Tiny But Mighty: Sugarless Gum

Just over 25 years ago, the nation’s biggest poison control center took a call about an unfamiliar substance called xylitol. A second incident was recorded, later that year. Ten years later, calls were coming in at a rate of over 3,000 per year. A decade later, in 2020, the number of cases had surged to over 7,000 annually. The following year, it had further expanded to number around 25 cases per day, seven days a week.

Xylitol is a killer, yet it’s found at in thousands of food products and is being added to many more each day. It’s a sweetener that actually has several beneficial effects in humans; however, its impact on dogs is nothing short of catastrophic. For a human, this is something that tastes almost exactly like sugar but contains just over half the calories. To a dog, it tastes delicious and dissolves easily in the stomach, rapidly causing the pancreas to produce huge, inappropriate amounts of insulin. You may not be a diabetic yourself, but you probably still know that taking six or seven insulin shots at once is an enormous mistake with fatal consequences. An overabundance of insulin causes one’s blood sugar to plummet, bringing about seizures and death. That process takes only about 15-45 minutes to fire up and really get some momentum. It can’t be reversed by simply adding sugar to the system and requires several days of intensive hospital care. Even if our patient’s blood sugar can be stabilized, allowing him to survive the initial crisis, permanent liver damage may become evident within a few days after the event.

Xylitol is very attractive to dogs because of its sweet flavor, but it’s also pretty easy to get when provided in the form of sugarless gum. People want to keep this around because xylitol-based gum is actually quite healthy for your teeth. We like the soothing monotony of gum-chewing and the effect it has on our breath, so we keep it close by, in our purses, pockets, and the center console of our car. It never spoils, so we often forget where we left it. It comes in tiny nuggets which are pretty easy to fumble and drop onto the floor. Once it’s been on the floor, we’re not especially motivated to locate and eat it. Dogs, though? Finding stuff to eat under the furniture is one of their happiest pursuits.

Xylitol is a very potent substance, more dangerous than our other candies. A single pellet of sugarless gum will make quick work of a 10-pound dog. You’ve heard a lot about chocolate, but the same 10-pound dog would have to work his way through most of a bag of Halloween-size Snickers bars to suffer the same lethal effect. Compared to chocolate, sugarless gum is easier to lose, quicker to swallow, and more efficiently absorbed in the gut, also arguably more likely to be found without its wrapper—a recipe for disaster.

How can you keep this harmful compound out of your dog’s reach? Surprisingly, it’s far more difficult than you might imagine. Check our next piece for a (long) list of facts you’ll need to keep your pet safe.

Dr M.S. Regan