Chewing gum as a delivery mechanism? Does it even work?

Chewing gum has been used as a delivery mechanism for a long time and its delivery credentials are rather superb. Perhaps the most famous and currently widely used ‘functional gum’ is nicotine gum which is consumed by millions of people to quit smoking. 

 

At BLOCKHEAD we are focused on delivering functional boosts rather than helping with addiction. But why deliver benefits through a gum? The reason is simple - Speed of action - Convenience - Precision dosing. Gum is able to deliver an active ingredient directly to the bloodstream, so it acts fast. It doesn’t require water to swallow it down or transport it; instead through new gum technology, the active ingredients can be released from the gum as you chew. 

 

Speed. This is perhaps the biggest benefit of chewing gum. Chewing gum can deliver active ingredients sublingually and via the buccal mucosa. In plain English, this means that as you chew the active ingredients are released from the gum. These active ingredients are then absorbed through your gums and under your tongue which is rich with blood vessels, once they have passed the blood vessel membrane, they are able to immediately transport the active ingredients around the body. This is much faster than drinks and tablets which need to be digested in the stomach. To put this into context. Caffeine gum works in 5 minutes rather than the 25 minutes that drinks take to have an effect. 

 

Another example of the speed of using sublingual and buccal absorption is rubbing sugar on the gums when a diabetic is having a sugar low. Or a wilder example could be drug use like in the Wolf of Wall Street where cocaine is rubbed against the gums for a fast ‘hit’. To be clear BLOCKHEAD does not contain any illegal substances and is informed sport approved. 

 

 

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