According to a Japanese study, consuming chewing-gum while walking on foot is the surprise ally for weight loss. Accordingly, chewing gum seems to be an ally against overweight men after 40 years, encouraging them to walk faster, the Japanese scientists said yesterday.
“Combining physical exercises and chewing gum could be an effective way to manage weight,” these researchers wrote in their study’s report, recently published by the Journal of Physical Therapy Science.
The Japanese study examined “heart rate, distance walked, walking speed, number of steps, and energy expenditure” in 46 Japanese fans of taking long on-foot walks, aged between 21 and 69.
The participants had to walk at their regular pace for 15 minutes on an athletics track. Half of them were chewing gum, while the other half had ingested all the chewing gum ingredients in the form of a powder dissolved in a glass of water.
Chewing gum is the surprise ally for weight loss in men but is not as effective in women
The overall heart rate was higher among those who chewed gum. But among “middle-aged and older” men (40 years and older) there was an additional effect, namely, when they chewed gum, they tended to walk faster, thus covering more distance, which made them spend considerably more calories.
The exact reasons remain unknown but researchers, who presented their findings to the European Congress on Obesity in Vienna, put forward several hypotheses.
Thus, another Japanese study had already proved that chewing-gum increased the heart rate, even at rest, therefore, the Japanese scientists have evoked the “cardio-motor synchronization”, the tendency that the body has to increase its activity when the heart accelerates.
This trend “is more likely to occur in older people than in the younger ones,” the researchers stipulated.
In addition, previous studies have indicated that women have less chewing muscle activity with chewings-gums than men. Thus, chewing gum while walking on foot doesn’t have the same weight loss effectiveness in women.
In short, chewing gum is the surprise ally for weight loss in men who consume this product while performing a physical activity like walking.