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/eliminating_coasts Mar 03 '25

I think if chewing is the thing that causes the effect, there's not much harm in eating a vast quantity of uncooked and peeled but unchopped carrots - they're not particularly energy dense, high in fibre and vitamins etc. so you probably could just keep munching carrots like a horse for hours without having a significant negative effect.

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u/TheArmoredKitten Mar 03 '25

Total anecdote, but my dog's favorite treat is a big ol carrot right out of the dirt. I'll go to the farmer's market and buy a couple of em, because even one keeps her busy for at least an hour. Any time in the summer when she starts being a pain in the ass I just toss a cold carrot at her and she just hangs out in a sunny spot and obliterates it.

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u/eliminating_coasts Mar 03 '25

And dogs are enthusiasts at chewing things, so I take that as a serious endorsement.

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u/FlashbackJon Mar 03 '25

If you can get Japanese carrots (I'm sure there's a specific name, but I just mean "the carrots we saw at every store when we lived in Japan"), they're usually extra girthy with a much woodier interior, and dogs still go fuckin' nuts for them.

E: The cultivar is shin kuroda.

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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '25

A frozen bone of the ananas too

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u/jazir5 Mar 04 '25

Oh that's a solid idea. Amazing really.

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u/Palico1986 Mar 04 '25

Japanese carrots are freaking amazing! We had to buy them every week while we lived there. I'm so glad the Asian market here sells them. They would definitely be in the top ten foods I miss about Japan.

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u/powerhammerarms Mar 03 '25

One summer when I was about 8 my cousin and I ate carrots out of my aunt's garden. At first we were rinsing them off under the garden hose but then we really got into it and just started eating them with the dirt.

We ate all the carrots and started in on some of the other vegetables. We got super sick and my aunt was pissed. I was so sick on their couch throwing up in an ice cream bucket waiting for my mom to pick me up that I had a hallucination that I had stood up to walk to the bathroom and I fell on their coffee table and broke it.

I was laying on the couch throwing up and crying feeling bad about the coffee table. And my aunt and my mom are like what are you talking about?

TL;DR I'm part dog

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u/30FourThirty4 Mar 03 '25

I wonder if the garden had some nightshade and you got a small taste from touching leaves? Crazy to get sick and hallucinate like that, that's call poison control bad.

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u/waitwuh Mar 03 '25

My bet is they just ingested at least one nasty bacteria from the dirt that made them sick. That could cause a fever and/or throwing up as their body tries to clear the infectious agent. A high enough fever and/or severe enough dehydration can cause hallucinations.

Kids are generally more prone to hypnogogic hallucinations. Similar to why kids sleep walk, their brains sometimes get mixed up with the “settings” and activity and stage coordination related to sleep. In a hypnagogic hallucination, it’s happening because part of the brain tries to jump into the REM sleep stage (which is when you dream) too early, before the whole brain is really ready and you’re still partly conscious/awake. It’s sometimes called a “waking dream.” It can happen with or without something else called sleep paralysis, which is when the voluntary muscle control gets turned off before you’re all the way asleep so you feel “stuck.” In sleep walking, by contrast, the brain didn’t cut off the voluntary muscle control to prevent acting out dreams / walking before the REM cycle started. Hypnogogic hallucinations and/or sleep paralysis are probably just as common in kids as sleep walking, it’s just that sleep walking is more obvious to the outsider observers ie. parents so we know and hear about it more. As kids grow older they usually grow out of these experiences because their systems figure things out and settle into more proper patterns.

Probably related to that, kids seem to be more prone to having fever and dehydration related hallucinations. I remember getting bad stomach bugs a few times as a kid, and also fevers with or without those, and having weird dream/hallucinations. I have one especially vivid memory where I was shivering from cold but sweating profusely and I lifted my bed sheets and a bunch of cats ran out from under the covers, one after the other, like a clown car situation. We didn’t even have any cats. My parents had to take me to the hospital a few times for IVs because I would get so sick I couldn’t keep any fluids down. Just fun childhood stuff.

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u/30FourThirty4 Mar 03 '25

You're honestly right I'm sure. You didn't know this but I was trying to think of non bacteria reasons it happened. Plus nightshade took over my thoughts and I couldn't stop.

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u/BertMcNasty Mar 05 '25

You could absolutely be right, and this is obviously anecdotal, but as a kid I regularly ate unwashed carrots from our garden and also literally ate dirt by the spoonful (I think I was low on iron or something). I don't think either one of those things ever made me sick, at least not the vomiting kind of sick.

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u/Wtyjhjhkhkhkf 28d ago

I like to induce sleep paralysis in order to meditate after the altered state of consciousness it provides.

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u/powerhammerarms Mar 03 '25

Maybe? It was rural northern Minnesota in the Superior national Forest. I'm not sure if nightshade grows there?

