If you are one of the many people who has swallowed a gum By accident, a question probably popped into your head right after that surprising sensation. How long will he stay there? There is a widespread notion that gum will remain in the stomach for seven years after being swallowed.
Is not true.
“It’s an ancient made-up legend,” said Simon Travis, professor of clinical gastroenterology at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. “I have no idea where the myth came from – I can only imagine it was invented by someone who wanted to stop their children from chewing gum.”
Swallowing gum is only bad for your body if you do it in excess, Travis said, which is very rare. He explained that swallowing three or more pieces of gum a day would be considered excessive.
“If you swallow gum, it will pass through your stomach, into your intestines, and come out unchanged at the other end,” Travis said. “There are cases of gum becoming lodged in the intestines of young children if they swallow too much and causing obstruction. But in more than 30 years of specialized gastro practice, I have never seen a case.”
Dr. Aaron Carroll, a distinguished professor of pediatrics and chief health officer at Indiana University, has written several books debunking myths about the body. Carroll agreed that swallowing gum won’t do any harm, but he wouldn’t actively encourage it.
“It has no nutritional value,” he said. “Gum is made from sweeteners and flavorings. The gum base is a mixture of elastomers, resins, fats, emulsifiers and waxes. So, I wouldn’t say it’s healthy.”
How long have people been chewing gum?
Before gum was commercialized and sold in the packages we see today, it was used by ancient people to quench thirst and hunger, according to Jennifer Mathews, professor of anthropology at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, and author of “ Gum: The Chewing Gum of the Americas, From the Ancient Maya to William Wrigley.”
The Mayans chewed a substance called chicle, which comes from the sapodilla tree prevalent in southern Mexico and Central America, Mathews said.
“Chicle is a natural latex that comes from something called the Chico sapote, or sapodilla, tree,” Mathews explained. “If you cut a tree, the latex starts to ooze as a form of protection. Forms a barrier to protect the tree. Well, you can just pluck it from the tree and start munching on it.”
Likewise, the Pima Indians in what is now the United States chewed the sap for thousands of years before European settlers picked up the habit and it was commercialized, Mathews said.
When to worry about swallowing gum
Unless you’re in pain or have swallowed a lot of gum, Travis and Carroll said you don’t need to go to the doctor if you accidentally swallow a whole piece.
“It’s a theoretical problem,” Carroll said. “Theoretically, it would have to be something big enough to cause a blockage [intestinal] in a small child, but that’s not something the average person needs to worry about.”
However, for people with problems with the gastrointestinal tract, which is a series of organs joined together in a long, twisted tube from the mouth to the anus, ingesting gum can cause problems.
“If things are open and there are no blockages, there are no strictures, things are going to go well,” said academic gastroenterologist Dr. Leila Kia, associate professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
“If there is a narrowing or if you have very severe inflammation for whatever reason, or if you have a motility problem where your stomach or colon is not emptying the way it should, then certainly swallowing something like gum or something that cannot be break down, that can stick around and really cause problems,” said Kia
Crohn’s disease is a common cause of inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract and can cause narrowing, according to Kia. She said doctors generally recommend a low-residue diet for Crohn’s patients, which avoids certain foods like raw fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, popcorn and gum.
Some types of cancer and surgeries can cause this narrowing. “Certainly, if you swallowed a lot of gum, this could become a problem if you only had a tiny stomach or if your anatomy had been rearranged, which is essentially what happens when you have gastric surgery,” Kia said.
Still, Kia has never removed gum from anyone’s body, although she has removed dentures that she thinks were inadvertently swallowed.
Source: CNN Brasil
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