Can chewing gum help you quit smoking?

Chewing gum is awesome for helping you overcome difficult situations, but can chewing gun help you quit smoking? The answer is an emphatic yes it can. Struggling with quitting? Find the right gum for you and start chewing to kill those smoking cravings today.

Smoking is a hard addiction to overcome. There is the addiction to nicotine combined with the psychological addiction to the act of smoking. Both need time and effort to overcome. After smoking for years, the old habit of having something near or in your mouth is deeply ingrained in the mind. Some people resort to junk food to fill these cravings while others try to go cold turkey. Without the stress release, tempers can flare up when trying to quit smoking. Smoker’s rage is real.

Enter chewing gum into the picture. Chewing gum provides an activity for the mouth to overcome immediate cravings. This certainly beats the alternative of eating junk food to satisfy oral activities or just being full of rage. A single piece of chewing gum can keep your mouth and mind on something other than your next cigarette. Its fame for being a special cigarette cessation aid is what prompted scientific research into chewing gum and smoking.

Research was done in the late 1990’s showing that chewing gum was effective at helping people quit smoking. The idea is that the chewing motion kept the mouth active enough to reduce the desires to light up. This led to nicotine gum designed to keep the mouth active and give it the nicotine that it was missing from the cigarettes. Unfortunately this hasn’t been the cure all doctors hoped it would be.

Further research by others in the 2000’s suggested that the flavor of the gum might be important. A study in the Addictive Behaviors Journal in 2010 tackled the question of whether it is the flavor, the chewing action or both. What the study found was that it isn’t just the chewing of the gum but it is combination of the flavor and the chewing action that helps a person quit smoking.

It’s important to know that the success of chewing gum in tobacco abstinence is for short periods of 3 to 4 hours, meaning it’s useful for warding off immediate desires. The longer term cravings have to be dealt with using other methods, but chewing gum is a sure fire help to quit smoking.

In choosing a gum to help you quit smoking, the scientific research shows that you need to find a confectionery gum that tastes good. Honestly, if you don’t like the flavor then you are less likely to use it to overcome your cravings so choose one you like. You can even choose a couple of different flavors to help give you some variety and if excess sugar is a concern then take a look at the sugar free gums.

Research has shown that it’s important to keep gum on hand and use it preemptively when cravings strike. Start chewing right when the cravings begin and remember it’s always a good time to chew gum. You can quit smoking with the help of chewing gum.