Don’t Chew Gum

I subscribe to Health & Beyond Weekly:  An Eclectic Natural Health Newsletter by Chet and Josh  Day.  I enjoy all the tips and recipes and other items I receive in this newsletter.  One item of interest this week is a post on chewing gum.  As a recovering gum chewer (several years now), I appreciated reading this.  I stopped chewing gum when I realized that even the non-sugar free gum (“regular” gum) still had aspartame in it.  But beyond that, there are other issues:

Don’t Chew Gum

By Dr. Ben Kim
Excerpted from “Experience Your Best Health”

Here are some points to consider before you pop another stick of chewing gum in your mouth:

Chewing gum causes unnecessary wear and tear of the cartilage that acts as a shock absorber in your jaw joints.
Once damaged, this area can create pain and discomfort for a lifetime.

You use eight different facial muscles to chew. Unnecessary chewing can create chronic tightness in two of these
muscles, located close to your temples. This can put pressure on the nerves that supply this area of your head, contributing to chronic, intermittent headaches.

You have six salivary glands located throughout your mouth that are stimulated to produce and release saliva whenever
you chew. Producing a steady stream of saliva for chewing gum is a waste of energy and resources that could otherwise
be used for essential metabolic activities.

Most chewing gum is sweetened with aspartame. Short and long term use of aspartame has been closely linked with cancer,
diabetes, neurological disorders, and birth defects.

If your gum isn’t sweetened with aspartame, it is probably sweetened with sugar. Sugar is most likely the single
greatest dietary cause of chronic health problems like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and emotional disorders.

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