A Dad Ate 25 Packs Silica Gel For Breakfast. This Is What Happened To His Stomach.
KC is a 33 year old man, presenting to the emergency room with nausea, and vomiting.
He tells the admitting nurse that he was prepared. It was only a matter of
time before he could escape the simulation and join everyone else, in the real world.
You see, KC was a single dad who worked hard to provide for his kids.
Over the last 10 years, he had survived several rounds of layoffs at his office job.
But even in surviving every single company change, KC could never get a promotion.
He’d try to take special projects. He’d try to make friends with the leadership.
But nothing he ever did, amounted to any actual movement in his career.
All his friends from school were getting bigger titles. They were getting paid,
but he was stuck at the bottom, doing the same job as he had had, for the last 10 years.
Disillusioned, KC started to despise both people at his company and corporate
anything. Any time he saw some kind of messaging on an ad or a warning on a label,
all he could think of is how much he hated big companies.
One day, KC hadn’t slept well. He woke up, and wasn’t sure where he was. On the table was a
big bag of silica gel dessicant that he had left overnight for his 3D printing hobby. And as he saw
the warning on the label, Silica Gel, Do Not Eat, his immediate contempt for corporate took hold.
As he was brushing his teeth, he got angrier and angrier that those packets were speaking to him.
Those silica gel industry big shots can’t tell me what to do,
he thought, as he put 25 packs of silica gel in a bowl of milk, and started eating them like cereal.
Immediately after putting some silica gel packs in his mouth,
KC could feel the crunch on his teeth. The beads immediately stuck on to his tongue
as his mouth felt like a singularity as the beads started sucking every little bit of moisture out.
While chewing, he thought the packets tasted bitter, and he could feel the sharp edges
of chewed beads cut down the side of his throat as he swallowed them down.
KC felt the beads settle in his stomach, as he reluctantly opened his work laptop,
to clock in for his job. But as the minutes passed, he started feeling uncomfortable. He
felt a sour taste pierce in to his cheeks from under his tongue as he started vomiting in a way
like never before. At the toilet now, he could taste the silica gel and milk he ate
for breakfast come up. In the forceful upwards movement, those beads lodged in to his nose.
He could feel some beads squeeze in from under his eyes like they were pushing out of his skull.
On the floor, in the bathroom. In a world of hurt, KC knew it wasn’t over as he calls for 911,
and he’s brought to the emergency room, where we are now.
At examination, doctors find that KC is distressed. Other than the vomiting and nausea,
everything else seemed to be normal. He’s breathing. He has a heart rate. He’s alert
and responsive. He kept telling staff that he was ready to escape the simulation and join
everyone else in the real world, which gives the doctors some clues as to what could be happening.
This possible mental status change could mean something, but KC is otherwise coherent.
Except for the fact that he kept telling the nurse that those silica gel
industry hotshots can’t tell him what to do.
When the doctors asked him what he meant by that,
he told them: he ate 25 packs of silica gel for breakfast. He poured it in a bowl of milk like
it was cereal and ate it. And this tells doctors everything that they need to know.
Silica gel is a fancy name for silicon dioxide. Di meaning 2 and oxide referring to oxygen.
Silicon being one of the most abundant elements on earth, not to be confused with silicone implants.
Silicon and silicon dioxide are naturally occurring and are in things like sand,
while silicone is not naturally occurring. And silicon and oxygen are some of the most abundant
elements available on the planet. But why is silica gel a dessicant? What even is a dessicant?
Well, you see, these packets are usually found in packages that you want to be dry.
Beef jerky is an example. Camera equipment is another. This is because moisture in the
air can make food like jerky taste stale, and it can cause mold to grow on camera lenses.
Dessicant means that silica gel removes moisture, water, from ambient air, but how does it do that?
This brings us to an idea of “like dissolves like.” Oils mix together.
Water based things mix together. But water and oil, those things don’t mix together.
In chemistry, oxygen and hydrogens play with each other. They attract each other, even when bound
to other chemicals. So if water is made only of oxygen and hydrogen, water is dihydrogen monoxide,
then this could explain why water based chemicals dissolve each other. But oils are made of carbon
and hydrogen. Oils don’t really have much oxygen. And without that oxygen to play,
oils separate themselves out from the water, and they don’t interact and they don’t dissolve.
So if silicon dioxide has a lot of oxygen, then it does interact with water.
In the little pores at the surface of the beads, small water molecules stick on to
the surface. Little pores give extra surface and more space for even more water to stick per bead.
Because the area’s so large, silica gel takes on large amounts of water relative to its weight,
drying out its surroundings, because silicon dioxide holds on to water stronger than air,
explaining how it’s a dessicant. But why does the packet say do not eat?
The interesting thing about a label like this is that in English, many people read that as
something in here is poisonous if you eat it. Typically if something’s a choking hazard,
the label would say choking hazard. But it doesnt say that here. And even worse,
sometimes people will do things, especially when they’re told
not to do it, just like in KC’s case. But what exactly is poisonous here?
This brings us back to silicon dioxide. In chemistry, when things are unstable,
they’re reactive. The reason they react with something is to become more stable.
Poisons do their damage in the body, by doing that reacting. This could happen by blocking
a naturally occurring process required to live, like how carbon monoxide stops oxygen from being
transported in the red blood cells. Or poisons can react by permanently destroying something
in the body, like accidentally drinking a Lava lamp that makes crystals with
calcium from your body, that stick in to your kidneys and shred them apart.
The thing with silica gel, is that it’s already stable. It doesnt need to react with anything.
Actually, it’s so stable that it won’t react even if your body tried. It pulls water, but that’s
reversible— you can reuse packets if you heat them in the oven. Meaning, by itself, silica gel is not
poisonous in the body. The reason you’re not supposed to eat them is because, it could be a
choking hazard. It could block something in your stomach if you eat enough of it. But generally,
you don’t eat it because…. Why? It doesn’t do much to your body except maybe adsorb some of the
water in your stomach. And if you think you’re eating something weird, your mind’s a powerful
construct and you can easily convince yourself to push it back out, which brings us back to KC.
In the emergency room, doctors realize that nothing terrible is going to happen to KC
because he ate silica gel packs. The silica beads will suck water out of his stomach,
so doctors can rehydrate him, but no toxic actions will happen in his body. As soon
as they figured out he didn’t put anything else that could be a problem in his body,
they referred him for a psychiatric evaluation.
Silica gel ingestion cases do happen. It’s actually not that uncommon, despite that
well known warning label. Thirty-eight thousand people were reported to have eaten them in 2009
in America. And interestingly enough, 34,000 of those people were under the age of 6, so parents,
keep in mind what your kids are eating, you don’t want them exiting the simulation on you.
And 38,000 was only the reported cases, probably much more than that actually happened. In kids,
the beads can be choking hazards. Some other kinds of silica gel
may have coatings which can be toxic, but usually not in large enough amounts to do
permanent damage. Silicon dioxide is actually found as an additive in foods,
so we all do eat some silica in other forms. But don’t eat this. You don’t know where it’s been.
KC found out the hard way, there is no simulation and no real world other
than the one he was living in after eating 25 packs of silica gel at least this time around,
as he was discharged from the hospital, and he made a full recovery.
Thanks so much for watching. Take care of yourself. And be well.