Have you ever been chewing gum and all of a sudden coughed and swallowed it? Or maybe you had one of those moments where you just swallowed your gum without realizing it? Most people have swallowed their gum at least once in their lifetime, and if you did it as a kid you can’t help but think, “Is that going to take 7 years to get out of my stomach?” Seven years is a long time for a kid to wait around for the gum to come out the other end. I know I swallowed a handful of gum in my lifetime.
However, studies and observations by pediatric gastroenterologist David Milov of the Nemours Children’s Clinic in Orlando, Florida said that that is not true. In fact, he states, “If the legend were true, that would mean that every single person who ever swallowed gum within the last seven years would have evidence of the gum in the digestive tract, but colonoscopies and capsule endoscopy procedures turn up no such evidence. On occasion we’ll see a piece of swallowed gum,” he says, “but usually it’s not something that’s any more than a week old.”
It has been said that some of the gum is digested like the sweetners added however, that actual chewy, rubber like substance of the actual gum is not. Gum may be composed of many natural or synthetic elastomers, or rubberlike materials, as well as plasticizing softeners, resins and preservative antioxidizing agents. The permitted elastomers include natural, tree-derived chicle.
In the study, Milov says. “It probably passes through slower than most foodstuffs, but eventually the normal housekeeping waves in the digestive tract will sort of push it through, and it will come out pretty unmolested.”
A 1998 study in the journal Pediatrics, for example, described three children who came to a clinic with intestinal pain, constipation and other symptoms, and were found to have small masses of chewing gum in their guts. One was a 4-year-old boy who “always swallowed his gum after chewing five to seven pieces each day.” Another was a 4-year-old girl.
Three other studies, including one in The American Journal of Diseases of Children, describe similar cases. In most, the young patients were fine after removal of the obstructions. The phenomenon is rare, the studies noted. But they might also serve as a cautionary tale for the parents of small children, particularly those with a strong fondness for gum.
Therefore, it is not recommended to swallow gum if you don’t absolutely have to because it is fairly more difficult for your body to digest gum than to digest other things you eat, but at the end of the day it is rare to encounter a complication in your body due to gum.
I recently read online that in a study conducted on adults and children; total transit time, from eating to elimination in stool, averaged 53 hours however, the time is an overestimate because what they used to pass through the digestive system was much slower than actual food. The average transit time through just the large intestine was 40 hours, with significant difference between men and women: 33 hours for men, 47 hours for women.Then, in another study, 35 children were fed juice containing a red marker and asked the children’s mothers to note when the stool first turned red. The mean time of transit from mouth to anus for the group was 33 hours. However, we are not all the same so this is just average because some kids took less time and other kids took more time. Therefore, the study shown above doesn’t really say if those kids were average kids that took 33 hours to digest their food. Furthermore, you have to take into account that gum is made up of substances that makes it harder for even the average adult to digest, but it definitely doesn’t take 7 years.
http://www.mayoclinic.org/digestive-system/expert-answers/faq-20058340
I don’t believe in this myth at all! This made me interested in finding out how fast our body digests food and whether some foods take longer to digest than others. A Whyzz article stated it could take one to three days for your food to digest through your stomach! It has 20 feet of intestines to go through! In another article, I found that it depends on the person as to how long it takes to digest their food: the person’s state of physical and emotional health, medications they may be taking, etc. When you stated there were cases where some children had gum in their intestines, does that mean they are more likely to have gum in them for longer? Would the amount of time for food to process be slower in children than adults? I’m just curious…
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=george&dbid=156
http://whyzz.com/how-does-our-body-digest-food
I have always heard this myth and believed it! I’m glad I don’t have something sticky stuck in my stomach for so long. I think people are prone to hearing this myth so they just believe it. Although it doesn’t stay in your body for 7 years, could it have an effect on the body because of it stickiness?
I found this article interesting because I have swallowed my gum so many times and I have always heard that rumor about gum taking 7 years to digest. Thanks for the clarification on that!
Actually it doesn’t take seven years for gum to be digested, it doesn’t even take 7 days. MRI procedures haven’t detected any old gum in someone’s stomach unless the person swallowed the gum the same day they got their procedure done. However, it’s still a terrible idea to swallow gum multiple times a day for a long period of time because the gum is made up of materials that aren’t exactly easy for you’re stomach to break down.
It is not a myth. If you consume large amounts of gum it can take 7 years to digest. With that being said if you occasionally swallow gum it will not do much harm. Although gum is capable of lasting 7 years in your stomach, symptoms will occur that will show your problem and doctors can fix it and tell you to stop eating gum. Check out this story from BBC:
“One was a four-year-old boy who had been suffering from constipation for two years. He found it so hard to go to the toilet that his parents began offering chewing gum as an incentive to try. He ate between five and seven pieces a day and always swallowed them, rather than spitting them out. After four days of fibre supplements, oils and enemas had no effect, doctors sedated him and removed a “taffy-like” mass (referring to its similarity to chewy, toffee-like sweets from the US) from his rectum consisting chiefly of gum. It wasn’t seven years old, but it did cause him serious problems.”
In conclusion, I suggest that just don’t swallow your gum, just spit it out or throw it away. Do not let these stories cause you not to eat gum because it has benefits to chewing gum.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130625-does-gum-take-years-to-digest
I remember hearing this rumor about guy taking 7 years to digest all the time as a child because I would always accidently swallow my gum. After reading this article I was interested to find out what foods break down the fastest and slowest. The slowest things for out bodies to break down are fats and proteins because they are so complex. As an athlete, I live off carbs and these are the fastest for our body to break down according to Healthy Living. So now I understand why we have pasta parties right before a big game!
http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/foods-longer-digest-others-11622.html
If the myth of taking 7 years to digest gum were true, then I would have gum in my body until the age of 22. Thank god that this myth is not true. The study done by pediatric gastroenterologist David Milov shows convincing evidence that gum does not in fact stay in our body for 7 years. However, there must be a reason why every parent told his or her children to never swallow gum. For example, does swallowing gum cause intestinal problems? Based on this website (http://kidshealth.org/teen/expert/illnesses/swallow_gum.html) Swallowing gum does not actually cause any intestinal problems. However, in rare cases swallowing a large mass of gum, or many small pieces of gum can block the digestive tract. Even though swallowing gum can’t cause serious issues, it is still not a wise decision to swallow them.
Although, like said in this blog, it only takes a few days for gum to be digested it definitely is not recommended. Swallowing gum can cause “a young child to choke; the sugar can promote tooth decay; and no one knows exactly how the chemicals in such processed foods affect the body in the long term” (Smith). Also, our bodies weren’t made to process artificial ingredients, so being exposed to those is definitely not a good thing.
http://www.webmd.com/children/features/swallowing-gum
Thanks for the clarification!
I have swallowed my fair share of gum in my life, and it is relieving to know that it isn’t sitting at the bottom of my stomach. From your reporting, it seems like there isn’t really any internal or functional damage from swallowing gum, but perhaps you might want to investigate if there are additional side effects to swallowing the gum. Are gums made with different types of sweeteners depending on the brand and do those sweeteners have different affects on the body. I know there have been a lot of blogs done recently about the effects of sweeteners that are found in sodas and soft drinks, maybe those are the same that are found in gum and have similar side effects.