Can chewing gum reshape your jawline? We asked experts.

The internet continually reinforces certain beauty standards for both men and women. Today, some boys and young men are preoccupied with the desire for a strong jawline and are turning to “facial fitness gum” in hopes of achieving that chiseled look.

A handful of chewing gum manufacturers market their chewing gum products, mainly via TikTok, with some users claiming that their jaw definition is due to their gum-gnawing habits. The idea is that chewing gum expands the muscles in your jaw, creating a more defined and seemingly more masculine shape. One such company, Stronger Gum, says on its website that “stronger jaw muscles are not only beneficial for facial appearance, but are also essential for health.” These correspond to similar ‘jaw trainers’, silicone products intended to be chewed on for jaw training. But when it comes to the science, there’s little evidence to suggest that chewing gum, or anything else for that matter, can cause significant and lasting changes to your face shape, no matter how hard that gum is.

“Gum is so readily available and it’s not that difficult to chew… I understand the appeal,” says Sunthosh Kumar Sivam, a facial plastic and reconstructive surgeon at Baylor College of Medicine. “But when I put on my facial plastic surgeon hat, I worry.”

“There are many different reasons why someone might not have the definition on their jaw that they want,” says Sivam. Neck fat can contribute to a softer jawline, as skin loss can occur in older adults. Lifestyle changes to lose a little weight can often really change the definition you see in your jawline.

Additionally, Sivam says, a flaw in the concept of jaw gum is that people tend to want a bony, protruding appearance in their jaw. Chewing gum will do nothing for that part of the jawline, it will just increase the mass in your jaw. jaw muscles. And you’d probably have to chew gum all day for hours for several weeks to actually see results. Results that disappear immediately once you stop chewing consistently.

“I don’t think these people, especially young people, understand the downstream effects of their activities,” said John S. Vorrasi, chairman of the department of oral and maxillofacial surgery at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “The average person should only grit their teeth to chew for about an hour to an hour and a half per day,” he says. If you expand that to four or five hours a day, “that’s well above the threshold of what we normally do, and you’re going to have some inherent side effects from that.”

Side effects of excessive gum chewing will be much the same as those of chronic jaw clenching or grinding, says Vorrasi. “There are plenty of people who have temporary headaches due to overuse of those muscles.” In addition, you can damage the tissues in your jaw joints and your overworked muscles can cramp, causing you to suffer from closed jaw joints.

When patients have TMJ pain, “one of our biggest recommendations is not to chew gum at all,” says Sivam. If it gets really bad, “we have to put patients on a special diet where we completely limit chewing for a few weeks, and the pain can be very hard to deal with.”

If someone has a persistent desire to change their face shape, the first step would be to make some lifestyle adjustments such as diet and exercise, says Sivam. In addition, to really change your jaw shape, you will have to resort to cosmetic procedures. Options that can reshape the jaw include getting contoured implants or dermal fillers along the jawline, fat dissolution or removal procedures, or a neck lift.

There are some things our bodies are just not meant for, says Vorrasi. Anyone who is really interested should “have that conversation with a professional to talk about ways to achieve that effect without causing unnecessary harm to yourself.”