Correlational Research between Tooth-marked Tongue and TCM Constitution in the Health Inspection People
体检人群的齿痕舌与中医体质的相关性研究

This research was aimed to investigate the relationship between tooth-marked tongue and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) constitution in the health inspection people. Each of the 3092 participants had completed a questionnaire about TCM constitution in order to find out their own type of TCM constitution. Each participant's tongue had also been examined and had its corresponding tongue diagnosis. Meanwhile, each participant had its own digital tongue map done. The results showed that the incidence of tooth-marked tongue among the 3092 participants was 56.27%, where 11.21% of the tooth-marked tongues were high-graded ones. The female participants had a higher occurrence rate of having medium to high-graded tooth-marked tongue than male ones (P < 0.01). For qi-deficiency, yang-insufficiency, phlegm-dampness, and dampness-heat constitution with the age of 50 and above, the occurrence of tooth-marked tongue was lesser (P < 0.05, P < 0.05, P < 0.01, P <0.01). The incidence of tooth-marked tongue among 8 biased constitutions and the gentle constitution showed no difference (P > 0.05). Comparing to the gentleness constitution, the occurrence rate of medium to high-graded tooth-marked tongue was higher in both intrinsic characteristics and blood stasis constitution (P < 0.05). It was concluded that the tooth-marked tongue is not a specific symptom in the TCM constitution differentiation. Also, age and the incidence of tooth-marked tongue are correlated. The high-graded tooth-marked tongue is valuable in defining health status. Therefore, it is suggested that "no high-graded tooth-marked tongue occurs" should be a gentle constitution differentiation content.