How much gum can you swallow

Blockage is most likely when gum is swallowed along with foreign objects, like coins, or when swallowed with nondigestible materials like sunflower seeds. Little kids are most likely to be affected because they might not understand that gum is chewed, not swallowed. Chewing gum is made of either natural or synthetic materials gum resin , preservatives, flavorings, and sweeteners.

The body can absorb sweeteners, such as sugar, and they can add up to a lot of calories if you chew a lot of sugary gum. But the human digestive tract can't digest the gum resin.

It's moved through the digestive tract by the normal pushing peristaltic actions of the gut. The gum's journey ends during a trip to the bathroom.

We all have plaque on our teeth. It's a group of bacteria that lives in your mouth and forms between brushings. The best way to keep plaque in check…. Receding gums are common.

Along with good oral hygiene such as brushing and flossing, there are a number of natural remedies for receding gums…. Health Conditions Discover Plan Connect. Swallowed Gum. Medically reviewed by Stacy Sampson, D. Risks Ingredients Is it a food? Health Takeaway What happens if you swallow gum? Should I go to the doctor if I swallow gum? Is chewing gum considered a food? Should I let my child chew gum? If, that is, you don't swallow too much gum. The gastrointestinal system consists of everything from the lips to the anus.

That's the journey your gum has to travel if you swallow it. Typically, food breaks down as it goes through the GI tract, and the system is made for that. For that reason, the esophagus is much more robust than the small intestines.

The esophagus doesn't really absorb anything. It's just a tube to carry food or gum, which is definitely not food to the stomach. The stomach does some of the hard work. It mixes food with acids and churns it pretty violently until the food is turned into a slurry of juices and solids.

That slurry is drained into about 20 feet of small intestines. In the small intestines, the solid matter continues to break down with the help of bacteria in the gut.

Different nutrients are absorbed through the small intestines, but water mostly stays in the slurry to make it easier to move through the system. At the end of the small intestines, what's left—at this point, we'll just call it poop —is transferred into the large intestines, also known as the colon. Water is absorbed through the walls of the colon until the poop reaches just the right consistency to be expelled.

If you're old enough to read this, then you know how it ends. Gum doesn't work like digestible food. It is not going to break down.

What goes into the intestines is exactly the same consistency as what went into the esophagus. Depending on how much of it is in there and the health of the system, the presence of gum could grind the whole thing to a painful halt. There isn't a lot of evidence to show how much swallowed gum is too much, but there are reported case studies showing that chronically swallowing gum could, well, gum up the works.

In an article published in the journal Pediatrics in , pediatricians presented three cases of kids who had swallowed gum and suffered intestinal blockages.

That young lady didn't just swallow gum. In her case, the gum was responsible for holding together four stacked coins she also swallowed. The whole mess got stuck in her esophagus not very far below her throat. Eh, not so bad. And when no food comes down, your stomach really begins to churn and grumble, causing pain and making you more conscious of your need to eat.

Additionally, Spicer's favorite gum contains aspartame, acesulfame K, and sucralose—three artificial sweeteners that have been scientifically shown to trigger your sweet receptors and rev hunger.

So add gum chewing to the list of 30 Reasons You're Always Hungry. If you were constantly being bombarded by questions from information-hungry journalists, we'd bet you'd be pretty stressed out, too. Maybe that's why Spicer chews so much gum. As a video from the American Chemical Society's Reactions series explains, our bodies don't have a way to break down the indigestible rubber base of gum a synthetic rubber called butyl rubber.

Even though your body can't digest the gum, it doesn't mean it won't try! In fact, your body will likely trigger a natural, neural response in the parasympathetic nervous system which tells your body to slow down and focus on digesting rather than go out and seek more food. As a result, your body may expend a significant amount of energy trying to break down those 35 pieces of gum, and you'll feel drained as a result. Yes, the whole point of our investigation is to find out what happens when you swallow a lot of gum, but a part of that is also that Spicer does chew the gum first.

This chewing stage is what can lead to extra bloating, since chewing incessantly which you'd be doing to get through 35 pieces of gum in just a few hours can cause you to swallow excess air, which can lead to bloat. If you take a closer look at Spicer's favorite gum—cinnamon Orbit—you see that each piece contains four different sugar alcohols: sorbitol, glycerol, xylitol, and mannitol.