Gums have become a huge part of some individuals who wish to lessen odors inside their mouths. Originally, chewing gums helped increase saliva production for better oral health.
However, researchers found out that chewing gums lets you take risks of diseases, too. So better your sugar intake as chewing gums may be linked to serious diseases in the next few years.
A study showed that a low-calorie sweetener called xylitol, found in certain food like chewing gum and candies and in dental products like toothpaste, may double the risk of heart attacks, stroke, and death in people who consume a lot of it.
The study’s senior author Dr. Stanley Hazen said in a report that they had given healthy volunteers a standard drink containing xylitol to observe how much their xylitol levels would increase, and they rose by a factor of 1,000.
He likewise said that when someone consumes sugar, his/her glucose levels might increase by 10 percent or 20 percent, but they don’t surge as dramatically as xylitol levels did, which rose by a factor of 1,000.
According to the study, even after drinking a moderate amount of xylitol, similar to what people normally drink, differences in how platelets behave were still noticeable.
“These experiments are interesting but alone do not prove that platelet abnormalities are to account for a linkage between xylitol and clinical events,” said Dr. Matthew Tomey in a report but was not part of the study.
How will it become a serious public health concern in the Philippines?
In the Philippines, ischemic heart diseases were responsible for the highest number of deaths in 2022, according to the Oxford Journal of Public Health study released last year, totaling 114,557 cases, which constituted 18.4 percent of all reported fatalities during that period.
With the said study, various Filipinos are poised to face their increased chances of suffering these diseases as access to food, beverages, and other products containing xylitol remain easily accessible.
