Chewing your gums out
According to the website Gum busters North America, Americans spend more than $1.3 billion a year on chewing gum. While many people chew gum, only few can realize that it can become an addiction that can leave people with serious health risks.
We have heard that in this world every third person is addicted to something or the other, and mind you anything. So, that can be alcohol, drugs, coffee, cigarettes, tea, sex, junk food, video games and what not. But there are many who have weirdest and wackiest addictions to dirt eating, tanning, funerals, plastic surgeries, paper chewing and most interestingly chewing gums.
Gum addiction can happen to people if they don't know how to control themselves. Initially, they start chewing gum because they like the taste. Then they realize that they are chewing gum when they are nervous or bored. It can be used to pacify them so it seems like they have something to concentrate on. Therefore the amount of gum chewed within a day increases. After this stage their body comes to a point where it needs gum all the time to feel comfortable. According to the website Gum busters North America, Americans spend more than $1.3 billion a year on chewing gum. While many people chew gum, only few can realize that it can become an addiction that can leave people with serious health risks."It is observed that many people chew gum to keep from smoking cigarettes. This is the most obvious and most popular reason for many gum addicts. They chew sugarless gum, to keep them away from damaging their teeth and getting cavities, which is a myth. Most likely we chew gum for freshness of breath and for taste pleasure”, says a famous dentist. But excessive habit of chewing gum, he says, causes your jaw muscles to hurt which can cause mastication of the muscles (i.e. over using of the jaw muscles). Mastication is defined as the biting and grinding of food in your mouth so it becomes soft enough to swallow. According to Susan Cukiemik, RD, a medical nutrition therapist from "Ask the Expert" (a website where you can ask any question and an expert will answer it), "Chewing stimulates the salivary glands production of ptyalin, a digestive enzyme, which can overwork the pancreas and lead to a deficit of pancreatic enzymes as people get older, resulting in incomplete digestion and consequently a number of illnesses." Also, chewing gum contains paraffin - the same substance used in manicures - which, if swallowed, can accumulate as a mass in the intestine, causing malabsorption of nutrients, according to Cukiemik. Chewing of any kind or of anything can contribute to temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJ). Although a small piece of most consumed gum contains only a half teaspoon of sugar; it is not new for people to chew sticks all day. “Regularly bathing the teeth as well as gum line in sugar nourishes bacteria and causes teeth enamel to dissolve," says Cukiemik. According to medical studies; excessive sugar in human blood can lead to osteoporosis, arthritis, and other degenerative diseases even at early age. Sugar free gum might not be any better because many contain artificial sweetness and colours, some of which have been associated with bloating, diarrhoea, and headaches. Though today people completely deny that chewing gum is an addiction; we cannot ignore the side effects and long term hazardous prolonged ill effects on health. What is recommended when your are found addicted is a thorough oral examination, when it is detected that there are signs of nutritional deficiencies as well as a number of systematic diseases, including microbial infections, immune disorders, injuries and some cancers, an elaborate medical examination is required to prevent further deterioration of the gums and dental muscles.
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