The Awesome Effect Gum-Chewing Has on Stress
And stress isn’t the only thing gum-chewing can help alleviate! (GIF: Paramount Network Television Productions/Giphy)
Feeling stressed out? Chew gum.
That’s the takeaway from a small study from Japan’s Tokushima University, published in the Journal of Prosthodontic Research. For the study, researchers tested the saliva of 19 men and women immediately before and after they took the Uchida-Kraepelin test, a 30-minute questionnaire designed to make people feel stressed.
Three minutes after taking the test, study participants chewed flavorless gum for three minutes, and their saliva was tested again seven minutes later. They repeated the experiment on a different day, but did not chew gum.
Here’s what researchers discovered: When participants chewed gum after the experiment, there was a “significant” change in the level of catecholamines, compounds that increase a person’s ability to deal with anxiety, in their saliva. Scientists also discovered that people who chewed harder were able to de-stress faster.
While the study was small, it’s not the only one to call out gum’s stress-busting power.
Related: From The Brain To The Immune System, How Stress Pirates Your Whole Body
Research published in the journal Physiology & Behavior found that people who chewed gum while doing a multi-tasking test designed to induce stress had less anxiety and lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their saliva than those who didn’t chew gum.
A similar test published in 2011 in the journal Appetite found that chewing gum during a stressful situation increased gum-chewers’ alertness. (Another study published in the journal Nutritional Neuroscience had similar findings.)
Gum may even help with depression. A 2013 study published in the journal Appetite discovered that people with mild to moderate depression who chewed gum for six weeks (in addition to taking medication) had less depressive symptoms than those who didn’t chew gum.
It’s also been linked to better test scores. Research conducted by St. Lawrence University found that people who chewed gum for five minutes before taking a test did better than those who didn’t chew gum pre-test.
But…what’s the link between gum and de-stressing? Researchers haven’t found a definitive answer, but clinical psychologist John Mayer, PhD, tells Yahoo Health that the physical act of chewing may relieve tension, leaving us feeling less stressed as a result.
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“Chewing gum helps to ‘de-clench’ the muscles in the jaw,” he explains. “These muscles are often tightened under stress and can become very, very stiff and painful in a stressed, anxious person.”
By working those muscles through chewing, it helps relieve the physical tension, which can influence our mental response to a situation. “In a way, it is like exercise,” Mayer says.
Andrew Johnson, PhD, a psychology professor at Bournemouth University in the UK who has studied gum-chewing and stress, tells Yahoo Health that the link may be indirect. Research has found that chewing gum improves performance on stressful tasks, he points out, and, “since people are performing better on the task, they find it less stressful.”
Gum-chewing can also invoke a primitive soothing oral response in us that goes back to infanthood, licensed clinical psychologist Alicia Clark, PsyD, tells Yahoo Health.
“Many soothing habits (which can become addictive) have some element of oral gratification, like cigarette smoking, compulsive over-eating, and pen- or nail-biting,” she says. Gum-chewing is just a “healthier” way of getting that same soothing feeling, she explains.
Want some help getting through a stressful situation? Experts say there’s no reason not to reach for a stick of gum — just opt for a more teeth-friendly, sugar-free version.
Read This Next: Is Swallowing Gum Dangerous?
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