Sonic200 wrote:
If you swallow gum will it stay in your stomach for 7 years?
No. Thoroughly debunked . . .
Quote:
It's hard to find anyone who hasn't heard this specious claim about swallowed gum, usually when they were children:
Nothing factual supports this rumor -- as sticky as chewing gum might appear to be outside the body, once it's sent down the alimentary canal it's no more remarkable in that respect than most anything else we swallow.
This oft-repeated claim may stem from genuine confusion over a term commonly applied to chewing gum: indigestible. Although gum base is composed of a mixture of elastomers, resins, fats, emulsifiers, and waxes that resists the body's efforts to break it down (hence the 'indigestible' designation), gum does not linger in the stomach. Your gut moves gum along through the intestines until it is finally eliminated as human waste in the same way and at the same rate as any other swallowed matter. Granted, it comes out the far end relatively unchanged by the trip, but it does come out on schedule.
Source:
This Snopes Article
20 Aug 2023, 7:38 pm
