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  "How To Swallow 30 Pills All At One Time---Safely"

     Don't get choked up!  How many of you have problems even swallowing one pill or capsule?  Reasons for that, range from fear of choking to dry pills that leave a terrible taste in your mouth. 

     Natural reflex instincts your body uses in an almost unconscious fashion to protect you from swallowing something that might do harm to the body is the trigger for your difficulty. 

     So it becomes necessary to persuade the body and mind that the particular items you put into your mouth purposely are safe to swallow.  Call it a training process anyone can easily and quickly do----maybe takes 5 minutes to practice
and learn. 

     Think about it.  You can easily swallow a big forkful of prime rib in one easy gulp, yet one tiny little pill half the size of a pea is a threat.  Am I right?

Go through these training steps slowly:

• Talk to your mind directly using your own convincing and persuasive techniques.  Convince yourself that what you are delivering into your mouth to swallow is not only safe to do but has great benefit to you.  Burn the thought into your brain.  It doesn’t know--- you have
  to tell it.
   

• Make the connection: If you know that you actually have easily swallowed without a single problem large bolus chunks of food without chewing them up in small pieces, even without your thinking that it might not be possible, then you know for sure--- it’s not the size of the group of pills that matters.
   

• Understand clearly that you always have a backup plan to instantly use if needed.  You can quickly cough or spit out the pills.  You should always take pills with some fluid along with them.  You can easily empty your mouth if things aren’t going right. 
  
  If you swallow some of the pills and fluid, and you suddenly get a gag reflex and need to spit, cough, or gag the rest out of your mouth---that’s an automatic reflex the body uses anyway. 
  
  Adding more fluid to the mixture before swallowing may be necessary---you know from trial and error what works for you.

1.      Insert one or many pills into your mouth, below or on top the tongue.
To practice or train yourself it's best to start off with one or two pills you have already been taking and then increase the number of pills by one each day and see how much easier it gets.

2.      Use your tongue to group the pills together in a bundle somewhere in your mouth.  And the place that is least likely to trigger a gag reflex is at the back your tongue .  Later you’ll find pills can just be thrown into the mouth anywhere, let your tongue round them up in a pile, and don’t keep moving them around until fluid is added. 

You know that any bitter or bad taste of the pills will be immediately covered up when you add fluid to your mouth.

3.      Group the pills and fluid towards the back of the tongue--- but not so far back on the tongue or in the mouth that you trigger the gag or swallow reflex.  You’ll find the right spot subconsciously.  At least I don't know anyone who stops and tells their mouth to swallow each time they have something in their mouth to swallow.

4.      Add your choice of fluid/liquid to your mouth.  Preferably not a carbonated, spicy, or hot drink because they stimulate sensors in the mouth and on the tongue that utterly sabotage your efforts---room temperature or warm fluids are best.

The volume of liquid you add to your mouth is a matter of your choice and ease of swallowing comfort.  I don't know if you have noticed, but some people have a big mouth (now I'm in trouble).  Make sure the volume of fluid is adequate ---not too much or too little.  It’s different for everyone.

5.      Use your tongue to slosh the fluid around in your mouth enough to cover the surface of every pill or capsule completely.  It has to be done before you try to swallow.

6.      Move the bolus of pills and fluid to the very back of the tongue ready to swallow.

7.      Tilt your head back a moderate amount with your chin upwards as you move the bolus to the back of the mouth.  The idea is to use gravity to assist in the swallowing process.  If you tilt your head too far back it automatically stops tongue movement and swallowing reflexes.

All long distance runners run with their chin up and head back.  It allows the trachea entrance to open wider for air to pass through--easier breathing of larger volumes of air.  That's exactly what you don't want when swallowing food over top of that opening.  And it's what happens if you tilt the head too far back. 

8.      Intentionally create an instruction to your brain (tell yourself exactly what you are going to do)……"swallow everything all together in one swallow!"  If you don’t think that thought, the old defensive reflexes that have always interfered with you being able to do this are reactivated.

9.  Focus your mind on only one thing at this point.  Nothing else.  Concentrate only on the fluid in your mouth---not the pills.  "I'm going to send this liquid (not pills) down my gullet in one swallow."  The pills simply follow the liquid down without a hitch.

Tip: The primary reason people choke on food is simple to understand.  When eating too fast at a meal the unconscious tendency is to keep a chewed up bolus of food in the back of their mouth while you put another mouthful in the front of their mouth.  And at the same time you are chewing the food at the front of the mouth while you have an open glottis lid (opening into the trachea--windpipe) and you are breathing.

Now, if you can visualize that chewed bolus of food at the back of the mouth that you never swallowed clinging precariously on the back of the tongue dangling loosely over the open trapdoor to the windpipe, you can understand how easily a chunk of food can drop off that bolus of food directly into the open trachea ----- and you choke.  And you can understand that the solution is to swallow the mouthful of food before inserting another......just like mom told you to do.

Then the question arises......how can such a small chunk of food actually block off my windpipe and make me unable to breathe at all? There is no way that a small peanut one-third the diameter of the trachea can block it off completely as it seems to do.  Right?  Ever wondered about that?

Lesson: Whenever a foreign object (usually a piece of food) falls into the windpipe it instantaneously triggers the sensors of the lining wall of the trachea to go into an instant spasm of the muscular tissue of the walls, clamping down around the object, thus closing the windpipe completely or partially. 

It's the automatic method the body uses to prevent any further objects getting into the trachea.  And it's why a person cannot even take a breath in in order to cough the food object out of there.  This is one time that you can give another person who's choking a powerful squeeze (Hymen maneuver) and save a life. 

Without the Hymen maneuver or hard pounding on the back a choking person's only chance of survival depends on the time it takes for their body to cause the tracheal spasm to subside quick enough to cough the food object out and avoid suffocation.

     I could jump into real medical and technical details that would drive you nuts, but there are enough crazy people in the world already.

Word Count = 1326

Keywords = natural instincts, little pills, persuasive techniques, swallowing reflex, body reflexes, swallowing problem.

Problems occur when swallowing pills too fast and they become stuck half way down as every health book tells you and this kitten experienced.

Curt Graham, M.D., L & C Internet Enterprises, Inc.
2404 Mason Ave.  Las Vegas, NV 89102
E-mail = cgmdrx(at)gmail.com

  © Copyright 2004-2011 Curtis Graham, M.D., L & C Internet Enterprises, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.