When you get news of sadness, disapointment, or something heartbreaking, why do you get that feeling like your throat is clogging up?
In: Biology
The autonomic nervous system (which deals with stress) controls the body’s fight or flight response. During a stressful situation, the ANS calls for an increased flow of oxygen to the muscles that require it. As a result, you begin to breathe faster as the glottis expands to let all the air in. But tense situations also make us swallow to hold our breath (to hold back tears). As these actions require closing the glottis, other muscles are constricted. Since different muscles are trying to open or close the glottis at the same time, the result is the sensation of ‘a lump in your throat’.
The [autonomic nervous system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomic_nervous_system) acts unconsciously and handles things like heart rate and respiratory rate.
When you’re sad, the autonomic nervous does several things to get a lot of oxygen to the whole body. Among other things, it makes the glottis (the thing in our throat that ensures we can breathe, but food we eat doesn’t enter our lungs) open as much as possible. This leads to muscle tension around your throat, which is that strange feeling you’re talking about.
The main reason you feel like your throat is clogging up is because it kind of is, but stress (or very strong emotions) is why it is closing up. When you feel sad or stessed our body tends to tense up all or most of our muscle and that includes the ones in your throat. It is a ring of muscles that help you swollow that, when tensed up, make you feel as if your throat were clogged
Hey! [I made a quick video to answer your question (With a 10/10 joke at the end).](https://youtu.be/cI1FTfH2H0c)
In case videos aren’t your thing, I’ll summarise here too.
* It stems from the autonomic nervous sytems (ANS). This is responsible for a bunch of different things such as blood flow and rate of breathing.
* When we are faced with a stressful sitatuation (like news of sadness etc) our ANS kicks in to allow for fight or flight.
* Our body changes rapidly because of this, but the important part of this for the question is the increase of blood flow and oxygen to the necessary muscles.
* To help us get more oxygen to the muscles, we breath faster and expand our glottis. This is the opening of the throat that allows air flow from the ‘voice box’ to the lungs.
* This doesn’t cause the lump UNTIL we swallow. When we swallow, we are essentially fighting with these muscles and causing tension. That tension is that lump you are feeling.
There’s also a name for it, it’s called the **globus sensation.** Hope that helped mate.
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