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Gum Chewing Found to Boost Brainpower, Memory

Posted by timothy on from the 9-out-of-10-neurologists dept.

rohis writes: "Reuters health has a story about effect of Chewing Gum on thinking, memory and other subjects here based on the research by University of Northumbria and the Cognitive Research Unit.The experiments involved 75 people split into groups of non-chewers, real chewers and "sham" chewers. Short term memory was tested and found to improve for real chewers."

2 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. Whatever happened to scientific method? by Decado · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Are we really expected to pay any attention to a test involving only 3 groups of 25 test subjects? The odds of this being anyway accurate must be minute. A simple survey generally requires a little over 1000 people to get a 95/5 accuracy and yet these fools publish data where they claim from a group of 75 people that chewing gum makes you smarter. Could someone please teach these people about conducting proper scientific research (as if their premice wasnt ridiculous anyway).

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  2. May not help memory, but... by sclatter · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Not long ago I found myself working two jobs. I had to get out of bed rather earlier than I was used to and tended to start the day pretty groggy. I don't drink coffee (upsets my stomach) so I needed another solution to perk me up in the AM. I found that chewing gum worked incredibly well. After chewing on a piece for about ten minutes I felt far more awake and alert, and the effect seemed to last long after the stuff went in the trash.

    So I started thinking. I'm a horse person, I have half a dozen of the beasts. Horses are programmed to chew. It's believed that the muscles involved in the chewing process actually help pump the blood through all the vessels in their head. Without the chewing action during grazing blood would tend to pool in the horse's head. After my gum chewing revelation I wondered if a similar principle might apply in humans. It seems logical that increased blood flow could lead to an increased feeling of alertness.

    Or maybe I was just high on minty freshness! ;-)