Source: Geek

Nicole Kell

Many of us have heard that if you swallow chewing gum, it takes your body seven years to digest. Is this actually true? Do we all have pieces of gum sitting in our digestive tract for years and years?

The human digestive system can break down, utilize, and/or dispose of almost everything we consume. Technically chewing gum will not break down entirely because the synthetic portion is not digestible. However, the digestive system will eventually identify gum as nutritionally useless, move it along through normal intestinal activity, and expel it from the body. Chewing gum usually stays in your body for less than a week.

It is harmless to swallow an occasional piece of gum, but if a remarkable amount of gum is repeatedly swallowed then it can potentially lead to a bowel obstruction. Swallowing gum also poses a very slight choking hazard.

Even though gum does not stay in the human body for seven years after being swallowed, it might be wise to refrain from swallowing your gum to avoid a potentially sticky situation.

http://tristanmed.com/blog/entry/the-truth-about-swallowing-gum

https://www.mayoclinic.org/digestive-system/expert-answers/faq-20058446

https://kidshealth.org/HospitalSantJoandeDeu/en/kids/swallowed-gum.html

Source: It’s Interesting

Nicole Kell

Most have us grown up hearing about the “five-second rule”. Simply put, people say that food is safe to consume if it is snatched up from the ground in five seconds or less.

But is the food really safe to eat or should we throw it away?

High school student Jillian Clarke and Dr. Meredith Agle at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign performed an experiment to determine whether it is safe to eat food that has been on the ground. Jillian swabbed the floors of a lab, hall, dormitory, and cafeteria in order to quantify the number of organisms. She repeated this and then examined swabs from both trials. The swabs showed minimal microorganisms. The lack of microorganisms on the floor is due to the fact that floors she was testing were dry and most pathogens such as E.coli and salmonella only survive in moist conditions.

However, it has been proven that when it comes to damp floors and carpet, or moist and sticky foods such as gum, watermelon and ice cream, all bets are off when it comes to the “five second rule”. A professor from Clemson University performed a similar experiment, but on different types of surfaces. He found that it didn’t matter how long the food was on the floor, but the amount of bacteria on the floor and the moisture of the food/floor play a significant role how much bacteria transferred to the food.

When it comes to the spread of bacteria and eating food off of the ground, researchers and doctors advise people to throw away the food in order to avoid risk of illness.

https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/5-second-rule-rules-sometimes-#1

https://www.ahchealthenews.com/2017/09/12/five-second-rule-myth/

https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2016/09/the-five-second-rule-is-a-myth/

Does reading in the dark make your eyesight worse?

Nicole Kell

As kids, many of use were told  that reading in the dark “weakens your eyes”. People tend to hold books closer to their face in dim lighting because of the decrease in contrast between the black words and white pages. Reading or focusing on close objects in the dark can makes the  eye muscles work harder than normal to focus on images and they can fatigue. Think of it as “eye exercise”.

Ophthalmologists have found no evidence to support the idea that this extra exercise your eyes get in low light is harmful and find no evidence to support this concept.   If you feel  headache or nausea it might be due to staring at something relatively close to your face.

It’s safe to read in low light.

Sources

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/health/04real.html

https://scienceline.org/2007/10/ask-peck-darkeyesmyopia/