Touching your tongue to frozen metallic should be a ceremony of passage if you happen to’re a five-year-old boy from a chilly place. It’s presumably extra irresistible than hopping in mud puddles or sampling a newly frosted cake. But it’s harmful?
Anders Hagen Jarmund is aware of all about this specific temptation. Yes, he is gotten his tongue caught.
“I’m from a small place called Hattfjelldal, which is quite cold in the winter,” he mentioned. “I don’t remember if it was a signpost or a lamppost behind the school, but I remember licking it and my tongue got stuck.”
Turns out he wasn’t alone.
“This was an experience that my friends had also had, actually, and then we were wondering if it was actually dangerous, getting your tongue stuck to a lamppost or railing,” he mentioned.
In reality, in Norway, not less than, the federal government was involved sufficient about the issue to move laws in 1998 prohibiting naked metallic in playground tools.
So he and a gaggle of associates who have been additionally researchers determined to seek out the reply to their query: is getting your tongue frozen to chilly metallic harmful?
Mostly not an issue however …
The brief reply is that almost all of the time, licking a chunk of frozen metallic might be not going to end in severe hurt.
You’ll need to heat the metallic the place the tongue is caught to loosen it, possibly by respiratory on the metallic or utilizing a bit of heat water.
Whatever you do, nonetheless, don’t yank the tongue off, Jarmund says.
“Try not to panic,” he mentioned. “I remember the panic, you’re standing there and your tongue is stuck to metal. But above all else: Don’t pull your tongue off too fast.”
This isn’t just idyll hypothesis. Jarmund and his associates have lately revealed two tutorial articles about the issue in peer-reviewed medical journals. And a technique they discovered their solutions concerned pig tongues.
Nothing within the medical literature
To perceive what occurred subsequent, you should know a bit of bit about Jarmund.
He’s simply completed his medical diploma on the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and is ending his PhD dissertation on preeclampsia proper now. He additionally works on the aspect with knowledge evaluation for an NTNU analysis venture on using ultrasound to measure blood flow in infant brains.
Thus, it should not shock you that he and his associates – his brother Ståle, Sofie Eline Tollefsen and Cristoffer Sakshaug, thought doing some research venture of their spare time could be enjoyable.
They’d already performed a radical evaluation of healthcare-related social media memes which they published in an academic journal . So why not deal with this query?
As greatest they might inform, there was nothing within the medical literature that assessed the true hazard of really freezing your tongue to frigidly chilly metallic.
So, within the spirit of true scientific explorers, they determined to fill this specific information hole. Their quest would contain two vital instruments, one typical, one much less so: a literature evaluation, and the aforementioned pig tongues.
Uncovering a reputation: Tundra tongue
First, Jarmund and his colleagues carried out a radical evaluation of Scandinavian newspapers since 1748 for tales of folks freezing their tongues to chilly metallic. They discovered the primary report in 1845.
60 per cent of the victims – although to be truthful they might equally be referred to as perpetrators – have been boys.
They combed by means of greater than 17000 search hits and recognized 856 reviews. A quantity have been so newsworthy that they merited protection in a couple of newspaper. That left 113 particular person instances.
And they discovered a scientific examine that gave the expertise a reputation: Tundra tongue.
Five-year-old boys topped the checklist
The title was a enjoyable discover, however extra importantly that they had sufficient instances to establish developments.
Here’s the most important: the prime age for getting your tongue caught to frozen metallic is 5. And 60 per cent of the victims – although to be truthful they might equally be referred to as perpetrators – have been boys.
“I’m not surprised the majority were boys,” Jarmund mentioned. “The thing is, I’ve had my own little freezing experience.”
In the top, what the researchers discovered was that almost all instances of tundra tongue had no or gentle penalties.
But absolutely 18 per cent of the instances they discovered resulted in visits to a health care provider or hospital to take care of issues like avulsion. That’s the scientific approach to describe a chunk of your tongue getting torn off, resembling when yanking it off a frozen piece of metallic.
Finding volunteer tongues
Once having uncovered this sticky final result, Jarmund and his analysis companions determined they wanted to do extra.
“We were curious, of course, and no one has studied this,” he mentioned. “We wanted to do something systematically. That’s what research is about. It was also a little bit for us to learn how to do this type of research.”
Although his colleagues have been all researchers, none of them had really carried out an experimental examine like this, the place they’d reply questions resembling:
- How will we examine freezing tongues to metallic objects with out having to make use of our personal tongues?
- How will we measure how a lot power it takes to take away a tongue that’s frozen caught to metallic?
- And the place will we get sufficient volunteer tongues to make sure we might have statistically vital outcomes?
They additionally managed to drag collectively a really interdisciplinary staff: an affiliate professor in mechanical engineering and professors in pathology and biophysics pitched in to assist.
An ideal answer
About this time, Jarmund’s brother, Ståle, was looking out for a very good grasp’s venture. Not to be too tongue-in-cheek, however this venture appeared like an ideal answer, served up on a platter.
That meant they have been capable of line up the tools – a number of sensors, an infrared digicam, and a setup that required no small quantity of tinkering to get all the pieces synced up.
Among the important thing items of tools was one thing referred to as a power sensor, which is about what it appears like, they usually did donate saliva to lubricate the tongues.
But they did not need to volunteer their very own tongues to the venture, they usually did not need to recruit volunteers both.
“We doubted any ethical committee would approve human volunteers for this,” Jarmund mentioned.
After a debate about which animal species may need a tongue that was closest to human tongues, they settled on pig tongues. Eighty-four tongues, to be actual.
A licensed slaughterhouse north of Trondheim willingly provided them.
“And they were quite cheap,” Jarmund mentioned. “But I’m not sure there’s a huge market for pig tongues.
Nearly half lost a piece of tongue if it was torn off, so don’t do it!
While Jarmund spent three months on a research exchange in warm, sunny California, the rest of the team spent days in the lab, warming the tongues, cooling metal and putting the two together.
They found, not surprisingly, if you apply pig tongues to a frozen section of a metal lamppost, they will stick, and quite well.
In fact, in 54 per cent of the experiments, parts of the tongue were torn. The harder they pulled, the greater the likelihood that a piece of the tongue would get torn off.
The greatest risk of having a piece of your tongue torn off, their experiments showed, was when temperatures were between -5 and -15 °C.
There was a surprise, however: when they tested the pig tongues on very cold metal, there was less chance of avulsion.
They don’t know exactly why, but they think it’s because the tongue freezes hard enough so it can resist being torn when yanked free from the icy grip of frozen metal.
So, what exactly should you do when your five-year-old boy decides that he is unable to resist… and licks a light post when it’s -7.5C?”
The science is obvious: Take a deep breath, do not panic – and do not yank your tongue off too quick.
References:
Jarmund, Anders Hagen; Tollefsen, Sofie Eline; Sakshaug, Baard Cristoffer; Honarmandi, Yashar; Torp, Sverre Helge. (2026) Demography and outcomes of frozen tongue: a scoping review of Scandinavian tundra tongue cases. International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology
Jarmund, Anders Hagen; Jarmund, Ståle Hagen; Tollefsen, Sofie Eline; Sakshaug, Baard Cristoffer; Torp, Sverre Helge; Johnsen, Håkon Jarand Dugstad; Rita de Sousa Dias. (2026) The trauma of the tundra tongue: an experimental and computational study of lingual tissue damage following adhesion to a cold metal lamp post. Head & Face Medicine