Need that stuck song out of your head? Just chew gum

A new study has revealed that chewing gum can help you get rid of the song stuck in your head.

As per the University of Reading study, people chewing gum are less likely to think about "sticky" songs, and less likely to hear them after they've stopped, the Independent reported.

The findings could even show that chewing gum could also be used to keep annoying or recurrent thoughts from popping into people's heads.

Lead author Phil Beaman said that the majority of people experience earworms, which comes from the German word "ohrwurm" for only short periods, perhaps just a few minutes, but others can experience them for two or three days which can be extremely frustrating and debilitating.

Participants in the study were played Play Hard by David Guetta and Payphone by Maroon 5. They were then told not to think about the songs, and hit a key whenever they did. The people who were doing so chewing gum hit the key a lot less than those that were told to do nothing or tap their finger, the researchers found.

Beaman added that interfering with our own "inner speech" through a more sophisticated version of the gum-chewing approach may work more widely, but more research is needed to see whether this will help counter symptoms of obsessive-compulsive and similar disorders.

The study is published in Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.