r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Mar 03 '25
Neuroscience Chewing different materials affects the brain and a new study found that chewing on wood (wooden tongue depressors), compared to chewing gum, led to a significant increase in a natural brain antioxidant called glutathione, and better performance on memory tasks.
https://www.psypost.org/chewing-wood-may-boost-memory-and-brain-antioxidants-study-finds/
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u/mvea Professor | Medicine Mar 03 '25
I’ve linked to the news release in the post above. In this comment, for those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/systems-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2024.1489919/full
From the linked article:
Chewing on moderately hard foods, like wood, might do more than just break down your lunch; new research suggests it could actually boost brainpower by increasing levels of a natural antioxidant, which in turn may improve memory. A recent study published in Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience explored how chewing different materials affects the brain and found that chewing on wood, compared to chewing gum, led to a significant increase in a brain antioxidant called glutathione.
After analyzing the data, the researchers found some interesting results. First, they looked at the glutathione levels in the anterior cingulate cortex before and after chewing. In the group that chewed wood, they observed a significant increase in glutathione levels after chewing compared to before. This means that chewing wood seemed to boost the amount of this important antioxidant in that brain region.
However, in the gum-chewing group, there was no significant change in glutathione levels after chewing. While there wasn’t a statistically significant difference in the change in glutathione levels between the gum and wood groups directly, the trend was clearly towards a greater increase in the wood-chewing group.
Next, the researchers examined the relationship between changes in glutathione levels and performance on the cognitive tests. They found that in the wood-chewing group, the increase in glutathione levels was positively related to scores on immediate memory and story memory tests. This means that participants who showed a larger increase in glutathione after chewing wood also tended to perform better on memory tasks.
Interestingly, this relationship was not found in the gum-chewing group. There was no link between changes in glutathione and memory performance for those who chewed gum. In essence, chewing wood seemed to both increase brain antioxidant levels and improve certain aspects of memory, and these two changes appeared to be connected.