According to an Israeli study, heavy consumption of chewing gum is linked to migraines in adolescents. Reducing her daily chewing time would reduce symptoms.
What if chewing gum gave teens a headache? In any case, this is what an Israeli study published in the journal Pediatric Neurology suggests, according to which stopping chewing in young people corresponds to the end of migraine attacks in this population.
To come to this conclusion, Dr Nathan Watemberg of Tel Aviv University first noticed during his consultations that young people who were addicted to chewing gum often had chronic headaches. Following this observation, the researcher then decided to test the link between the two.
Accompanied by his team, the scientist therefore brought together 30 adolescent patients who were prone to head pain regularly and who chewed for 1 to 6 hours a day. After one month of abstinence from gum, 19 of the subjects reported a total disappearance of the disease, 7 indicated a decrease in its frequency and intensity. After this first observation, 26 “guinea pigs” agreed to resume their chewing habits. And this is where the results are most astonishing. After two weeks, all confirmed a return of the pains.
Nathan Watemberg explains this phenomenon by the too great stress on the temporomandibular joint, that is to say the place where the jaw meets the skull. “It is the most stressed joint of the body,” he recalls. In addition, another recent study suspected aspartame, widely used in chewing gum, to be the cause of migraines.
Dr Watemberg already advises adolescents who suffer from chronic headaches to stop chewing gum first.
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