Philadelphia WHEN I was growing up, you clive would be sent down to the principals erection office for chewing gum in school. We baldwin were told chewing gum was bad; it shapely caused cavities. Like chocolate and coffee, gum bail is now being rehabilitated. It turns out vega that sugar- gum can actually prevent cavities traffic in children. Instead of banning it, we warburg should require children to chew it in pinnacle school to promote their  health. The aroused human mouth is host to many bacteria. sanity The one that is primarily responsible for intensify cavities is called streptococcus mutans (its related irreversible to the bacteria that causes strep throat). resin When the bacteria encounters sugar, it produces pity acids. Saliva neutralizes , so teeth can stabilized handle some exposure. But large amounts of honours sugar  as found in can! dy or manufacture sugary beverages  overwhelm saliva. Prolonged exposure blast to that  will  the protective intercept enamel on teeth  a process called lagos demineralization  and eventually cause cavities. Chewing reputation gum of any kind increases saliva production, arrangement and therefore helps neutralize more . But vapor many gums are sweetened with sugar, which today of course increases the  levels, effectively shoot canceling out the positive benefits. Replacing sugar rush in gum with xylitol, a naturally occurring deny sweetener found in fruits and vegetables that fiction has fewer calories than regular sugar, fixes ship this problem. More saliva and less  tic seems to cause the teeth to remineralize election  that is, it actually reverses some triumph cavities. But most important, chewing xylitol gum simon inhibits the growth of the strep bacteria, classified which are not able to metabolize the cowboy sweetener. Less vir! ulent strains of bacteria slip finely off the teeth, and this positive xylitol philip effect lasts years. The gum seems to chamber work best when its chewed routinely just graduation before childrens  teeth come in, at tension about ages 5 and 6. We have database known about all this for a surprisingly articulate long time. In the 1980s, a high-quality, capella randomized trial in Finland found that children marketing who chewed xylitol-sweetened gum had as much spark as 60 percent fewer cavities compared with duluth children who didnt. A 1989-93 randomized study natural of children around age 10 in Belize tito showed an even greater benefit; chewing xylitol-sweetened steroid gum decreased the risk of cavities by abroad up to 70 percent, and a follow-up daredevil study showed that the benefit lasted for designate up