one is something we mentioned above; you can switch to unflavoured e-liquid. As an alternative, though, you could simply stop vaping. If you’ve been vaping for a while, your nicotine needs probably aren’t that great anyway. If you switch to nicotine lozenges for a day, it’ll probably do wonders for your sense of taste.

Contact Easypuff for help with your next vaping purchase

EasyPuff is New Zealand’s vape shop. We pride ourselves on having the best selection of vaping devices and e-liquids in the nation, and we’re happy to help if you’re having trouble deciding what’s right for you. Just click the chat icon in the corner of the screen or call us on +64 7 925 0904.