I know we both had fevers too. I was so hot I was sweating and I remember them talking about it but no idea what my temp could have been.

It's interesting that you mentioned touching the leaves like that. I had a friend from Georgia who talked about picking tobacco before school when he was young. And the dew on the leaves and such would cause the kids to get sick from nicotine. I think he said you could pick for like half an hour or something and then you'd get really sick and you'd have to lay down in between the plants.

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u/30FourThirty4 Mar 03 '25

Yeah nightshade is poisonous when eaten but I doubt you ate any, but I could see it being absorbed through the skin. Like you said with tobacco and dew. I'd have to double check but I believe tomato is a nightshade but we don't eat the leafs.

Edit: nightshades include tobacco! This is something to not trust a reddit coment on and read up on your own.

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u/powerhammerarms Mar 03 '25

I will just plan on eating no leaves until we get this figured out.

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u/boringestnickname Mar 03 '25

We did that with potatoes when we were kids.

Stole them out of a patch in the kindergarten and ate them raw. I think we actually had a water hose to rinse them with, though. Didn't get sick (but did get in trouble.)

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u/FlashbackJon Mar 03 '25

Every dog we've ever had goes absolutely nuts for carrots. There is no treat or toy or other human food that evokes the pure joy and insanity. If they even THINK we've been cutting carrots (such as by cutting literally anything with a knife on the cutting board) or that we're holding carrots (such as by carrying the kid trays we still use pretty regularly even though the kids are older now) they will alternate between sitting perfectly still (a feat that is otherwise impossible but they know they have to sit to get carrots) and literally standing on their hind legs doing the "beg" motion.

If you leave the kitchen without carrots, you have to do the "nothing in my hands" motion like a blackjack dealer, and they still think you might be lying.

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u/Youre10PlyBud Mar 03 '25

We had one that loved radishes. She got into the garden one year, dug one up, then promptly dug up every single one and demolished them (her name is mischief, had the habit of getting into things like this ha). Had the worst gas ever, but we learned that was a treat for her so she'd get cold radishes out of the fridge once every blue moon.

Never seen a dog get so happy for a vegetable.

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u/MoreRopePlease Mar 03 '25

My dog loved fruits. She'd nose around in the blackberry brambles looking for blackberries. She'd stretch as high as she could to get the low-hanging cherries from the trees, she'd eat my strawberries and blueberries (I had to put a little fence around the patch). Sometimes I would throw her cherry pits or the ends of strawberries and she'd chase them and wolf them down. She also loved playing with garter snakes, and throw them around like a bit of rope, poor things.

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u/PsyCurious007 Mar 04 '25

One of my garden foxes, Daisy, had a thing for gooseberries and would stand up on her hind legs to get them.

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u/Youre10PlyBud Mar 03 '25

Ha, I had a chow chow that did the same with snakes.

Found him with a rattlesnake once... I was just about to take it from him and he decided he was done with it, so he tossed the snake on the ground, put a paw on the head, bit just behind it... Then pulled back violently, skinning the whole thing.

It was actually quite disturbing but I was happy to be down a rattler.

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u/MoreRopePlease Mar 04 '25

woah... sometimes the mask comes off and we see the wild animals that are hidden in our pets. But, yay for safely killing a rattler. He clearly knew what he was doing.

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u/Youre10PlyBud Mar 04 '25

Yeah, no joke. Still one of the best pets I've ever had.

My stepdad works in construction. I came home from school one day and couldn't find Porky (the chow that skinned the snake) or his mom anywhere. I'm calling for them and calling for them and they're not coming.

Walked into the garage... And there's some dude sitting in the corner with both our chows growling as loud as can be. He broke into to steal my stepdad tools and the two chows pinned him in the corner till I came home.

They got some ice cream that day. Kept us safe from both intruders and pest animals, couldn't ask for better dogs.

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u/PsyCurious007 Mar 04 '25

He’s lucky Porky didn’t decide to step on his head & skin him

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u/dupe123 Mar 03 '25

I assume she aced her dog training tests immediately afterwards

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u/Unceasingleek Mar 03 '25

I think the problem would be confounding a study by eating something instead of identifying if the act of chewing something semi hard creates the effect.

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u/Graybie Mar 03 '25

If you eat enough you even start to turn a bit orange. 

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u/Masterjts Mar 03 '25

You have to eat like 15-20 a day (full sized carrots) for 2-3 weeks before you'd even start to see a change. Easier to just spray tan.

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u/FartyPants69 Mar 03 '25

Don't threaten me with a good time! Love carrots, and I actually turned orange a few times as a kid

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u/Svrogo Mar 03 '25

You'll also diarrhea.

