IWTIO: The Product

Hi! If you're not lost, welcome to hearinga about a new way to look at human communication, cognition - or thinking - and swallowing. Relax and - and I hope you're comfortable enough to tell me if or when I get off track. We need to take this journey together, so we all get to the end with good memories. Are you comfortable? Got enough room? Good, good, that's good! All right, let's talk about where we're going on this trip. We want to talk about people; people of all kinds - all sizes, shapes, all colors, ages, beliefs, constitutions and appetites. Their appetites then lead us to talking about all the foods, that this big group of people might eat. They eat what they can afford, what they can find, grow, what they can stash away for when it's the best time to eat, or when they have to because Mama tells them, "eat!". You eat because you have to, it keeps you here with all the rest of us. It keeps you here, and it keeps you happy and wanting more: more food, more time, more life. So we have lots of people to talk about, and we have all the foods these people need and crave. Seems pretty natural and easy to talk about people and food, right?

There're people, and all people communicate - some better than others. We need to do it, people do. It's part of our makeup, like walking on two feet and thinking about tomorrow. I want to communicate well, because my Mama said I HAVE to do it this way. I communicate because I want to stay emotionally close to people like my loved ones, friends; the people I know from work and my neighborhood. Those communication skills help me behave as my family, friends and neighbors expected - to follow the rules. Good communication also helps me to tell people what I'm thinking, seeing and feeling, and at a more basic level, I get what I need through what I can say, hear, read and write, and think.

Thinking is so closely linked to communicating, isn't it? You are awake and alert; you're focusing and concentrating, reasoning and classifying, planning and executing. From the time we're sleeping in a drawer, a bassinet or crib, we're plotting how to jump out and run the world. Developing as we do throughout life, we couple our thinking and talking skills with all the physical prowess that we should have. We learn to take care of ourselves, we learn what our parents and teachers share with us, and we learn from the big world with our increasing sophistication of our thinking brain.

Hang on, hang on! You look a little restless. We've almost got through the basics of what we can do - we still need to think about chewing and swallowing. Since we use many of the same muscles and nerves to swallow that we use to speak, my colleagues and I in speech - language pathology take on the responsibility of making sure we all can eat what is good for us, as well as simply what tastes good. We chew foods in a range from mashed peas to massive steaks over time. Getting the food we chew ready for swallowing ("when food is ready to swallow, it should be like MOTOR OIL; sticky and slippery!") is critical. Most of the time, we don't have to think about it.