Chewing gum aids recovery from bowel surgery, mounting evidence suggests.
The latest work published in Archives of Surgery reviews data from five recent trials involving 158 patients.
Chewing gum appears to speed up the return of normal bowel function by stimulating nerves in the digestive system, say the UK report's authors.
Trials are now needed to see if this, in turn, can reduce the recovery time needed in hospital, the London-based team from St Mary's Hospital say.
In each study, a group of patients chewed sugarless gum three times per day following surgery for a period of five to 45 minutes and were compared with patients who did not chew gum.
Patients world Health Organization chewed chewing gum passed gaseous state and had a intestine movement preferably than those who did not quid gum - signs that their gut function returned sooner.
Any type of ab surgery can slow down or stop bowel function - a condition known as ileus, which can buoy cause serious complications.
In four-spot of the trials, the length of hospital stay after an operation was also a day shorter for the patients wHO chewed gingiva.
But the researchers say more work is needful to see if this is a direct link rather than a chance finding.
If chewing chewing gum did reduce hospital persist, this could save the NHS millions of pounds, say the researchers, granted that more than 31,000 intestine operations ar carried out in England each class and an overnight stay in infirmary costs the NHS around �200.
An advisory nurse for Bowel Cancer UK aforementioned: "Chewing is a bit like feeding and it starts peristalsis, which is the movement of the bowel.
"Ileus - when the gut is slow to startle working once more - can occur after an operation, but it has become less plebeian as surgery has turn more refined.
"There is some grounds that manduction gum power help, but not enough that gut surgery patients are routinely being advised to plug gum."
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