I know the question is a little silly, but it’s been keeping me up for a while for some odd reason.
Why is it that we already have HCl in our stomachs, but drinking HCl would cause a problem? Or would it? I know it would burn your throat, mouth, etc, but if you were to run a tube down your throat to your stomach in a similar way to a feeding tube, wouldn’t you be able to add more HCl to your stomach without damaging anything? Or is the HCl in our stomachs different from the one we get in chemist stores?
For example, instead of eating foods to build back your stomach acid levels, can’t you just put more in via a tube?
In: Chemistry
Going down your throat would be the issue, even if you get the concentration of the solution to be close to stomach acid.
Ever hear how vomiting too much can burn your throat? That’s the stomach acid. As an emergency measure, emptying something possibly poisonous from the stomach is worth a bit of temporary damage to the throat. But it feels awful, doesn’t it?
The stomach lining is designed to hold the acid. The throat and mouth are not. So yeah a tube feed that bypasses the esophagus would theoretically work, though I imagine upsetting the balance of the amount of acid in your stomach isn’t *great* either.
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