Popular British ultra-endurance athlete Ross Edgley has pushed his body to extraordinary limits, but one of the most disturbing consequences of his swimming challenges directly affected his tongue.
During a recent appearance on Andrew Huberman’s podcast on Monday, October 26, the athlete recalled how his stunts led to his tongue “falling off.”
When Huberman asked whether he meant his actual tongue was falling off, Edgley confirmed that it was.
The details of his ordeal concerned viewers, with one person commenting, “This is dangerous. Looks like you need to go see a doctor now.”
British ultra-endurance athlete Ross Edgley described the bizarre moment he realized pieces of his tongue were “falling off”
Trigger warning: This article contains graphic medical details that may be distressing to some.
Ross is a prominent ultra-endurance athlete, adventurer, and best-selling author.
He is widely recognized for pioneering extreme long-distance swimming challenges that support ocean conservation and scientific research.
During his appearance on the Huberman Lab podcast, Edgley explained that he developed his tongue injury during the Great British Swim, his 2018 attempt to swim around Great Britain’s entire coastline.
The extraordinary endurance challenge made him the first person to swim around Great Britain.
Beginning in Margate in 2018, the journey covered approximately 1,792 miles and took 157 days to complete.
Edgley swam for hours each day, returning to a support boat between sessions to eat and sleep before starting again from the same point.
The challenge subjected his body to prolonged exposure to seawater, cold temperatures, jellyfish stings, and severe chafing from his wetsuit.
When Huberman asked him what he meant by his “tongue falling off,” Edgley replied, “Yeah. Yeah. Shouldn’t have bit that snake, dude.”
The 41-year-old pushed his body to its limits during his record-breaking swim around Great Britain
After the joke, he explained what he believed had caused the problem.
“No, so it’s saltwater exposure. Basically, you know, the human body is not meant to be in salt water for that long. So, it extracts all the moisture from your tongue,” he said.
Edgley then recalled, “It was about a week in, and I remember they made this amazing soup. It was just this rich vegetable soup. All the team are tucking into it. It was amazing. So full of vegetables, nutrients…”
However, when he looked at his own bowl, he noticed something unusual.
Ross shared, “So I turned to the captain. I said, ‘Why haven’t you got any pork or chicken? It’s only in mine.’ And he just leaned over, and he went, ‘Ross, that’s not pork or chicken. That’s your tongue.’”
“And it was falling off in the soup,” the athlete added.
Endurance swimmers call the condition “salt mouth.”
The term describes salt buildup in the mouth and throat during prolonged open-water swimming, which can cause significant irritation and discomfort.
A review of open-water swimming published in the BMJ describes symptoms that can include a painful, swollen tongue, difficulty tasting food, and problems swallowing.
The condition is known among endurance swimmers as “salt mouth” and can make everyday activities difficult
In severe cases, a painful, damaged tongue can make it difficult for endurance swimmers to consume the food they need to sustain their efforts.
However, Edgley’s account alone does not explain the exact medical mechanism behind the extreme tissue loss he described.
Prolonged seawater exposure can cause salt buildup and mouth irritation, but the extent of his reported injury was unusual.
During his conversation with Huberman, Edgley also shared how he managed the problem.
“For anyone listening, if you find yourself in a similar situation, coconut oil acts as a barrier, maintains the moisture,” he said, adding, “It did grow back as well.”
Ross had described the injury in graphic detail in his 2018 interview with The Guardian, explaining that he first realized how bad it had become when he woke up and found pieces of tissue on his pillow.
“I realized something was bad when I woke up with chunks of it on my pillow,” he said. “It’s that tender, you’re just pulling strips off. You could see the taste buds on it, it was that thick.”
Moreover, his tongue was not the only part of his body to suffer.
Ross also developed a painful neck wound that his fans and followers nicknamed “Rhino Neck.”
In a 2018 interview, Edgley revealed how he realized “something was bad” and tried to protect his tongue
The physical toll was so severe that Edgley described the experience as a shift from a sporting challenge to something closer to survival.
“Even a week in, it went from being a swim as most people consider it, as a sport, to being a survival exercise,” he told the outlet.
His daily routine also left little time for recovery.
He had to balance the demands of swimming with eating enough to fuel the challenge and getting whatever sleep he could manage at the time.
Despite the medical consequences, his dedication to his craft has paid off over the years.
In 2018, his performance in the Great British Swim earned him the World Open Water Swimming Association’s Performance of the Year award.
In 2024, he set a Guinness World Record for the longest non-stop river swim by swimming 318 miles down Canada’s Yukon River over 56 consecutive hours.
Last year, he also completed a grueling four-month, 1,000-mile circumnavigation of Iceland, swimming through freezing waters at 3°C, Arctic storms, and active volcanic zones while collecting marine biodiversity samples.
“This is possibly the mentality of the Gladiator or Spartan warrior in modern times. Such resilience!” one fan wrote
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