MEMORY
EXERCISE INVOLVES CHEWING GUM
July 21, 2005 | By: Mary Alice Powell
The
green, the red, and the yellow wrappings cover the first
packages of chewing gum purchased in at least 10 years.
Now if I can just remember where I put them. That's very
important because this is a test.
It's
my own personal evaluation, in the privacy of my own home
and wherever I roam to determine if chewing gum will improve
the memory. The jury is still out on the scientific studies
that have been conducted, but there is enough data to pique
my interest.
Goodness
knows, ginkgo, promoted as inducing circulation to the brain,
didn't work, so why not go for gum chewing? It's a lot cheaper,
but it also can be messy and annoying to others if you are
chomping away during conversation. And what is more maddening
than to step on gum on the sidewalk, or more unappetizing
than to feel gum under the table in a restaurant? Yuck.
Reports
of tests in Japan and Great Britain are intriguing. In 2000
Japanese researchers showed that brain activity in the hippocampus,
an area important for memory, increases while people chew.
Two years later both the short term and long term memories
of 75 adult gum chewers scored higher than those people
not chewing in tests conducted by British psychologists.
"These
results provide the first evidence that chewing gum can
improve the long term and working memory," Andrew Scholey
of the University of Northumbria in Newcastle, England said,
in the report published in the NewScientist magazine.
There
is also the notion that the chewing delivers oxygen to the
brain and could boost learning ability. That could bring
chewing gum back into the classroom, which has been a no-no
as long as I can remember. I can still hear the seventh-grade
teacher standing over a student with her hand cupped under
his chin and screaming, "Spit out the gum."
A dental
school seems to be an unlikely place to experiment with
gum chewing, but one study took place at New York University
College of Dentistry. Only 56 students took part, but like
the equally small study in Great Britain, the chewers attained
higher grades.
Thomas
Adams, a New York inventor, developed chewing gum, as we
know it today, in 1845.
Through
history, people have been known for chewing on something,
including thickened resin and latex from trees, but we have
to thank the Mexican General Antonio Santa Anna for giving
Adams the main ingredient.
When
the general, exiled from Mexico, came to New York, he boarded
with Adams and introduced him to chicle, which Mexican men
chewed. After trying to make everything from toys to rain
boots with the latex, Adams chewed on a piece of chicle
and voila! chewing gum was invented.
Bubble
gum is also an American invention that happened by accident.
Credit goes to Walter Diemer, an accountant of a Philadelphia
chewing gum factory who liked to experiment with formulas.
History records Diemer as saying in 1928 that he ended up
with something with bubbles.
When
a five-pound portion of the "bubbly" stuff sold
in a grocery store, the company knew it was a winner. It
was named Dubble Bubble. Later Bazooka was a popular brand.
And why is most bubble gum pink? Because that's the only
food coloring Mr. Diemer had.
Breast
enhancement is another benefit claimed for gum chewing.
Bust-Up is a Japanese product that contains an extract from
an underground tuber with chemicals that mimic the effects
of the female sex hormone estrogen. Chewing it three or
four times a day is said to increase breast size.
So be
it. I am chewing for memory improvement, not body enhancement.
My pack a day test will contribute to the annual $2 billion
sales, excluding bubble gum, in the United States.
And
to, my dentist, here's an FYI. The test gum is sugarless;
not flavorful, but sugarless.
Source:
www.toledoblade.com
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