Myth busted: Doctor reveals what really happens if you swallow gum

He’s a real gumshoe.

A doctor is setting the record straight once and for all about an “old wives’ tale” that says that if you swallow a piece of gum, it stays stuck in your stomach for seven years.

“I’ve no idea where the myth came from — I can only imagine that it was suggested because someone wanted to stop their children from chewing gum,” Simon Travis, a professor of clinical gastroenterology at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, told CNN.

He said that swallowing gum isn’t dangerous, but if someone swallowed three or more pieces of gum in a day, it’s considered excessive and could potentially cause a digestive blockage. 

“If you swallow chewing gum, it’ll go through the stomach, and go through into the intestine, and pass out unchanged at the other end,” Travis said. 

“There are cases of chewing gum lodging in the intestines of infants and even children if they’ve swallowed a lot, and then it causes an obstruction,” he continued. “But in over 30 years of specialist gastro practice, I’ve never seen a case.”

Travis isn’t the only one to chew out the myth for good. 

Dr. Aaron Carroll, chief health officer at Indiana University, also debunked the gum myth — as well as several others. 

Speaking with IU Day, he’s squashed the five-second rule myth that food doesn’t pick up the germs on the floor if it’s snatched in time. However, he said the floor is definitely cleaner than the refrigerator handle or the sponge. 

He also set his sights on explaining that sitting too close to the TV won’t ruin your eyes. 

The regular myth buster is co-author of the book “Don’t Swallow Your Gum!: Myths, Half-Truths, and Outright Lies About Your Body and Health.”

Carroll explained that swallowing gum won’t harm someone, but that it won’t make them healthier either.

“It has no nutritional value,” he told CNN.

“Gum is made out of gum-based sweeteners, flavoring and scents. Gum base is a mixture of elastomers, resins, fats, emulsifiers and waxes. So I wouldn’t say it’s healthy.”

While swallowing gum isn’t harmful unless it’s done “excessively” one 5-year-old boy from Ohio swallowed 40 pieces of gum and needed a procedure to have a clump of it stuck in his stomach. 

He went to the ER a day after swallowing the gum and suffered cramps and diarrhea as a result of his obstructed GI tract. 

Blowing one piece of bubble gum can also be dangerous — if it’s spicy CaJohns Trouble Bubble Bubble Gum, that is. 

At least 10 elementary students at Dexter Park School in Orange, Massachusetts, were hospitalized in April after encountering the gum, according to officials.