C. Dong et al., THE EFFECTS OF CHEWING FREQUENCY AND DURATION OF GUM CHEWING ON SALIVARY FLOW-RATE AND SUCROSE CONCENTRATION, Archives of oral biology, 40(7), 1995, pp. 585-588
On ten separate occasions, unstimulated saliva was collected from 12 a
dults and then eight samples of saliva over a 20-min period while chew
ing, in random order, 3 g of either Wrigley's Spearmint chewing-gum or
gum-base at frequencies of 35, 50, 70, 90, or 130 chews/min. With bot
h stimuli, flow rates peaked in the first minute of stimulation and th
en fell with time, A repeated-measures analysis of variance showed tha
t for both the gum and the gum-base, flow rates were independent of ch
ewing frequency, except during the first minute with the chewing-gum.
The gum elicited a significantly higher flow rate over the first 4 min
of chewing, while the base elicited a significantly higher flow rate
over the 8-20-min period of chewing. The sucrose concentration in sali
va was also independent of chewing frequency. The salivary sucrose con
centration peaked during the second minute of chewing (mean +/- SE = 4
24.7 +/- 20.0 mM) and the concentration then fell progressively with t
ime. However, sucrose was still being released into saliva during the
15-20-min period of chewing (12.6 +/- 0.8 mM). Gum-base which had been
chewed without access to saliva was softer than unchewed base but sho
wed no change in filler content or a reduction in the average molecula
r weight. The decrease in hardness of the chewed gum-base may have res
ulted from improved mixing of heterogeneous phases and increased dispe
rsion of plasticizing agents.