[HN Gopher] What happens if you swallow gum?
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       What happens if you swallow gum?
        
       Author : gnabgib
       Score  : 39 points
       Date   : 2024-06-17 21:11 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (health.clevelandclinic.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (health.clevelandclinic.org)
        
       | glonq wrote:
       | Raise your hand if you read the topic wrong the first time.
        
         | 7bit wrote:
         | I read "a gun" and was wondering if it's really that many
         | people that would warrant writing an article about it.
        
           | smusamashah wrote:
           | I read it as "a gun" in hindsight. Head to reread because
           | that didn't make sense.
        
       | mkmk wrote:
       | I'm not sure why, but this makes me think of the time before
       | ubiquitous internet, when the answers to questions like this one
       | were much harder to come by.
        
         | ljlolel wrote:
         | Ditto
        
         | furyofantares wrote:
         | What I did when I was a kid was swallow every gumball in a
         | carton of gumballs to prove that they couldn't possibly be
         | staying in my stomach for 7 years because nothing else would be
         | getting through.
        
         | gmfawcett wrote:
         | Yes, although the New York Public Library has had you covered
         | since the 1960's: https://qz.com/732086/the-new-york-public-
         | librarys-little-kn...
        
       | JohnMakin wrote:
       | It's always been amazing to me that in the post-internet, pre-
       | enshittification era of the Information age that people could go
       | around confidently spouting bullshit facts like "gum stays in
       | your body for 7 years" when a few swipes of a thumb can tell
       | anyone with an internet connection otherwise.
       | 
       | Nowadays this doesn't hold as true, because search results /
       | LLM's tend to give you the information it thinks that you want
       | rather than what is actually the result. Have seen a lot of
       | people getting into dumb, easily disprovable arguments and using
       | a copy pasted google summary as evidence to whatever absurd claim
       | they are making.
        
       | jiveturkey wrote:
       | um why don't they answer the real question: what happens if you
       | swallow _bubble_ gum?! 12-year old me needs to know.
        
       | gamache wrote:
       | Nothing, really. It's food-grade plastic and it will come out the
       | other end.
       | 
       | Now, what happens if you seal high-pressure hydraulic oil systems
       | with it? Let's find out!
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1RYVSmuOmc
        
         | metadat wrote:
         | Why is the pressure gauge full of liquid? (Presumably water?
         | but why / how?)
         | 
         | Quite the talker there :)
         | 
         | Edit: Got it Shog9, thanks!
        
           | Shog9 wrote:
           | Probably not water. Purpose is to dampen vibration, making
           | the needle easier to read and possibly protecting the
           | mechanism a bit. https://tameson.com/pages/liquid-filled-
           | pressure-gauge
        
         | giantg2 wrote:
         | What if it's chicle, does it differ?
        
       | jrh3 wrote:
       | My child went through a phase of swallowing a bunch of gum. He
       | got appendicitis. It might have been a coincidence. The article
       | does not mention appendicitis but some of the symptoms are the
       | same as intestinal blockage.
        
       | mikeyinternews wrote:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lbg0ZBXnuZE
        
       | smusamashah wrote:
       | Try eating a chocolate while chewing bubble gum. The gum will
       | soon dissolve / break into tiny threads/pieces. It might be rough
       | experience and you may feel like spitting it out.
       | 
       | Happened to me by accident as a kid and I remember asking some
       | cousins to do the same and they experienced the same thing.
       | Unless gums are made differently, it should still work.
        
         | m463 wrote:
         | Mixing peanut butter and gum.
         | 
         | As a matter of fact, it is a perfect solution for getting out
         | gum stuck in your hair.
         | 
         | It just dissolves.
         | 
         | Another unexpected solvent I found was when I was a teenager
         | working on a gasoline engine. Don't pour gasoline in a
         | styrofoam cup. The gas went right through the cup, like it
         | wasn't even there. Ate a hole anywhere it touched.
        
           | brij0102 wrote:
           | But now you have peanut butter hair!
        
           | xattt wrote:
           | My co-workers once told me their experience about caring for
           | an older epileptic patient. Many patients with epilepsy
           | continue to take the same meds for decades if the meds work
           | for them, which means you'll encounter some ancient drugs.
           | 
           | This patient was ordered chloral hydrate, which is given in
           | liquid form. One of the younger nurses went to give them med
           | in a styrofoam cup, only be shocked that the cup had melted.
        
           | throwway120385 wrote:
           | Acetone works great too. It's very useful for getting rid of
           | styrofoam from packing because you can reduce several cubic
           | feet of styrofoam to a brick 1/100th the size and then throw
           | that away instead.
        
         | serf wrote:
         | you can sorta-kinda do that with anything with a high fat
         | content.
         | 
         | the fat interacts with the gum base and emulsifiers. the fat
         | also coats the components in a way that reduces likelihood of
         | re-amalgamation.
        
       | giantg2 wrote:
       | With the new gums being synthetic plastic and waxes, I wonder
       | what effects there might be from things like microplastics.
        
       | pc2slow4webpack wrote:
       | 1/d * 1wk seems like a low threshold for problems
        
       | carabiner wrote:
       | Some day I hope they will research how it feels to chew 5 gum.
        
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