Props to Kate McKinnon for her candor: When asked about the most recent photo in her camera roll, the Saturday Night Live alum said it was a photo of her “geographic” tongue.
McKinnon — who’s promoting Secrets of the Purple Pearl, the second book in her Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science series of children’s books — opened up about the health condition in People’s One Last Thing questionnaire as she revealed the photo or screenshot she had taken most recently.
“I took a photo of my tongue and sent it to an actor friend of mine,” she said. “We both have the same medical condition. It’s called geographic tongue. Your tongue sheds in patches and looks like an atlas, hence the name ‘geographic tongue.’”
According to the Cleveland Clinic, geographic tongue is a noncancerous condition that affects an estimated 3 percent of the world’s population. The condition results in smooth, red patches on one’s tongue. It can occur in people with emotional stress, eczema, psoriasis, airborne allergies, diabetes (particularly Type 1 diabetes), reactive arthritis, or vitamin deficiencies (including zinc, iron, folic acid and vitamins B6 and B12). It can also occur in people with the condition called fissured tongue and in women who use oral contraceptives.
“It’s gross,” McKinnon said. “We brag about how geographic we are on any given day. Maybe I shouldn’t be saying this in a magazine.”
Duck Dynasty star Sadie Robertson went public with her geographic tongue five years ago as she stuck out her tongue for a photo she posted to Instagram. “I have geographic tongue — yes, it’s a thing, and yes, that’s why my tongue looks weird,” she wrote in her caption.
FYI, the American Academy of Oral Medicine elaborated on the condition, saying that it can cause a burning or smarting sensation on the tongue and that the red patches are caused by the loss of papilla, the finger-like and mushroom-shaped projections that cover the tongue’s surface. Similar-looking lesions — called geographic stomatitis or erythema migrans — can occur on one’s palate, gums, and cheeks, as well as under the tongue.