The Cognitive Benefits Of Chewing Gum | Hacker News Reader

The Cognitive Benefits Of Chewing Gum

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113 pointscwan29 comments

At some point many years ago, gum was a startup. I would have loved to hear the elevator pitch:

  So, we have a sticky product that you put in your mouth and chew.
  We call it "Gum".

  It's a food?

  No, you just chew it for a while. Then, you throw it away.

  Throw it away? Where are you going to sell it?

  Everywhere - gas stations, supermarkets, corner stores.

  OK, I might pass. Let me know how it works out.

Chewing gum has been around for thousands of years, first to be commercially sold in the mid 1800s. So it had somewhat of an established test market :)

Interesting aside, Wrigley didn't start off selling gum - originally it was packaged for free with their baking soda. The gum became more popular than the baking soda and well... they did a fairly profitable pivot.

Around half a century later Topps was a manufacturer of chewing gum, having roots in the tobacco industry (things you chew?). By this point in time gum was sold by itself, and there were many players in the industry. In an effort to increase sales they began packaging cards with the gum and well...

Did the baking soda ever affect the taste of the gum?

I would bet there is a new gum company formed at least once a month.

http://mudcat.org/detail_pf.cfm?messages__Message_ID=364502

Credit to Ogden Nash, it seems.

    The gum-chewing girl and the cud-chewing cow
    Seem somewhat alike, yet different somehow.
    Ah, yes, there it is! I see it all now!
    It's the intelligent look on the face of the cow.

Ironic.

That is far too metrically clumsy to be by Ogden Nash.

Whoops sorry for the accidental downvote..

Often times I find myself playing with pens, chewing on gums/pencils/paper/toothpicks, generally playing with anything I can get my hands on, especially when trying to listen to people or think carefully. As a kid I was always yelled at for playing with things too much, or touching things or having to get a tactile feel for things in order to learn them.

Personally I feel like in order to truly understand things I need to get a 'feel' for it and having multiple sources of inputs into my brain helps a lot. So reading/listening to someone speak/seeing someone speak/playing with it for fun/doing work with it are all things I need to do if I want to have a strong understanding.

This tends to be a weakness for me in my courses because I have a tendency to take longer to pick up abstract mathematical concepts than my classmates. The advantage is in the next course, say calc II, I usually have a deeper understanding and am able to make up for it. I am not sure if this is a result of me doing more work with the subjects or if its because I was able to learn it in more 'ways' than they were.

Chewing gum doesn't seem to work for long periods, in my experience, because the gum looses flavor and or changes consistency so much that it just barely distracts me. If it doesn't change it tends to fall into the background. If thats the case I start to 'play' with it in my mouth making shapes, or folding it, all things to keep my brain busy.

Reminds be of the study showing doodling also benefits cognitive function (http://www.bakadesuyo.com/does-doodling-make-you-smarter).

It's not hard to imagine how physically occupying yourself in some way, whether it's doodling or chewing gum or diddling your thumbs or playing with a pen, frees up your mind to concentrate on a mental task.

Indeed. It may or may not be related to the fact that listening to music helps memory and cognition slightly -- as long as you're not concentrating on an auditory task.

For whatever reason, occupying systems of your body that aren't required for a given type of thinking (gum for non-tactile tasks, music for non-auditory tasks) seems to help that thinking task.

Odd.

I write my To Do's on a blank piece of paper, but in half an hour they are magically hidden between a bunch of numbers, silly equations, arrows and squares. I do not enjoy doing it (afterwards, heh).

Can you elaborate on the last line you wrote?

That was probably a reference to this link:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3058626

Yeah, that's what I was thinking of.

Actually just smelling mint has been shown to increase performance for tasks requiring concentration. Maybe there's some correlation there. The article only mentions sugar vs nosugar gum.

Some fighters brush their teeth before a bout.

I've found that chewing gum keeps me more alert when driving late at night. Obviously I don't plan trips around this habit, but it works great in a pinch since I require significant amounts of caffeine for the same effect.

Edit: Additionally it helps mild upset stomach. Beware! Anecdotal evidence! I read somewhere that saliva "counteracts" the acid in your stomach. Can't find the evidence now.

Any non-acidic liquid will help reduce acid-related upset stomach. Water works, but I'd assume the constant increase in gum probably has a longer effect than the temporary effect you get from a sip of water.

I've never heard of saliva doing anything more than diluting your stomach acid, but I've never really tried to find if it does or doesn't. So I'll leave that for another commenter.

I seem to remember reading that saliva is slightly basic (pH > 7.0) A quick Googling reinforces this. Not that it means anything. I am not a doctor or a medical professional.

More anecdotal evidence!!

I've actually noticed the increased alertness as well.

I've also noticed the stomach-settling effect, but less so in terms of stomach acidity, but more in terms of digestion after a big meal.

I've also noticed chewing gum can curb my appetite, but if I'm really hungry it makes it worse (probably from swallowing air).

Health food stores and some pharmacies sell ginger-flavored gum, which is an anti-nauseant and tastes great to boot :)

I know a better benefit. Since I started chewing gum (brand x - contains Xylitol) I have better teeth.

I slowed down my coke/dew consumption and eat gum instead after every meal after a glass of water. Believe me, having fresh breath makes a huge difference. Yes... cognitive in my case :)

As a sufferer of Temporomandibular Joint Disorder (TMJ - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporomandibular_joint_disorde... ), I know that I, and many others, grind their teeth when under large amounts of stress. Could it be that my body has already adapted to the chewing motion as a mechanism for improving cognitive performance? (Due to stress, I grind my teeth, both when sleeping and when awake, which contributes to my suffering from TMJ)

I occasionally grind my teeth at night, enough to give me migraines the next day. A doctor suggested gum as a remedy, and it seems to work. I guess his theory was that it worked the muscles enough to 'wear them out' by the time I went to bed.

Whatever the reason, it suggests that we do get some benefit from exercising our jaw beyond eating. Maybe we evolved to eat tougher stuff than the typical modern diet.

I've seen similar results regarding simple eye movements side-to-side, as an aid to certain mental/emotional processing. Generally, perhaps simple rhythmic motor tasks, and maybe especially those associated with the senses of communication (seeing, speaking, eye-contact), have a spillover benefit for concurrent thinking.

I saw one result for memory performance in right-handed people ( http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ#saccading ) - was that what you saw? Doesn't seem connected to emotional processing.

The emotional result I was thinking of is the use of 'Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing' (EMDR) for PTSD treatment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_desensitization_an...

Here's an example of eye-movements improving certain kinds of recall:

http://www.livescience.com/1473-moving-eyes-improves-memory-...

By one view of memory – recall makes memories stronger – the EMDR result might seem paradoxical. Making traumatic memories stronger helps? But there's also the theory that recall is really recall-and-re-store, perhaps modified, so maybe EMDR helps recast the same memories to be less loaded. Per Wikipedia there's still some controversy over EMDR.

Hm, it's a weird angle, but I'm pretty sure that's a photo of "Bubble Gum Alley" in my hometown of San Luis Obispo, CA.

It's been there for decades, gradually accruing a disgustingly large amount of gum on the walls (sometimes several layers deep).

It's the Pike Place Market gum wall in Seattle. Proof is in the "Market Theater" sign barely visible in the top right corner.

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