Let’s say you are dying of starvation. You pull one of your teeth out, causing blood to slowly seep into your mouth, which you swallow. The calories from the blood getting digested will delay the time you die of starvation, right? Or will losing blood while starving kill you faster?
It sounds like the swallowing wasn’t the problem, the bleeding was. The swallowing just masked the true symptom, the bleeding, from being observed by others.