Author: Peer

Plastic Chewing Gum Litters and has negative consequences. We chew about 500,000 tons of plastic chewing gum every year. In the streets and squares, chewing gum is one of the most common pieces of food. Plastic chewing gum is difficult to remove and therefore prohibited in e.g. Singapore.

Expensive to Remove Chewing Gum Spots

In London, it costs £10 million a year to remove chewing gum spots. In the run-up to the 2012 London Olympics, all the gum sat strapped to the inner city streets was cleaned up. There were about 100 gums on every meter’s way. In Sweden, too, the costs of removing chewing gum from the street are high. The City of Stockholm has a person employed to remove chewing gum. He tells us that only Drottninggatan costs one million kronor to clean from chewing gum and it takes just over a month. Then it won’t be long before it’s time to start all over again…

Chewing Gum is Hard to Break Down

It takes 20-25 years for nature to break down chewing gum, therefore it is not very environmentally friendly. Chewing gum generally contains artificial sweeteners such as sorbitrol, xylitol, aspartame. Sorbitol can be laxative and for those who are allergic to aspartame it is deadly. Many chew gum to get fresher breath, but the added flavors can at most hide bad breath. It’s the saliva that makes your breath better. Saliva excretion is greater if we chew on harder material because then the salivary glands are stimulated more. That’s why CHEW PEER gives you better breath.

Plastic chewing gum has poorer chewing resistance than elastic chewing gum like CHEW PEER. On the Shore scale, plastic chewing gum does not give a rash, unlike elastic. Therefore, plastic chewing gum is likely to produce less effect on the brain. A study by the Karolinska Trial Alliance will compare them. Subjects will chew elastic and plastic chewing gum while measuring blood flow in the brain. Because elastic chewing gum is harder, a greater chewing force is required. The hypothesis is that it also increases blood flow more in the brain. But even if it doesn’t, JAWPEER is useful. On the one hand, there are many studies that prove that chewing is a good thing. Partly, many people feel that it is more pleasant to chew CHEW PEER than chewing gum.

Plastic Chewing Gum is Softer than Elastic

Plastic chewing gum is very soft compared to CHEW PEER and has almost no chewing resistance. It means chewing through the rubber completely. Therefore, harder chewing gum soured than usual to show good results in scientific tests. The hardness of elastic materials is measured in the Scale Shore A. CHEW PEER is made of a material that is much harder than plastic chewing gums. That means they are around 30-40 on the Shore scale, compared to plastic chewing gum that has 0 (zero) on the same scale. Therefore, the effects of plastic chewing gums on the brain are unlikely to be as great as from elastic gums.

The Taste from Plastic Chewing Gum Distract the Brain

Another thing that makes CHEW PEER better than chewing gum for the brain is the taste. Research seems to show that chewing a tasteless product makes the brain faster. For example, a research study measured how different gum flavors affected reaction time in a Stroop test. Those who chewed mint gum had the same reaction time as those who did not chew at all. But the reaction time for lemon flavor was even slower. The lemon flavor seems to overload the brain, leading to a temporary deterioration of cognitive functions. Plastic chewing gum has both poor chewing resistance and can have a distracting taste. Therefore, it can even negatively affect cognitive ability when chewing. In conclusion, elastic chewing gum – which tastes nothing and has better chewing resistance – benefits the brain more. But we won’t know for sure until the KTA pilot study is complete.

How does the brain perceive the body? Differently than the mirror tell the eyes. If you look at how the cerebral cortex is connected to the different body parts, it becomes clear that it has both output and input functions. The Motor cortex (red) performs movements while the Sensory cortex (blue) receives sensory impressions. It turns out that a large part of the cerebral cortex is connected to the mouth. The hands also take up a lot of space, but the upper body does not seem to be nearly as important.

Experiments during brain surgery

This has been achieved through experiments with patients who are operated on in the brain. The surgeries can be long and patients need to be awake. Therefore, they find it nice to have a little variation in the meantime. When the researchers stimulated the cerebral cortex with a weak electrical current, patients experienced it in different parts of the body. Afterward, the researchers were able to draw a map showing where on the brain’s surface different parts of the body represents. As a result, the Homonculus were depicted.

Homonculus shows how the brain perceives the body

If you draw how the brain perceives the human body, it looks much like Homonculus above. In other words, it’s distorted. But the picture above is not entirely correct. To begin with, the figure should have even bigger jaws and also gape more. The inside of the mouth is huge to the brain. It allows it to act as the body’s laboratory. If we want to investigate something really carefully, we’ll put it in our mouths and chew on it. This means that large parts of the brain work together to analyze the object.

Discover your mouthfeel with JAWPEER

The interaction of different senses in the mouth is called mouthfeel. With the mouthfeel, we can determine what is edible and what is not. Sensations such as heat, dryness, and tingling are recorded by chemical means. The mouth sensation arises from a combination of different nerves in the mouth and on the tongue. As a result, we experience things better that we put in our mouths. Unfortunately, the mouthfeel is too rarely used. In conclusion: the brain puts a lot of attention on the mouth. f you want to stimulate it then there is now a good product: JAWPEER. Since we have different tastes and tastes, it can contain different large and different hard CHEW PEER. The idea is that you should be able to find your own favorite and then subscribe to it if you want.

