Fun fact sweet sisters…. You cannot buy chewing gum at the
Honolulu airport. They do indeed sell Wasabi flavoured Macadamian nuts should
you be so inclined but juicy fruit is not on the menu. Feel free to peruse the
aisles of Mont Blanc fountain pens, Tom Ford sunglasses and all things Marc
Jacobs. A fresh orchid Leigh is yours for the taking as are two whole
pineapples packed and ready for transport ($36 gets you the two pineapples and
a pineapple cutter) but if you want gum you will go wanting.
There I was on line at HNL with my 1 litre of bottled water
and Sunday NY Times ready for take-off shall we say when I hit the till and
looked down for the requisite bubble gum to keep my mouth busy and my Eustachian
tubes open. Amidst the Mentos and the M&M’s there it wasn’t…. chewing gum.
“ Excuse me,” I asked the salesclerk, “where’s the chewing
gum?”
She smiled and responded, “We don’t sell gum at the
airport.”
“Why not?” I inquired, immediately wondering if gum fell
into a liquid or gel category that I was not aware of. Could gum have crossed
over into a new dark side?
“Because maintenance objected- it was too much work.”
My lovely and informed salesclerk went on to tell me that
they stopped selling chewing gum at HNL about “10 years ago” after the maintenance
crew at the airport found that they were spending too much time and money
cleaning gum of the airport’s surfaces.
There I was in the middle of the airport imagining the great
chewing gum debacle of 2004.
Picture it- entire airport was riddled with multicoloured hardened gobs
of Hubba Bubba and Bazooka left in unforeseen locations all over the airport
each still stamped with bite marks of tourists gone by. It was an international
rainbow fest of dental dam proportions.
Think about it for a moment…. Maintenance found the scourge
of chewing gum such an issue at the Honolulu airport so as to ban together and
shut down its sales. How bad could it have gotten? How powerful is maintenance?
How much work IS gum?
Are tourists to Hawaii really such savages that they leave
their half chewed gum strewn about the airport; hidden under airport benches
and behind water fountains like little dental treasures?
These questions swirled through my head along with one
more…. I wondered what I would do on a 6-hour flight across the Pacific with
nothing to prevent my eardrums from backing up mid flight?
I should say that I’m not a big “gum chewer” to begin with.
This is because I tend to swallow it. Yes… I swallow gum. As a child I was
warned on many a schoolyard that said gum would indeed stay in my system for 7
years. In fact as I grew older the amount of time said gum would take to pass
through my intestines tended to shift… last count I heard was something like 6
months.
Turns out my schoolmates were lying little assholes.
Leave it to science and my medical training to save the day
once more. Think about it logically for a moment? I’ve had a couple
colonoscopies in my life and I’ve seen over 50 of them. Never once did I spot
any gum. That is easily 52 occasions when at least one person must have had a
Chicklet in the last 5 years or so…. And so no, gum does not stay in the body
longer than any other food.
In fact according to your standard medical textbook gum is
partially digested (the sugars in it that is) and the rest of it passes through
the digestive system in much the same way any waste does.
Indeed chewing gum has been around for thousands of years.
Archeologists in Europe found teeth marks in birch bark tar that date back to
the Mesolithic Era of the Stone Age. Native Americans from as early as two
thousand years ago chewed balls of plant material called “quids”, according to
researchers who’ve studied the Western Basketmakers of the South-Western USA.
Whose idea was it to bring this ancient material to a modern
day flying machine?
According the CDC a blocked ear during flight or “airplane
ear” is caused by blockages in the Eustachian tube in your inner ear. The
Eustachian tube links your middle ear with the back of your throat and the
environment outside. This is essentially a tube that allows a communication
between the inner air and the outside world- it allows for pressures to
equalize between the two.
When we fly, the Eustachian tube can become blocked when
pressure in the cabin shifts. This change in pressure places stress on your
inner ear, causing the pain you feel during airplane ear. The tube can become
blocked for a number of reasons, including inflammation due to allergies like
hay fever and additional mucus produced if you have a cold.
Chewing gum can help equalize the pressure, relieving
discomfort, although it’s not the gum itself that helps. The actions of chewing
and swallowing use muscles around the Eustachian tube, potentially opening its
internal exit at the back of your throat. Doing this allows air to move into or
out of the Eustachian tube, helping to equalize pressure and easing both the
stress on your inner ear and the associated discomfort. The equalizing of
pressure causes the “popping” sound you hear when your ears “open up”.
Interestingly, an antihistamine can also prevent Eustachian
tube blockage and prevent your ears from “blocking up”.
And so you can either chew gum or take drugs to prevent
airplane ear?
Indeed my sisters you can. In life as in fashion its all
about the options.
Do they sell Cold and Flu tabs and HNL airport? Yes, the
most certainly do. And so, like a true scientist and a visionary I bought Nyquil
at the Honolulu airport, took one and woke up in Vancouver with a blog in my
head and my ears wide open.
I am truly appreciative to the owner of this website who has shared this nice article at this wonderful place.
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