It's hard to swallow

We rarely think about how we breathe or blink. The same applies to swallowing. But in order to swallow painlessly and effectively, several very complex mechanisms should work perfectly and smoothly. In healthy people, the body automatically coordinates swallowing and breathing. Despite their common mouth entrance, what you swallow does not go to the lungs, and the air that you inhaled does not enter the stomach. If this happened, in the first case you would suffocate, and in the second - you would stretch the stomach and ripped it! The opening and closing of various pathways from the throat is performed by nerves and muscles. If you are difficult to swallow, this can be explained either by damage to the nerves that control the swallowing process, or by changes in the central circulatory system (for example, in stroke ). Muscles can become weak, for example, with myasthenia gravis . Further, the esophagus can be pinched by a tumor or infected with a fungus , so that swallowing becomes painful and difficult. An autoimmune disease, called scleroderma , makes the esophagus rigid, inflexible, and it is not able to normally push food into the stomach. With an increase in the organs located near the esophagus, it can be squeezed and narrowed from the outside. Finally, the most obvious and common cause of difficulty in swallowing is any acute infection of the throat , in which pain and swelling interfere with swallowing.

Thus, there are many physical conditions that can disrupt your ability to swallow, and some of them are potentially serious. This symptom requires immediate medical attention . To determine the cause, your doctor may think about special tests and x-rays, but you can help him solve the problem more quickly if you report the following.

If the trouble occurs at the very beginning of swallowing, the cause lies in the throat (the area from the back of the tongue to the beginning of the esophagus). You may have acute strep throat, tonsillitis, an abscess or fungal infection , but damage from stroke and polio will also cause a similar phenomenon . The poor functioning of the muscles, for example, with myasthenia gravis , can also make the onset of swallowing very difficult . A similar effect will have an enlarged thyroid gland squeezing the esophagus.

If you start to swallow normally, but then find it difficult to push food down further , then something happens to the esophagus. He can be:

• Narrowed by a tumor in himself,
• Is compressed by a tumor from the outside - or enlarged glands , or enlarged aorta (the main arterial vessel emerging from the heart),
• The esophagus simply does not push food properly.

If you are difficult to swallow, both liquid and solid, there is usually a severe infection or swelling inside the esophagus. However, neurological disease or loss of elasticity of the esophagus will also give similar symptoms.

If you easily cope with solid food, but bad - with fluid, the cause is not in the esophagus, but in the nerves or muscles of the pharynx . If a part of the liquid you are trying to swallow comes from the nose, you have a swallowing paralysis , most likely due to a stroke .

If you swallow hard food heavily, and with a liquid full order, then the esophagus itself or the area around it is mechanically blocked .

If your throat narrows, when you are nervous, and it's hard for you to swallow or if it seems that you always have a "lump in your throat," and a complete examination did not find anything, you have an emotional disorder called a hysterical orb . This happens much more often in women than in men.

The more time passes after you swallow, to difficulty or discomfort, the lower the cause of the problem lies. For example, if everything is okay during the first 15 seconds, but then there is a feeling of blockage, then there is either a blockage in the lower part of the esophagus , near the stomach, or you have a hernia of the diaphragm , in which food spews from the stomach back into the esophagus.

If swallowing gets worse during the weeks or months, esophageal cancer is very possible.

If difficulty swallowing comes and goes, most likely a nervous breakdown or spasm . Conversely, the physical blockade has a permanent and increasingly deteriorating character.

If you swallow easier, when the head is thrown back, the problem is in the throat, not in the esophagus. Look at it yourself.

When swallowing is not only difficult, but also painful, there can be some thumping acid from the stomach into the esophagus (esophagitis), spasm , ulcer or scratch on the back surface of the pharynx. You may also have swallowed a fish or chicken bone that ripped off the esophagus mucosa.

Do you regurgitate food in minutes or hours after eating, especially when lying down? Your esophagus or lost elasticity, or it has a diverticulum - a bag in its wall. The food you swallow fills the diverticulum, and you are forced to regurgitate to relieve yourself. If this is the case, you may have an unpleasant smell from your mouth because of the decomposing food in the bag.

If you have a hoarse voice for weeks or months before the difficulty with swallowing started, then the frustration grabbed the vocal cords. But if the opposite happened, i.e. Hoarseness arose after difficulties with swallowing, this is strong evidence in favor of esophageal cancer , pressing on the nerve, controlling the vocal cords. Expansion of the aorta in the chest will also give similar symptoms.

Do you find it difficult not only to swallow, but also to walk? This suggests a common disease, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis , myasthenia gravis or any brain disorder .

If you have a swelling around your neck, the enlarged thyroid gland can press down on your esophagus .

If your fingers hurt in cold water and you, in addition, became difficult to swallow, you can assume an autoimmune disease - scleroderma.

This section describes many symptoms that can alarm you, but in fact they are quite commonplace. Swallowing disorder does not belong to the latter. It requires careful examination for as short a time as possible after detection.

Symptom: difficult to swallow