Chewing, its what we do after every bite, but did you know it has more function than getting the food in your body? There was an episode of "No Reservations" with Anthony Bourdain on TV visiting Ethiopia and he commented that, "American food has a low 'chew to swallow' ratio. If it requires too many chews in order to swallow, most Americans probably wouldn't eat it." Maybe he's right. Popular American food items are things like hamburger, french fries, hot dogs, burritos, donuts, pizza, and pasta; these all have a relatively low chew to swallow ratio and are fast foods that are eaten on the go. How can less chewing affect us in the long run?
A study by the Centre for Occupational and Health Psychology that found chewing gum may increase alertness and lead to 10% improvement in cognitive performance on intelligence tests. The Journal of Oral Rehabilitation reported, research in animals and humans has shown that mastication supports cognitive function in the area important for learning and memory (hippocampus) and improves the performance of cognitive tasks and processing (prefrontal cortex). Chewing increases blood flow to the prefrontal cortex, increases cardiac activity, blood sugar/oxygen levels and the brain is aroused; as a result, helps with brain function according to an article in the International Journal of Medical Sciences.
From a growth standpoint, learning to chew food is important in infant development and has an effect on speech development too. When speaking, you briefly stop breathing and coordinate moving your jaw, lips, tongue all at the same time; so you can appreciate why it is a major milestone in a child's development. However, as adults, speech requires only ~20% of the force used for chewing. Chewing less, is actually one of the risk factors in people for the developing dementia and Alzheimer's disease later on in life (this includes the absence of molars, the teeth we use most to chew with).
The Taoist recommendation is to chew your food well. Give yourself enough time to chew your food thoroughly during meals produces more saliva, helping improve your digestion and naturally gives you a moment to have more awareness of what you are eating. Just as the jaw movement while chewing affects the brain, mental stress can also affect the jaw causing teeth grinding, or temporo-mandibular joint disorder (TMJ) and tension headaches; all of which are manageable and often alleviated successfully with Chinese Medicine. If you have frequent digestive complaints such as, constipation or bloating, you may want to slow down and try chewing your food more. Great things to incorporate in to your daily diet, if you haven't already, are more vegetables, like Burdock root. Limit foods that come from a bag or a box. The best part of this all, is that its something you can do for both digestive and mental health..
“Food is the only medicine that we take in large doses at least a few times a day, every day of the year, for our whole life. The cumulative effects of food on the body’s biochemistry and Qi makes it more powerful than any drug.”
Notes:
According to the Alzheimer's Association, studies indicate that as many as 10 to 20 percent of people age 65 or older have Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) . Among patients who experienced MCI symptoms that contacted their physicians for an exam, as many as 15 percent progress from MCI to dementia each year. Nearly half of all people who have visited a doctor about MCI symptoms will develop dementia in three or four years. An estimated 5.2 million Americans of all ages have Alzheimer’s disease in 2014.
If you're curious about the intelligence tests mentioned in the beginning of the article used to measure performance, you can take a sample test here.
Sources:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19356310
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3894406/
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2842.2010.02079.x/abstract
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2737457/
http://www.lion.co.jp/en/oral/role/02.htm
Cohen, K. S. (1997) The Way of Qigong: the Art and Science of Chinese Energy Healing New York, Ballentine Books