Let’s say you’re having lunch with a friend of yours, and when you take a bite of your sandwich and swallow, you start to cough uncontrollably. You manage to drink some water and get it under control and your friend explains to you that your sandwich “went down the wrong way”. What do they mean by this and what actually happens when this occurs?
In: Biology
Your throat splits into two paths – one path goes down to your stomach, the other goes down to your lungs. When you swallow, you have a flap called the epiglottis that blocks that path to your lungs – food and drink goes down into your stomach, and the path down to your lungs stays clear. Air goes one way, food goes another.
If you swallow weirdly, or if there’s a problem with that flap, a bit of your food might go down that windpipe – we call it *aspiration*. Your body *really* hates that happening, because food getting into your lungs can cause damage or infections like pneumonia. And of course, if a blockage is big enough, you can choke to death. So coughing is the body’s way of forcing that food back up towards your throat, so that it can reroute to your stomach, keeping your windpipe and your lungs clear.
Latest Answers