My Swallowing Is My Business

Here's an illustration of one component of what I have called "organic SLP": teach, teach, teach. An actual teaching handout given to an actual patient - with the aim of the consumer of clinical service, taking action to prevent disability when possible. One way to do that, is to understand normal function. Feedback as always is VERY welcome!

I don’t have to think about swallowing most of the time. I started swallowing before I was born.

Scientists have found that the human fetus swallows at age 15-16 weeks. I developed my first taste preferences in the womb. After I was born, I was fed and then learned to feed myself, by learning all the skills to get food in my mouth.

Sitting up in a chair, or standing, seemed to be the positions where swallowing was done most often. When I was a kid, I also ate in every other position because – I could!  I ate upside down; lying flat while watching TV; - I even ate while spinning in a carnival ride!

But, as I got older, my swallowing seemed to work more easily when I was upright.

My swallowing happens because I use some muscles voluntarily, and because of other muscles that work without my thoughts. The voluntary muscles are controlled in this

  part of my brain.

 The muscles that work automatically   are controlled by this part of my brain.  So, even though I can control some parts of my swallowing and change part of the swallowing act, all the swallows I have done over my lifetime have made the way I swallow a strong pattern of habits.

Here is how I do it. Here are my habits:

I pick up the food with my fingers or a utensil. When I take a drink, I use a teaspoon, a cup or a straw to put it past my lips.

I hold the food or liquid on my tongue, and form it into a shape that can be squeezed back or chewed, until it forms a more slippery and sticky shape (left illustration).  The squeezing gets the material to the back of the tongue, where my control over swallowing changes. The swallow “triggers” there (right illustration) and pushes food or liquid into my throat. When the material goes DOWN, the voice box lifts UP. What I swallowed moves down past the voice box and pushes open a valve into the esophagus.  My swallowing is totally automatic at this point. Before the material goes into the esophagus, I can use my tongue to affect what happens to the food or liquid. In the esophagus material travels in waves of squeezing, down to the stomach.

There. That is my swallowing. It is my business to swallow well, because I eat to live. I eat to feel satisfied. I eat to be with others. My body, my business.