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u/dependswho Mar 04 '25

I love raw carrots but yes they give me cramps

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u/life_question_mark Mar 03 '25

I used to eat around 3 raw carrots every single day and eventually my palms became completely orange. Everyone around me was half joking half concerned about it

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u/888mainfestnow Mar 03 '25

Consuming vast amounts of carrots can create Carotnemia from an abundance of beta-carotene that I guess starts with your palms turning orange.

The cure is to back off on the amount of carrots a person consumes at that point.

I've never known anyone that kept consuming a high carrot diet to see how far they could take it after their palms turned orange.

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u/TheMadFlyentist Mar 03 '25

I was brought to the doctor as a baby for a normal checkup and the pediatrician allegedly immediately asked my parents if they had been feeding me lots of carrots, squash, and sweet potato. The answer was yes, as these were my favorite foods, and I would devour them endlessly.

Apparently my parents had not noticed my slow transition into being (mildly) visibly orange. It subsided quickly once my diet was changed with no lasting effects. There are apparently no negative effects except in severe cases or in those that last for months on end, and the effects may be more due to poor diet diversity than the beta carotein itself.

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u/MoreRopePlease Mar 03 '25

Isn't that the same thing that makes flamingoes be pink? They get it from eating shrimp or something like that.

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u/TheMadFlyentist Mar 03 '25

Yes, essentially, although the carotenoids flamingos consume from shrimp are not all (or even any?) beta carotein specifically.

I believe astaxanthin is the main carotenoid found in shrimp/seafood, and it's a strong red pigment but doesn't convert to vitamin A like beta carotein does.

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u/masklinn Mar 03 '25

Carrots are more crunchy than chewy. You go through them fast.

I’d suggest liquorice roots. They are quite woody and chewy, and I prefer the taste of the raw root to that of liquorice sweets.

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u/samsaruhhh Mar 03 '25

It's not difficult to overdose on licorice if I'm remembering correctly, it can raise blood pressure, lower potassium levels, affect heart rhythms among other things..

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u/istara Mar 04 '25

Also to be avoided in pregnancy and breastfeeding.

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u/Eastern-Operation340 Mar 03 '25

My mom grew fennel as a kid. It was at the edge of the garden, we would such and chump of the stems and such all day as kids. Driveway looked like it had dried seaweed on it.

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u/notashroom Mar 03 '25

Sassafras roots would probably be safer and also very tasty.

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u/Panda-768 Mar 03 '25 edited Mar 04 '25

Crazy thing. During my weight loss days more than a decade ago I used to chew on raw , washed and peeled carrots. Didn't even bother chopping them. The hard chewy carrots, the constant nibbling at it like a bugs bunny, and the sweet juices that you get in your mouth while chewing, that really helped with cravings type hunger. I guess it had other benefits too.

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u/lipstickandchicken Mar 04 '25

Raw washed and peeled carrots are one my favourite snacks. So satisfying.

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u/curtcolt95 Mar 03 '25

you don't really chew on carrots though do you, idk maybe I'm just weird but like there's a definite difference to the way you'd chew on a piece of wood or gum vs the way you'd eat a carrot

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u/eliminating_coasts Mar 03 '25

I think it probably depends on how much water content they have, get a bag of carrots, and leave a few of them on a surface peeled with kitchen paper underneath them, and they'll harden up a bit.

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u/dtalb18981 Mar 03 '25

I'm in this comment.

Carrots genuinely changed my life.

I was like 360 pounds in high-school and decided to try and lose weight.

One of the tips is to replace unhealthy snacks with a healthy one usually celery is recommended but I used carrots and lost 200 pounds.

The only downside is you do have to swap out of carrots every once in awhile because it can turn you very lightly almost noticeable orange.

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u/dewdewdewdew4 Mar 03 '25

Until your skin turns orange....

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u/HugMyHedgehog Mar 03 '25

are you going to operate at peak efficiency once you're packing 10 extra lbs of carrot meat?

just chew a stick it's not even weird that's how people used to keep their teeth clean and it works

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u/RCC42 Mar 03 '25

If you eat too many uncooked carrots you will get a stomach-ache though, speaking from experience as an avid carrot-snacker.

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u/eir_skuld Mar 03 '25

Is the carrotpeel bad for you?

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u/M00n_Slippers Mar 03 '25

Actually there is one--you turn orange eventually.

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u/NotionAquarium Mar 03 '25

Yes but you don't want vitamin A poisoning. If your skin turns orange you've gone too far.

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u/The_BeardedClam Mar 04 '25

I love me some big ol peeled carrots. I could munch for hours and sometimes do at work.

When I first met my wife she was real surprised when I ate a whole pound of baby carrots over the course of a few hours.

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u/Cicer Mar 05 '25

Carrots actually have quite a bit of sugar in them

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u/holadace 29d ago

Yeah but too much carrots can turn you orange/yellow so I think I’ll stick to my original plan

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u/eucalyptusmacrocarpa Mar 03 '25

Until you turn orange