When drinking water and it “goes down the wrong pipe” is that water entering your airways? And if so, how does it go away?
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Yes, it goes down the trachea (windpipe) towards the lungs instead of the esophagus, towards the stomach.
It goes away by you coughing. That’s why we all have a reflexive cough when that happens. The cough moves the liquid back up so it can go back down the right pipe (or out the mouth).
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Yes it’s definitely entering it. But it makes you choke and triggers a reflex that makes you cough. And then, basically you will cough until enough water has been evacuated.
To piggy back this, what happens when you drink wrong and instead of a cough you’re chest hurts and feels heavy but it goes away after 5 or so minutes.
[This graphic](https://imgur.com/gallery/9KdKYPN) gives a detailed view of the inner workings of your throat. The trachea (gases) and esophagus (solids/liquids) are layered together. There are muscles and valves that close off to make sure liquid or solids don’t enter the lungs while swallowing or vice versa air into the stomach while breathing. And why you shouldn’t try to breathe in while drinking liquids (like drinking while heavy panting after exercise or thinking water will help while choking…) When you either accidentally override the automatic muscle closures or are too incapacitated to close those muscles properly anymore you get what’s called “aspiration”. Small enough and your lungs can get rid of it eventually on their own through coughing and the complex system of blood vessels and such- but a large enough or nasty enough thing gets inhaled and the stagnant aspiration becomes “aspiration pneumonia” and infects your lungs becoming so thick and gnarly you need antibiotics and steroid medications to help solve it. Sometimes the lung ends up with even worse infections or holes, and you need chest tubes or a whole crazy world of life saving treatments. That’s the long, short of it. -source am nurse
Like others have said, coughing is the main thing, but our lungs are pretty moist anyway, so from my understanding if theres a little bit of water that isn’t coughed up, our lungs are capable of absorbing it. Just too much water means no room for oxygen so to speak (drowning).
This gives a good oppertunity though to explain the other big issue with inhaling or ‘Aspiring’ stuff that isn’t air, really the biggest issue assuming whatever your inhaling isn’t obstructing oxygen intake, is that it isn’t sterile: it can have bacteria and pathogens which our lungs really don’t want. Like *really* don’t want; it’s why they have so many mechanisms to stop pathogens getting that far like mucous (that stuff you want to cough up/swallow every so often) and hairs (not hair hair, but verrrrry small hair like cells called cilia) which constantly Mexican wave the mucous and pathogens away from the lungs. But anyway, if significant amounts of pathogen make it past those defenses because say, you inhaled too much water and couldn’t cough enough out, you could risk ‘aspiration pneumonia’ which as it sounds, is pneumonia (a lung infection) caused by aspirating something.
The institute of human anatomy youtube channel has a great video on this! Very detailed, but definitely easy to understand.
Breathe in and out. Now swallow.
You should feel that spot in the throat(the trachea flap) close against the back of your throat when you swallow.
When you breathe, flap opens for your lungs. When you swallow or drink water or eat food-your body understands automatically that the flap need stay closed.
When water “goes down the wrong pipe”, it means your flap opened. It mainly happens when you drink lukewarm water, because your senses have a hard time picking apart air from water at that state.
There is a little flap called the epiglottis, and if it’s not down all the way then the liquid goes “down the wrong pipe” and begins to go into your lungs. Obviously, your body knows that this is not supposed to happen so it begins to expel the liquid by coughing. This is a very good thing, because if not you could be looking at pneumonia.
A lot of people have answered the question, but Ctrl+F hasn’t brought up the epiglottis on my browser. It’s a little flap in your throat that is supposed to close the trachea, which is where air goes, automatically when you swallow, which helps to prevent things going down the wrong pipe.
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