Importance of Chewing

         The Importance of Chewing

We recommend that our patients chew most nutrients which they are taking. Nutritional supplements are really foods, even though they are concentrated and/or extracted and as such they should be chewed by the patient. The chewing itself seems not to be the critical factor, but rather the insalivations of the substances prove to be important.  Therefore, if you are unable to “chew up” nutritional supplements, at lease suck on them prior to swallowing.

Chewing or tasting activates the oral stage of digestion and communicates to the nervous system, most likely through the taste bud receptors and sensory mechanism, just what is being put into the body. This can be seen by the changes in muscle strength which take place whenever required nutrients are placed into a patient’s mouth.

Warning! Chewing a nutritional supplement before swallowing it may be unpleasant due to the taste of the raw nutrients, undisguised by their natural environment of the food from which they were derived. Benefit! Tasting a nutrient gives you a “treatment” in a sense. The nervous system responds to tasting a required substance by resetting itself at a better functionally level. This can be seen by the immediate improvement in muscle strength upon tasting the substance. If you swallow the nutrient without chewing or tasting it, you are missing a part of the overall effectiveness of the nutrient.

The importance and benefit of chewing a nutrient explains why your mouth is up close to your brain rather than down by your stomach. The body can reset the entire nervous system through the act of chewing and tasting appropriate nutrients.  When something chemical is missing, the body goes on alert and sends up flares and warning signals in the form of weaknesses and changes in other body functions (such as heart rate).  These flares and warning signals are immediately neutralized when the appropriate nutrient has been chewed or tasted.  The nervous system tells the body, “Hey, now we are getting what we need. We don’t need to worry any more. We can take down the warning signals and everything is going to be ok.”

Our patients are always instructed to chew nutrients, or at least suck on them and taste them, before swallowing. Chewing a nutrient allows the chemical substance to maximize its effects on the structural (muscular balance) and psychological (attention is drawn to its ingestion) aspects of patient’s health.

For more information, contact Northfield Chiropractic at 507.663.1271 or 800.536.4325