It’s Okay to Swallow Chewing Gum
You may not want to swallow the gum, but if you do, it won’t kill you. And he wouldn’t have stayed in the stomach for seven years. The danger of swallowing chewing gum is greatly exaggerated.
Mayo Clinic gastroenterologist Mark Larson told the Greatist that he always swallows gum. (“I just don’t like the idea of taking it out and putting it somewhere,” he says.) Your body does the same thing to chewing gum as it does to anything else it can’t digest, such as all that healthy fiber . You just poop.
So where did the myth come from? Perhaps due to a real but rare phenomenon called bezoar , a mass of undigested matter stuck in your stomach or intestines. If your cat chops up hairballs, you know what I’m talking about. There is such a thing as “chewing gum bezoar”, but it is so rare that only three cases have been reported in the medical literature – nevertheless. We would still like you to dispose of gum properly, but that’s because it’s disgusting to swallow, not because it’s unsafe.
Photo by torbakhopper .