So, um, how's your tongue? (Unofficial research. Very.)

 I have a rather odd question, but I hope all you mid-range post-ops will indulge me.

How's your tongue?

About a year out from surgery I started to notice sometimes my sense of taste was a bit odd, kind of off. Later out, it even felt a bit sore. I started seeing, on and off, bald patches on the top where the taste buds were gone, and it was smooth, bare flesh underneath. The bald patches would grow, change shapes, merge together, or not, and sometime the bare spots would get rather raw and sore. Then it would slowly clear up and go back to normal, like over the course of a few weeks.

Fast forward another year or so. This pattern - funny taste, bald patches, bare spots with tenderness - 

("Man, my tongue hurts")
("Your... what?")
("You heard me. My tongue is killing me.")
("... only you, Koko.")

- followed by slow healing, continued. But finally I was actually in my doctor's office when it was looking icky, and she took a look and said. "Thrush."

Which, I'm happy to say, was incorrect, but I love her anyway. I looked at pictures on google images of thrush - - and no, no, no, excuse me for a minute  -  - that's not what was happening in my mouth.... thank god. But there were a couple of pictures much further down the page, and I went hmmm, and clicked.

"Geographic Tongue". Bingo.

Now, before you go running off to look, I should tell you geographic Tongue is not particularly pretty. But compared to Thrush images, which - oh no - excuse me -  - are really - oh my -   - awful, these images are a bouquet of posies.

But here's the reason I'm here.

From Wiki: "Causes vary, but may include zinc or vitamin B deficiencies, allergies, and hormonal changes."

And then I read that people with Celiac Disease often present with Geographic Tongue. One of the issues with having Celiacs is that it causes changes in the bowel leading to malabsorption of nutrients. So I'm thinking about the vitamin deficiencies, and the association with malabsorption, and I started wondering about WLS's nutrient absorption reduction, and here I am.

So, let me be the first person to ask you: how's your tongue doing? Anyone else out there noticing changes in their tongues some time after WLS?

 Mine is fine but I'm now funning off to take my B12 (I actually forgot it today)!

 I'm suppose to be "running" - not "funning"! But I had fun with your post!

I can't answer really, since I haven't had surgery yet.

but I did experience this while pregnant when I would eat chocolate. my doc thought it could be a hormone change that caused an almost allergy type reaction. it really does hurt!

It took about 6 months after having my son to have it stop completely. but before then it would appear, last 1-3 weeks, go away and come back a few weeks later (always after eating chocolate).
I hope you get it figured out soon!

My tounge is fine, but I have a friend and she had that. She was on a diet at the time and wasn't taking her vitamins, so she was low in B vitamins. Once she started taking them (cause she got pregnant and started her prenatal vit) she was fine.

I am 11 months out and have not had any problems with my tongue, but then again I do take my vitamins every day.  Now I have another reason to make sure I keep taking them! 

 I've had Geographic Tongue since I was young. I never heard about the connection with Celiac but since I don't do wheats/grains very often now, I probably wouldn't notice if I had that too, though wheat carbs didn't really cause any of the classic symptoms in me preop. I had thrush immediately post-op and it was AWFUL! My dentist recommended that I brush my tongue more often with geographic tongue, possibly more for the appearance & removing bacteria but I've long since come to terms with the fact that I will never have a "cute" tongue. Oh, and it looks worse after eating dairy because it just kinda highlights the patches & patterns. I'm a freak.....

 oh, and I'm actually high on B vitamins & zinc - looking into a compounding pharmacy to create a multi that excludes the things I'm too high on - so it might just be allergies. Who knows. Sometimes one is just a modern medical mystery.

Huh... And that was my next stop, too. I was going to try upping my B vitamins and zinc, since that's what they do in the UK for this. My lab work shoed my vitamins were all in the normal range, fwiw.

As a further note of interest - yeah, I know, to who? - I started getting small, liquid-filled, flat blisters on the roof of my mouth around the same time, and now I've learned that it's part of the same thing. When you have Geographic Tongue, and also get sores in other parts of your mouth, it gets the very fancy name of "Migratory Stomatitis". 
This, in spite of its name, has zero to do with your stomach. Which seems to be born out by the responses here.

 

You can have celiac without obvious symptoms...that's what makes it so hard to diagnose!

Anna