Gum, she adds, will never be a magic bullet for thinness.
Even if chewing some gum is good, too much chewing can be harmful. The repetitive stress can worsen pain in people with jaw, or temporomandibular, joint problems, says Dr. Eric Shapira, a spokesman for the Academy of General Dentistry. And that's not the only potential problem. Tooth-whitening gum in large doses can irritate the gums, Shapira says. Vitamin C gums can create an acidic environment that wears away tooth enamel. And a kid who chews too much vitamin gum risks iron poisoning.
In the past, the market for so-called functional gum has been finicky. Kelly McGrail, senior director of corporate communications at Wrigley, notes that gums containing nicotine and aspirin have been successful, but an antacid gum released by Wrigley in 2002 quickly exited the scene. The herbal SoBe gums briefly produced by South Beach Beverage Co. met the same fate.
As research continues, however, more consumer and medical products continue to enter the market. Wrigley is marketing a breath-freshening gum with zinc and copper salts, which they say bond with sulphur compounds that contribute to bad breath. Army scientists are working on an antimicrobial gum containing protein fragments that would fight cavities, gum disease and plaque just like toothpaste does.
There are gums with green tea extracts in Asia and potentially bone-strengthening calcium gums in Europe. And there are gums that walk on the wilder side: Bust-Up gum, produced by the Japanese company B2Up, claims to boost breast size with phytoestrogens extracted from the \o7Pueraria mirifica \f7plant. And a company in Mexico sells Sex Gum, Love Gum and Extasy Gum -- all laced with a purported herbal aphrodisiac called damiana.
The German company BASF, meanwhile, is producing gum with \o7Lactobacillus\f7 -- the same bacteria found in yogurt -- for fighting tooth decay.
And University of Helsinki researchers have created a gum containing an amino acid called cysteine that may help prevent cancers of the mouth, esophagus and stomach, especially in smokers. When they indulge in their habits, smokers, as well as drinkers, produce acetaldehyde, a chemical that's believed to be linked to digestive tract cancers. The Finnish group's studies show that chewing a cysteine-enriched gum while smoking removes most of the acetaldehyde in saliva.
