Chewing Gum and Headache

Treating some headaches in children may be a simple matter of getting them to quit chewing gum.
Excessive gum chewing may be an important but under-recognized trigger for headaches in older children.
Excessive gum chewing causes headache not through the ingestion of aspartame from the gum, as has been previously suggested, but by putting undue exertion on the temporomandibular joint (TMJ).

Doctors make a point of enquiring about the gum chewing habits of adolescents reporting daily or recurrent headaches. "If the neurological examination is normal and the habit is present, they should first of all discontinue it to see if headaches improve, before embarking on expensive diagnostic procedures, or prescribing medications for the headache in children .