Drs. Goldfarb and Goldfarb

Chewing Gum: Should You?

Chewing gum has a longer history than you might think. According to the Wrigley Company, a major manufacturer of chewing gum, people have been chewing it for hundreds of years. These early chewing gums were products made from the plants that people found around them. For example, ancient Greeks chewed on the resin from the bark of the mastic tree. Early North Americans chewed on the resin from spruce trees, and natives of Central America chewed on chicle, which is derived from the sapodilla tree.

Why did these peoples chew gum? Probably to get many of the same results we look for when we chew gum today.

Chewing Gum to Improve Bad Breath

One of the main benefits of chewing gum is that it stimulates the flow of saliva. This mechanism explains why chewing gum helps sweeten your breath. On the teeth and in the tiny crevices of the tongue, a type of bacteria, called anaerobic bacteria, happily thrive. These micro-environments in your mouth are moist and warm, don't hold much oxygen, and easily trap small particles of food, making them perfect homes for the bacteria. There the bacteria digest any proteins in the food and quickly multiply. With all this eating and reproducing, the bacteria also create a lot of waste, which is primarily composed of sulfur compounds. It's these sulfur compounds that cause bad breath.

This process is going on all the time in everyone's mouth. The key to keeping breath fresh is to restrict this activity to a minimum, so that the aroma is undetectable. Chewing gum for about 20 minutes after eating helps because the saliva it stimulates works to wash away both the bacteria and the food.

Chewing Gum to Control Tooth Decay

As with bad breath, chewing gum after eating can help reduce tooth decay by stimulating saliva that washes away bacteria and food particles. In this case, another type of bacteria digest the starches and sugars in the food particles. The waste products of this digestion is acid, which attacks the surface enamel layer of the teeth, and can eventually create small holes in the tooth surface. This is tooth decay, and if it isn't stopped, a cavity can reach into the inner layers of the tooth, causing pain, infection of the tooth root, and other serious problems.

The saliva is also able to remineralize the enamel. This means that saliva can sometimes repair tiny areas of decay by replacing the minerals in the enamel that the acid has damaged. It's important to keep in mind, though, that this only works if the chewing gum is sugar-free. If the gum contains sugar, it just adds to the bacteria's food supply, leading to more acid and more decay.

Sometimes we may recommend a chewing gum that is sweetened with xylitol. Xylitol is a sugar alcohol that has a slightly different structure than sugar, so the bacteria that cause tooth decay aren't able to digest it. In addition, xylitol acts to help slow the growth of the bacteria. These two factors mean that the bacteria in the mouth can't produce as much acid, reducing damage to teeth.

Some Considerations

You should know that not everyone can chew gum. If you suffer from temporomandibular disorder (TMD), sometimes called TMJ, your jaw muscles are probably already stressed and sore. Chewing gum or other sticky or hard foods can make this pain worse.

Also, if you have a temporary restoration, like a temporary crown or inlay, you definitely shouldn't chew gum. Sticky foods can sometimes dislodge the temporary, and this can be serious. For the permanent restoration to fit properly, the temporary must stay in place until the permanent one is ready.

If you wear dentures or partials, choose a gum that doesn't stick to dental work. You may want to experiment a bit with different brands of sugarless gum to find one that works well for you. In fact, chewing gum may help you practice getting used to new or relined dentures.

For More Information

If chewing gum is right for you, go ahead and enjoy it. Choose sugarless gum, and dispose of it properly when you're done. But don't rely on gum to keep your teeth healthy. You still need to brush and floss every day, and come see us regularly. If you have any questions about chewing gum, let us know. In the meantime, you might find these web pages interesting:

The American Academy of General Dentistry at http://www.agd.org/consumer/topics/decay/gum.html and http://agd.org/consumer/topics/nutrition/decay.html