6 reasons why chewing gum is bad for your health

Gum chewing is a seemingly harmless disease, but is it really so? In some countries, chewing gum is so popular that various studies are being funded in this area in order to find out how safe it is.

In countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia, 82% and 79% of daily chewers are respectively. And the main reason is quite colorful.

Like Bulgaria in the past, these days many merchants in the Middle East still return their customers not pennies but chewing gum. The love of chewing gum around the world is dictated by various reasons.

For example, some people chew because they like the pleasant minty or fruity aromas, others because it reduces stress, and still others to lose weight (this doesn’t work).

The next time you decide to buy a pack of gum, remember these six negative effects of chewing. This might make you think twice.

1. Chewing gum reduces the intake of healthy foods and increases the consumption of so-called “junk” (or better known in Bulgaria as junk food).

While chewing gum reduces a person’s motivation and desire to eat, at the same time, some studies indicate that people who like to chew gum are more likely to consume low-quality foods and products with low nutritional value.

This negative side of chewing gum can be explained by the fact that the strong and sweet mint flavor and aroma simply make the fruit less sweet, tasteless and even cloying and thus reduce the pleasure of consumption of these vitamin foods so important for the body.

2. Chewing gum causes an imbalance in the jaw because most people usually chew predominantly on one side.

Anytime a muscle on one side of the body is used predominantly over the other, it leads to future imbalance and very often chronic pain.

When chewing gum, the jaw is overloaded more on one side, which can lead to chronic pain in the teeth, muscles, and headaches.

3. Excessive gum chewing can lead to gastrointestinal problems. First of all, we must say that when chewing gum, the probability of swallowing a large amount of air increases, which can subsequently lead to an uncomfortable feeling in the stomach and intestines.

On the other hand, and more dangerously, chewing gum sends information to the brain that you are about to ingest food at any moment.

This leads to the release of digestive enzymes and juices, which eventually end up in the digestive system unused.

Ingestion of artificial sweeteners instead of food could lead to many problems, including diarrhea.

4. Chewing gum can lead to tooth decay and destruction of the tooth enamel and the tooth.

Some types of gum contain sugar. If you chew such gum, you are literally bathing your teeth in sugar, which, as we know, has a detrimental effect on teeth.

On the other hand, sugarless gum is also not safe. They often contain acids, flavorings and other substances that attack the tooth and lead to its destruction.

5. The gum often contains lanolin – a wax-like substance that is extracted from sheep’s wool to help the gum stay soft.

While not necessarily dangerous to your health, chewing lanolin is not exactly appetizing and tasty and cannot be called food.

6. If you have mercury fillings, chewing gum extracts mercury from the filling, and this substance is quite dangerous for the human body. Mercury quickly enters the bloodstream and causes oxidation processes in the tissues. Experiments show that the amount of mercury in the bodies of people who regularly chew gum and have mercury fillings is much higher than that of people who have such fillings but do not chew.

Chronic headaches in teenagers are often associated with chewing gum. 30 people between the ages of 6 and 19, all with complaints of chronic migraine pain, were asked to stop chewing gum for a while.

After a few days, 19 of them said that, for the first time, their headaches had completely disappeared. For 7 others, the situation has significantly improved.

After returning to their old habit of daily chewing gum, all 26 people began to suffer from their familiar headache again.