Chewing Gum Boosts Your Brain Power - Facts Analysis

Story:

Chewing gum boosts your brain power and memory.
Researchers at Coventry University have discovered that chewing mint-flavored gum could dramatically decrease feelings of tiredness. Meanwhile, separate research studies have suggested that chewing gum can improve test scores and improve memory by 35%.

Analysis:

The message says researchers have found that chewing gum will decrease the feelings of tiredness, boosts your brain power and also improves the memory. It is a fact.

As mentioned in the message, scientists at the Coventry University, England have conducted studies and found that people who chew a mint gum have dramatically decreased their feelings of sleepiness, tiredness and became more alert and attentive, without the usual jitters. A related study at Cardiff University, UK also showed the same results, with elevated heart rates and cortisol levels. The researchers proposed that the chewing gum motion gets the blood flowing to the head, and enhances the brain performance due to “mastication-induced arousal”. That is, chewing a gum wakes us up and keeps us fully focused on the task at hand.

Another group of researchers at St. Lawrence University, New York gave chewing gum to a group of students and analyzed their memory performance in several tests. They observed a burst of memory while chewing gum right away, which again dropped to the normal levels within 20 minutes. The study has shown that gum-chewing helped during recall and memory tasks especially. But note that these health benefits of chewing gum are short term effects and do not last long.

So if you want a brain boost for some time, grab a stick of fresh gum or even a bubble gum and get chewing – it is the oral equivalent of running on a treadmill. Interestingly, a product called Brain Gum containing one of the chemicals found in brain is on its way to Britain, and is supposed to regulate the functions of the trillions of brain nerve cells. With research findings like these, many more such products are sure to come up.

Update: 19 May 2013

Note that most of the Gums in market contain harmful, artificial additives like Aspartame and Sucralose, which are added as sweeteners. These artificial sweeteners are added in other food products as well. But studies have shown that Aspartame and Sucralose are neurotoxins and can have damaging health effects. Aspartame is shown to increase the incidence of malignant tumours in rats. So it is advised to avoid such brand of Gums and choose natural ones free of these artificial additives. In the reference section below, you can see PreventDisease giving the list of Gum brands containing Aspartame and Sucralose.

According to PreventDisease and Examiner, Glee Gum, Pur gum and Chicza are some of the natural Gums free from these harmful additives.