Strange question but...

[Igby]

ok does anyone else have trouble swallowing pills? I'm not talking about part drugs or anything. Just like panadole or whatever. It's strange because I can not physically swallow even small pills with a glass of water. I was wondering anyone else experiences this?

[meej]

I sometimes had problem swallowing pills but it's been a long time and I think only twice

[gracesloth23]

I've been like this all my life, but over the past 4 or so years it's gotten worse.

I used to be able to swallow pills if I had small ones, or cut up into small pieces the larger ones, and took them with yoghurt, not water.

But I'd always sit there with this mouthful and the pill in there, waiting for the moment where I felt I could swallow with not much trouble. Ugh. Sometimes I'd gag. Horrible!

Now I can't even swallow small pills. I haven't had to take any pills for many years thankfully, but I'm always scared that one day I'll get really sick and will be prescribed anti-biotics and I won't be able to take them.

[bwelling]

grace, interesting question, I often wondered if there are connections with use of your tongue and stuttering. I know you use your tongue when you swallow.

I found this on the web

Myofunctional Disorder/Tongue Thrust

Symptoms:

Placement of tongue against or between teeth while swallowing.

Placement of tongue against the teeth while at rest.

Difficulty chewing and managing some foods and liquids.

Difficulty swallowing pills.

Imprecise speech sounds.

Abnormal dentition, such as an overbite or open-bite.

Treatment:

A speech language pathologist can teach you exercises to strengthen the muscles of the tongue and to retrain the movements for a correct swallowing pattern and improved speech precision. The structured program allows for easy practice of all exercises in the home environment to facilitate improvement and carryover into the natural environment

[opher7]

Aristotle (also a stutterer) thought that stuttering was caused by a "defective tongue." I'm pretty sure that theory has been cast to the wayside since his time.

[gracesloth23]

Hmm, interesting. I notice my tongue is often up against the back of my teeth when just resting/doing nothing. I have no issues with food or swallowing in general, BUT I find that I’ve always had a thing where certain foods were hard for me to chew and thus swallow. If I ate some meat for example, I’d often end up chewing and chewing it until it became all dry and then I wouldn’t be able to swallow it…and to this day, with certain foods like things that have skin, such as some beans, apples, etc, I have to have other sorts of foods with them, like potato or something easy for me to chew and swallow, to sort of “overwhelm” the other difficult foods…so on second thought, maybe I do have issues with swallowing food! LOL.

I do have a bit of an overbite. I had braces for almost 4 years, but the front top 4 teeth are quite a bit over the bottom ones. It’s not like I look like a rabbit or anything, but it’s there.

And yeah, the pill thing. Wow! I’d never heard of this before!

Thanks for the info, bwelling!!

PS. I don’t think this would help the stutter though somehow.

[J1S]

I have trouble swallowing larger pills but I think that is only because my tonsels are so much more massive then a normal persons.

Doctors used to pressure me into getting them out because they always thought it would be the smart thing to do. They were sure they were gonna get infected eventually and cause huge problems.

Luckily they havnt.