![]() Give your child a sip of water, or let them use a straw. Then, place a very small candy (such as a sprinkle) on their tongue. For most children, age 4 is a good time to start.īegin by having your child sit straight up in a chair. Once your child is old enough to swallow small candies without a choking risk, you can start practicing how to swallow pills. ![]() That takes the pressure off, and the learning will be easier if they’re not feeling sick. Ideally, try teaching them this skill at a time when they’re not in need of medication. Teaching your child how to swallow a pill can be challenging. They may have some in-depth mental exercises you can do to make swallowing pills possible. They may be able to provide another form of the medication, such as a liquid or tablet that can be crushed into soft food.Īnother option is to speak with a psychologist. If you’re not able to get past the idea of swallowing a pill, try speaking with your doctor. Some of the strategies covered in this article focus on how to take your mind elsewhere while you swallow your pills. This is easier said than done, but it also becomes simpler with time and practice. ![]() The key to overcoming this particular fear is to learn not to focus on the act of swallowing. You may feel this kind of throat tightening right now, just thinking about the act of swallowing a pill. Globus sensation is a tightness in your throat not related to an external physical condition but from a feeling of fear or dread. When you feel stress or anxiety, you may experience something called “globus sensation.” The more you think about it, the more difficult it becomes. But when it comes to swallowing pills, you become suddenly all too aware of everything that goes into swallowing. Most of the time when you swallow, you don’t have to think about the reflexes at work. Nerves help your mouth, throat, and esophagus work together to move food, liquids, and pills into your digestive tract. This is not surprising given that the vast majority of swallowing assessments consider food or liquids that, as mentioned above, are part of a different swallowing process.Swallowing isn’t as simple as it looks. Given that medicines are the mainstay of medical management, the inability to swallow medicine safely is cause for concern.ĭuring my first 10 years as a community pharmacist, I was consulted by many patients who found it difficult to swallow medication, despite not having been diagnosed with swallowing difficulties. This may alter the therapeutic effect of the drug an insufficient dose may be administered or toxic dose-dumping occur. To overcome difficulties in swallowing solid medication, many patients and carers crush tablets or open capsules. Research has found some 60% of them have trouble swallowing solid tablets and more than half had residue remaining in the throat after swallowing, 17% had material that sat above the airway while 11% aspirated the medication (Carnaby-Mann and Crary, 2005). People with dysphagia have an even greater risk of aspiration of medications. When tablets and capsules are inhaled, they can cause breathing difficulties, lung infection and lung tissue death.ĭifficulty in swallowing – dysphagia – has been diagnosed in 35% of people aged over 50 and frequently appears after stroke and in older people with dementia, Parkinson’s disease and many other conditions. This increases the chances that medication will “go down the wrong way” (aspirated). To ease swallowing of medication, some people tip their heads back, opening the airway as during cardiopulmonary resuscitation. We naturally chew food before swallowing, but tablets and capsules require a complicated, conscious mechanism to over-ride the need to chew and the gag reflex, designed to eject foodstuffs that are not adequately chewed.
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