Swallowing Chewing Gum Can Raise Health Risk–Study

Research has suggested that swallowing your chewing gum could leave you with a bizarre and distressing medical condition.

Chewing gum can accumulate in the digestive system and harden, forming a ‘stony mass’ called a bezoar, said the researcher — and chewing other indigestible substances, such as hair, can also increase the risk.

In a case report published by Ecuadorian medics this month, a 24-year-old woman underwent a procedure to have a colossal 16in mass of hair, roughly the size of a beach ball, removed from her stomach.

Similarly, there was a similar case of a seven-year-old girl from Newcastle who had a cricket-ball sized mass of hair removed from her stomach, according to Dr Dan Baumgardt an expert pharmacology and neuroscience at the University of Bristol in the UK.

Occasionally bezoars can form out of the indigestible parts of these foods like cellulose, reported the ‘Mailonline’.