Im currently taking vitamin extras, and i’ve noticed that swallowing the tablet itself takes me a couple of seconds of “mental preparation” before commiting to it, yet any other hard item can be swallowed with easy and no thought to it.
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This is something I think about often, when you chew food you have a finely tuned technique of turning that mouthful into something called a “bolus” which is a pretty specific size/shape, it’s guided towards the back of your mouth with your tongue and then down your oesophagus by something called a peristaltic wave.
The whole system is a well oiled machine, it’s something you’ve been practising since you were in utero when you were learning how to swallow and strengthening those physical actions by swallowing amniotic fluid.
If something is ever out of place like the bolus or is too big, the whole system falls down, like if you’ve ever tried to swallow too much at once and felt that almost never ending pain in your throat, you’ll know!
A pill cannot be chewed which immediately disrupts those signals and the natural process you’ve been doing your whole life, it immediately becomes something you have to do consciously instead of an instinctive and unconscious process, swallowing anything without chewing is uncomfortable and unnatural.
Adding all that to the fact that like other people have mentioned pills are usually dry, they stick to the sides of your mouth and mean you have to consciously salivate to lubricate it and hope that it will not get stuck. You’re not just psyching yourself up to swallowing it, you’re overriding systems!
I once had a friend who hadn’t fully realised a pill has gotten stuck in his throat and out of the blue he coughed some white powder, I’ll be honest it was hilarious at the time, but ever since I’m scared of that happening to me so I always have to take pills with a drink.
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