Sugar Free Gum: Good for the Teeth, Bad for the Bowels

Gum, call it an oral fixation, call it an addiction, or even call it an obsessive trend, but whether you're a child, teenager, or adult, it seems as though most of the population has to be chewing it constantly. Dentists and health practitioners have always worried about chewing gum because of the sugar content and causing dental problems, so sugar-free gum was a new wave of keeping the chewing gum addiction going.

However recently, the ingredient known as sorbitol that is used in sugar free chewing gums have been linked to cause serious gastrointestinal problems.

Sorbitol , sometimes reffered to as E420, is used as a sugar substitute and provides dietary energy. Sorbitol is also used as a laxative. A lot of people that chew gum here and there, there is no immediate cause of alarm, but for those of you that chew a pack or three of gum a day, you are ingesting large amounts of sorbitol that quickly can add up to an overdose amount. If you are chewing 20g (15 pieces) of sugar free gum per day, you are running the risk of developing abdominal pain, gas, severe diarrhea, as well as triggering irritable bowel syndrome and fructose mal-absorption.

One in five adults suffers from irritable bowel syndrome and if the condition continues or is constantly aggravated, this increases your risk of colon cancer. If you don't know anything about colon cancer, the first and foremost thing that you should know is that it is the second leading source of cancer associated death that cause more than 600,000 deaths worldwide per year.

Fructose Mal-absorption on the other hand is the result of a decrease of fructose in the intestines. Symptoms are similar to that of the above stated; however depression and eye pain have also been caused. There is no cure for Fructose mal-absorption, but changing your eating habits will help.

Those who have experienced these symptoms; bloating, gas, abdominal pain, and diarrhea, due to sorbitol overdose, researchers have found that discontinuing chewing gum had stopped the symptoms and inevitably saved their life.

Sorbitol is not only used in sugar free chewing gum, but also in cough syrups, and some fruits and berries naturally produce sorbitol. For all of you cigarette smokers out there, sorbitol is also used in cigarettes in order to absorb water molecules from the environment. So in a chain reaction kind of way, smoking cigarettes also causes amounts of this dangerous ingredient sorbitol to pollute your body.In conclusion, sugar free chewing gum may help whiten teeth and even help you loose weight, but gum doesn't just affect your mouth, it can affect other parts of your body as well. If your have to have your sugar free gum, I would suggest decreasing your number of sticks per day as well as consulting your doctor. Remember, doing things in moderation is at times a lot better then overdosing.