Chewing gum daily may give teens, kids migraines
A new study has shown that chewing too much gum can give teenagers and young children migraine headaches.
Dr Nathan Watemberg of the Tel Aviv University-affiliated Meir Medical Center has found that gum-chewing teens and younger children could experience migraine headaches. Until now, there hasn't been much research about the relationship between the two.
At the Meir Medical Center's Child Neurology Unit and Child Development Center and community clinics, Dr. Watemberg observed that many patients who reported headaches chewed gum daily. He found out that when patients stopped chewing gum, they eventually started getting better.
To test this, Watemberg asked 30 patients aged between 6 and 19 years, who had chronic migraines or tension headaches and chewed gum daily, to quit chewing gum for one month. They had chewed gum for at least an hour, up to over six hours per day.
After a month without gum, 19 of the 30 patients reported that their headaches went away entirely and seven reported a decrease in the frequency and intensity of the headaches. Further, 26 of them agreed to resume gum chewing for the next two weeks. All of them reported a return of their headaches within a few days.