How chewing gum does alleviate stress and anxiety?

You must have stumbled upon people chewing gums, and te these people may appear to be smug and cocky. People may get fooled on account of their habits, who are addicted to chew gums; some of us may find this habit irritating. The surprise is, they indulge into chewing to cover up their nervousness or when they are distressed. Since long, it was opined that chewing gums are bad for health, and in some cases they are cancerous too.

The criticisms for manufacturers and the addicted gum chewers are now weakening away. However, the Australian researchers think the other way round; they have gone even a step ahead and claimed that chewing gums is the best way to bust stress. The study was conducted by Dr. Andrew Scholey; he is a professor of Behavioral and Brain sciences in the University of Swinburne in, Australia. According to him, chewing gum helps in relieving anxiety, it also improves alertness and finally reduces distress. The best thing is it improves memory too.

For the study, 44 volunteers were chosen, mostly of average age of 22 yrs. They were further divided into, gum chewers and non-chewers. And after the conclusion of test, it was analyzed that the group who indulged in chewing gum, showed reduction in anxiety to 17%, when the stress levels were mild, while they showed 10% reduction in moderate stress. Their alertness was also noted to be increased to 19% and 8% in the former and later case resp.

The chewing gum also resulted in improvement in other multi-tasking activities. Thus, when the mean performance of these two groups was when analyzed, it was noted that gum chewers had improved mean performance.

The scientific reason or this could be that, when a person gets distressed, then all the body muscles becomes tense, some body organs get more supply of blood, then the other organs. When a person starts chewing gum, than a lot of movement happens in the mouth, which makes him/her to focus in one particular activity. And, in most of the cases it is seen that even after the gum fades away with its flavor most of them continue chewing it. The main reason is it keeps us alert and keeps us away from being distracted from other elements. It even helps a person to bring his/her temper down and makes them calmer.

So, next time if you feel distressed then pop up a gum, try it, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep you busy away from any other distraction.