Will You Try It Once?

Hi! If you're not lost, welcome to hearing about a new way to look at human communication, cognition - or thinking - and swallowing. I'm a speech - language pathologist, a professional who helps people keep these skills. Relax, have a seat 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 feeling good about our travel. 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 to consider 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. Even though we all have differencies in how our communication sounds or reads, we all yearn to connect by thinking about and playing the communication game.

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. A healthy thinking brain, well protected and well fed, keeps us independent agents to confront our world each day.

Hang on, hang on! You look a little restless over there. 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 SLP 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. At times we all may have a momentary slip in our eating patterns, but the majority of us can manage those slips without any harm done.

We speech - language pathologists (SLP's) have to think about it for you. Swallowing is often the SLP intervention physicians call upon, when they send a referral our way to help someone. Thinking disorders are more prevalent among our referrals, with all the public's concerns about dementia. When speech, language and other communication problems are remediated well, we hear how skilled we are. Our professions are built upon bringing people back from the brink of disability, and now we're prepared to to serve our communities even more. Let's talk about how you can help prevent the effects of cardiovascular disease by eating well.

(Continued, part Two)