swallow


Gag Reflex – Episode 115

A cartoon image of a white male with short brown hair, in a blue, long-sleeved collared shirt and reck necktie, with his face tipped upward. He is holding a coffee pot at arm's length above his face and pouring coffee straight down his throat. Your gag reflex protects you from things improperly entering your throat, airway, and esophagus - whether it is a liquid like coffee or something solid like a sword.

Gag Reflex Basics

The official name of your gag reflex is the pharyngeal reflex or laryngeal spasm.  Trigger points for the gag reflex can be found on the roof of the mouth, back of the tongue, in the tonsil area, the uvula, and the back of the throat.  The purpose of this reflex is to prevent objects from entering the throat that did not first progress through the normal swallowing process.  It also helps prevent choking.

Gag Reflex Progress

When the reflex is triggered, the soft palate raises to close off the nasal passage.  Then the pharyngeal muscles contract on both sides to try and force whatever made it too far down back up into the mouth.  If the input is strong enough, it can also trigger vomiting (this is how vomiting is induced in eating disorders such a bulimia).

Do you Gag?

One in three people lacks a gag reflex, which means rather large things can enter their throats without triggering a reflex.  This is possibly how sword-swallowing got its start.

The other side of this coin is someone with a hypersensitive gag.  They can have trouble swallowing large pills and large bites of food.  Dentist visits and even neckties can trigger this unpleasant reflex.  It can be a part of a larger issue, such as Sensory Processing Disorder or Autism.  Or it can be a preconditioned issue due to a previous experience.  In either case, speech or occupational therapy can be done and will include desensitizing areas of the mouth to touch.

Other Protective Reflexes

  1. The Reflexive Pharyngeal Swallow is a triggered swallow that clears the pharynx of residue.  The glottis will close and allow the pharynx to move stuff to the digestive tract.  This is a protective mechanism to keep stuff out of the airways.
  2. Phayngoglottal Closure Reflex happens when the glottis closes inside the larynx without the continuation of a swallow.
  3. Phango-Upper Esophageal Sphincter Contractile Reflex occurs during any type of reflux from the stomach.  While some stomach contents may make it past the lower esophageal sphincter, so the upper one prevents it reaching into the throat and mouth.

Bottom Line

All of these reflexes are protective to prevent choking or improper ingesting of things.  They can be damaged to different degrees during head trauma or stroke.  But surprisingly, smoking causes the most damage to the protective reflexes on the pharynx.

Callbacks

Swallowing

Mouth Parts

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Music Credits: Up In My Jam (All Of A Sudden) by – Kubbi https://soundcloud.com/kubbiCreative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported— CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b…Music provided by Audio Library https://youtu.be/tDexBj46oNI


Your Tongue – Episode 105

Tongue Basics

Your tongue is made up of eight muscles.  This is why it is called a muscular organ.  It is the most important articulator in speech production. (A brief word dissection:  articulate means to communicate something clearly.  In medicine, articulate means to make a connection.  It all makes sense!)

The tip is called the apex.  The crease down the middle is called the median lingual sulcus.  There is another crease at the back of your tongue and it is called the sulcus terminalis.

Tongue Muscles

The tongue has two types of muscles.  Extrinsic muscles attach to bones boarding the mouth.  Intrinsic muscles are completely contained inside the tongue borders.

Extrinsic Muscles

These muscles are responsible for moving your tongue front to back and side to side.  There are four of them and they are named for the facial bones that they are anchored to.

  • The genioglossus muscle moves it forward so you can stick it out of your mouth.
  • The Hyoglossus muscle pulls it back and presses it down.
  • The Styloglossus muscle raises the sides of it during swallowing.
  • The Palatoglossus muscle raises the back of it during swallowing.  It also presses the soft palate down and squeezes the palatoglossal arch inward during that same step of swallowing.

Intrinsic Muscles

These muscles are responsible for all the shapes and movements your tongue makes when you talk and eat.

  • The superior longitudinal muscle covers the top side.
  • The inferior longitudinal muscle covers the bottom side.
  • The vertical muscle fibers are in the middle and connect the superior to the inferior muscles.
  • The transverse muscle fibers start at the median sulcus and connect to the outer edges.

The Tongue Has Skin?!

The surface of your tongue is known as the masticatory mucosa, which basically means it’s the surface that food comes in contact with.  The surface is made up of epithelial cells just like your skin.  The cells are keratinized (or filled with a toughening protein) so it is tough and does not get damaged by the wide variety of things we eat.

Call Backs

Wrinkly Brain

Skin 101

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Music Credits: Up In My Jam (All Of A Sudden) by – Kubbi https://soundcloud.com/kubbiCreative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported— CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b…Music provided by Audio Library https://youtu.be/tDexBj46oNI