Why does gum take so long

He ate between five and seven pieces a day and always swallowed them, rather than spitting them out. Inside the second patient, also aged four, doctors found a multi-coloured mass, which again turned out to be chewing gum. Doctors said the patient was in the habit of swallowing her gum quickly in order to get more. The third child was just months-old. It turned out that she regularly ate chewing gum, and, it appears, small coins. And, if you were to swallow some today, it will not hang around inside you until finally making its way out in time for the Olympics.

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The BBC is not responsible or liable for any diagnosis made by a user based on the content of this site. They can be hot and spicy in your mouth, as you probably know. A good rule would be to stick with sugar-free gum and don't have more than one or two pieces a day.

And when you're done with it, don't swallow it. Throw it away instead! Larger text size Large text size Regular text size. When Is Swallowed Gum a Problem?

But apart from these strange scenarios, swallowing an occasional piece of gum is harmless. While it will stick readily to your shoe, gum does not stick to your stomach wall or intestinal tract.

Instead of hanging around for years, gum simply travels the same path as food and is excreted in stool. An exception to this would be people with gastroparesis, or paralyzed stomach, which can result in a buildup of food in the stomach.

But even in extreme cases, Dr. However, Dr. McGreal cautions, the natural and artificial sweeteners in sugar-free gum can cause nausea, diarrhea, and headaches if swallowed in large quantities. It's for this reason that frequent swallowing of chewing gum should be discouraged, especially in children.

The magnetic fields themselves don't do any damage directly to your tissue, but the magnetic force between the magnets will cause them to stick together, with your tissue in the middle. And a few drops of water isn't going to turn off that kind of stickiness.