The strong connection of the mouth to the brain goes through the nerves. The cranial nerves are the “highways” of brain traffic that connect our senses directly to the brain. We have 12 pairs of cranial nerves visible on the underside of the brain. The thickest is the Trigeminal nerve. Trigeminal links to the oral cavity, the lower and the upper jaw. This means that the oral cavity conveys more information than the optic nerve.

The twelve cranial nerves and their functions

In: The olfactory nerve conveys smell information from olfactory cells in the nose.
II: The optic nerve gives us visual impressions via the eye’s light-sensitive cells.
III: The eye’s muscle nerve (oculomotor) controls the fine muscles that regulate the eye’s light intake.
IV: The nerve of the eye socket (trochlear) allows us to roll the eyes.
VI: The side viewer nerve (abducens) controls the ability to look to the sides.

V: The trigeminal nerve mediates sensation on the face, teeth, jaws, and oral cavity.
VII: The facial nerve takes care of lip movements and taste, etc.
VIII: The balance and auditory nerve records sound and manages the balance.
IX: The glossopharyngeal nerve is involved in mouth sensation, swallowing reflex, and saliva production.
X: The vagus nerve controls the vocal cords and communicates with the chest and abdominal brain.
XI: The accessory nerve manages the neck and neck muscles.
XII. The hypoglossal nerve handles seven tongue muscles that control our speech ability.

The Strong Connections to the Mouth

The nerve connections tell us what’s important to the brain. Notice that five of the twelve cranial nerves connect to the mouth in different ways, while e.g. only one of the nerves connect to the hearing. So the brain prioritizes the mouth. The strong mouth-brain connection means that you can stimulate the brain in a simple way: use CHEW PEER!

The mouth is rich in information. Because the modern media society is based so much on language, we tend to forget about the mouth. Instead, vision and hearing have been given special status as the two most important senses. For example, psychologist Zimmerman writes about the nervous system in light of the information theory. Zimmerman publishes a table that is interesting because it does not match what our biology looks like.

The Nerve Density Reveals the Mouth

Zimmerman imagines that the eyes are our biological “broadband” that can transmit 10 million bits per second. Psychologically, however, we can only perceive 40 bits/second from the eyes and 30 bits/second from the ears, he says. Taste and smell are far behind: they have an estimated psychological transfer rate of 1 bit/s each. But if you count the number of nerve fibers, it doesn’t seem right. Judging by the density of the nerve, the mouth is rich in information. It can convey more information than the ears or eyes.

Zimmermann, M. (1989). The nervous system in the context of information theory. Human physiology (pp. 166-173). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

Mouth More Important Than Eyes

Our culture has built-in values. Of our five senses eyes are highest in rank. God is often symbolized as an all-seeing eye. An old Jewish proverb says that the eyes are the mirror of the soul. The philosopher René Descartes, who lived in the 17th century, believed that the soul was connected to the pineal gland in the brain. He illustrated how the soul connected with the eyes through nerves. But the evolution that has created us prioritizes differently.

We can live without both sight and hearing, but not without a mouth. The mouth is thus rich in information. It combines taste, smell, and touch and is therefore our most complex sensory organ. If the body is the temple of the soul, the mouth is the door in, guarded by teeth that are prepared to bite off. The tongue then symbolizes the priest who stands in the door and welcome in. The tongue is so connected with nerves that it is almost like a visible part of the brain.

The background to JAW PEER is plain male vanity. One morning Peer saw his tired face in the bathroom mirror. He looked at his little wrinkles, bags under his eyes, and drooping cheeks. The face is the storefront of the body and the part of us that the outside world sees all the time. Peer didn’t like what he saw in the mirror. He decided to do something about it and start training the facial muscles.

Peer googled “work out your face”, “how to get rid of wrinkles” and “exercise equipment for the face” and searched around the net. The only product he found was a big disgusting ball. He didn’t want to chew on that. That’s why he made his own face trainer and started training. It was not very good, but already after a couple of weeks, he noticed that the jawline was getting more marked and the smile became wider and happier. There must be more who are equally vain, Peer thought. So was born the idea of JAW PEER.

The background to JAW PEER is thus completely banal. It was not an ingenious experience about the importance of mouth-feeling to the brain. At first, Peer made a prototype and began training the facial muscles. Then he discovered that something happens to the brain when you exercise as well. You could say Peer was just lucky, but you have to be lucky sometimes.

The last time Peer made an invention, however, he was rather unlucky. He had a great idea and created the vacuum cleaner lighting. Peer would clean in a dark and dirty wind and put a strong lamp on the vacuum cleaner shaft.  Abracadabra! The beam made him see every grain of dust in the dark. After the cleaning, it was really clean. Peer went to the Swedish Patent- and Registration Office, where he met an official who took away all the joy and enthusiasm. Apparently, it wasn’t an invention at all, due to this expert. Therefore, there was no patent at that time. But the idea is still good for everyone who wants to do other things when the sun shines that vacuum-cleaning.