Human Hormones

Sore stomach? Chew gum…

Chewing gum has always had the kind of negative image problems that most other ‘leisure’ foods are able to avoid. The sigh of a teenager chewing the small sticks of gum that they can buy for a few pennies is the norm, perhaps. Or at least it isn’t too offensive.

However, when the child gets older and hits adulthood, suddenly it ain’t too cool to stick the sticky stuff into their mouths. You can’t chew gum during an important meeting, for example. And you can’t chew gum when you are getting married, it just won’t do.

There has been some research carried out recently that casts a new light on the whole chewing gum issue. Apparently, chewing gum can be good for you, and it has a lot to do with the hormones that we find in our stomachs.

British researchers have found that chewing gum after abdominal surgery may help the process of recovery. This means that chewing gum, rather than being disaster for your insides (which is what people have believed for a number of years) is actually rather good for you.

There were five randomised trials in total, and the results of these guided the findings. IN the trials there were 158 patients, all of them having gone through a major piece of surgery called a colectomy. A colectomy involves the complete or partial removal of the colon.

The patients received almost exactly the same kind of post surgery treatment apart from one crucial difference. Around half of the patients were given gum to chew in the days after surgery. The other half were not.

Basically, researchers found that the chewing gum may have reduced the amount of time it takes for the gut to become active again. This is down to the release of positive hormones in the gut. This was obviously a massive benefit to those who were recovering from such a major piece of abdominal surgery.

On top of this potentially staggering result, the study also found out something else that was exciting. The chances of having the bowel obstructed, a common occurrence after such surgery, were greatly reduced. This, for obvious reasons, can have considerable implications for patients the world over.

One other pleasing finding is that some of the patients who chewed gum stayed in hospital post operation for a shorter period of time. For some of the patients this meant a day less in the hospital after the operation.

All the signs are good then. The study took place in the summer of 2008 and as yet no major findings or contradictions have tainted it. If the findings hold out, there may be more scope for pushing the case for using chewing gum (of all things) as a major post operative treatment after any kind of abdominal surgery.

And this means, of course, that there is every chance that someone, upon hearing that a child is being chastised for chewing gum, can quite easily say that the child is doing something that is actually very good for their stomach.