What happens if you swallow chewing gum
If you swallow your chewing gum, it stays in your body for seven years. It turns into a sticky tangle of threads in your intestines. Or it gets stuck in your appendix. Warnings from your parents, because as a child you weren’t supposed to swallow your Bubbelicious. Is there any truth to this?
If you swallow your chewing gum, it ends up in your stomach. Saliva and stomach acid break down some of the chewing gum, but they don’t manage to break it down completely. The rest doesn’t get stuck in your appendix or glue your intestines together, but simply leaves your body via the normal route. So you poop it out.
Stomach cramps
So is it OK to simply swallow chewing gum? It won’t do any harm, but children and people with intestinal problems are better off avoiding it altogether. People with Crohn’s disease, for example, can get severe stomach cramps and constipation from chewing gum—not much fun. And children can easily choke on chewing gum, which isn’t what you want either.
Surgical removal
The American website Healthline is considerably stricter: swallowing one piece of chewing gum isn’t a problem, but larger quantities can cause intestinal problems, they write. ‘The chewing gum may need to be surgically removed,’ they warn. If you experience nausea, abdominal pain and constipation after swallowing your chewing gum, they advise you to contact your GP immediately.
‘Bezoar’
Tech Insider also warns against swallowing chewing gum. ‘Such a blockage in your intestines is called a bezoar. A healthy 19-year-old woman in Israel suffered from a bezoar. The cause? She had swallowed five pieces of chewing gum every day for years.’ But Tech Insider also says that chewing gum can be good for you: it reduces stress because chewing gum lowers your cortisol levels.
Birds
Worried? In general, swallowing it is still a better option than spitting it out or sticking it under your plate. Birds think they can eat lumps of chewing gum from the street and become seriously ill from them. So throw it away with the general waste, because chewing gum doesn’t belong in the green bin.
