Hello everyone, I don't know if the little partner has the habit of chewing gum, almost everyone has heard of not swallowing chewing gum, but why? Today we talk about, what happens if you accidentally swallow gum?
When we chew food, food begins to break down because we have enzymes in our saliva that begin to break down food as we chew. After we swallow food, proteins and enzymes further digest them in the stomach, so all essential nutrients are absorbed by our intestines, and unabsorbed substances are excreted along with other by-products along with our gastrointestinal movements.
But chewing gum no matter how many times we chew, how much saliva is secreted, it will not decompose, it will not participate in the digestive process in our mouth, the main component of chewing gum is gum, the human stomach can not decompose this thing like other foods. Archaeologists have found some birch bark tar dating back to the Mesolithic era with tooth marks on it, ancient Greek women chewed frankincense to clean their teeth and freshen their breath, Native Americans taught colonists to chew spruce resin to quench their thirst, and in the 19th century, people chewed on solid paraffin wax with added sugar.
It wasn't until World War II that the substrate of chewing gum became gum gum, which is the latex sap of the mango tree. Modern chewing gum uses synthetic gum or natural gum to mimic the properties of gum gum, and its sweetener and flavor substances are mixed with gum and are very appetizing as chewed and released in your mouth, right?
The United States defines chewing gum as a non-nutritious chewable, because the substrate of chewing gum cannot be digested, and our body can decompose some of the sugars and spices in chewing gum, but it cannot decompose the lump of rubber. On the bright side, our bodies have other ways to get things out, and our digestive tract is an active place where muscle contractions move food through the body and can also help move gum chunks, eventually making it excrete from the other end. It's a bit like the rinds of corn kernels, our bodies can't digest them, but they don't gather in the stomach, and if you look closely you'll notice that you'll excrete these skins over hours to days, depending on your digestive system.
But this does not mean that you have to develop the habit of swallowing gum, because they do not decompose, your body to push a lump of garbage through the digestive system, if you increase this garbage, you may eventually get intestinal obstruction, to put it bluntly, the only way to process all food is blocked, if left unchecked, the consequences are very serious, so swallowing a piece of chewing gum may not be fatal, but try not to do it.