Chewing well can help you prevent diseases. How we chew directly affects the health of our teeth and gums. It’s a classic in every mother’s handbook: “Son, chew your food well.”
On this occasion, it is more than justified advice.
The eating process begins by chewing food in our mouths; a first step that we must do correctly or, otherwise, it could not only affect digestion, but also the health of our mouths.
Why is it essential to chew well?
The digestion of any food begins in the mouth, while we chew.
Grinding food well, dedicating about 30 seconds to it, helps our body to properly absorb all the necessary nutrients in the intestine, but it also helps to take care of the health of our teeth and gums, and all thanks to a fundamental flow in our day to day life: saliva.
What happens if we don’t chew enough?
Chewing food properly allows us to generate saliva, which in turn produces ptyalin, an enzyme that helps break down carbohydrates and eliminate bacteria that food may contain.
The first purpose of chewing is to prepare the food bowl for swallowing.
However, if we don’t chop our food with our teeth, we won’t produce enough saliva, so we’ll send the food directly to the digestive system.
Therefore, other organs will have to take care of breaking them down, which will make it difficult for our body to separate toxins from nutrients.
If this happens, we will have a greater risk of suffering poisoning more frequently and easily.
We could also suffer from imbalances in the levels of acidity in the stomach, which results in reflux, heartburn and gastritis.
On the other hand, by not producing as much saliva, we will not be tasting food, since this has an important function when it comes to detecting tastes and enjoying each bite.
Chewing well protects our mouth from diseases. By producing saliva, we ensure that food debris and microorganisms do not adhere so easily to the teeth, so bacterial plaque will have a harder time doing its thing.
In addition, chewing stimulates the production of immune cells that are specialized in fighting bacteria and fungi that enter the mouth and gums, and therefore helps us keep them safe.
Specifically, we are talking about Th17 lymphocytes, immune system cells that help prevent bacterial and fungal infections of the mouth.
What if we chew longer than necessary?
Extremes are not good.
Just as chewing food too little can cause problems, chewing it too much can too.
On the one hand, it could overload and damage the masseter muscle, in addition to ending up eroding our teeth in the long term; and on the other hand, it will overstimulate Th17 lymphocytes, which in excess can cause the appearance and development of gum disease (periodontitis).