Why Do We Choke On Our Spit?
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- čas přidán 5. 09. 2024
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When's the last time you choked on your own spit? Probably pretty recently, right? As it turns out, the reason we are so prone to coughing fits over nothing has a lot more to do with human evolution than you might think, and the features in our throats that let us embarrass ourselves during a big speech also set us apart from all the other apes out there!
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• Chimp Vocalizations
A few months ago, I had a major spit choke event sitting in the back of a full bus and started coughing *hard* to the point tears ran down my face. I had to explain to people staring in disgust that I had simply choked on my own saliva and it was not COVID.
Imagine having chronic rhinitis and asthma induced coughing during the pandemic...
Yeah, that's been a big issue for myself and presumably a lot of people. Everybody is afraid to cough from anything now. 😕 Trying to suppress it just makes it worse. 🤦
hahahaha *%@& 'em, what is wrong with people these days, they see a person choking and instead of feeling empathy they feel disgust.
@@Axodus Nobody was hostile or anything, people were sympathetic and understanding when I apologized. But of course there was some visible concern and growing uneasiness as the _minutes_ passed and I was still coughing my lungs out inside a bus during a pandemic. Maybe disgust isn't the best word, how does "omd fck no make it stop I don't wanna die like this fml" sounds like?
@@Axodus the reality is a lot of the time when someone coughs in public and they say it’s not Covid they’re lying, Covid is still spreading rampantly and a huge % of the “colds” people are getting are actually Covid
After my neck surgery, I’ve been having difficulty swallowing. I now appreciate how easily it can be messed up.
Sure, let's have the breathing tube and the swallowing tube share the same opening. What could go wrong?
Intelligent design indeed.
Dolphins figured it out, why didn't we? They have separate tubes.
Reminds me of The Good Place. Michael getting into the mindset of a human and mockingly saying, "ohhho I'm a human! And my breathing tube is next to my eating tube! And my arms end in these stupid little sticks!" LOL gets me every time.
the design is... very human
We didn’t have the budget for a complete overhaul, and it worked fine for the Fish, so…
Well, just listen to 2:07-2:17 (and following) again for the reason it's this way in humans. Of course, in order for it to be of benefit, humans need to make intelligent use of the capability.
I was just lying in bed one time, minding my own business, not talking or anything just chilling and out of nowhere I started to choke on my own spit
Same!
Me too! It really scared me 😨
One time?
Everytime it happended to me it pissed me off to no end because of how absolutely stupid it was
It happens to me twice and i was so scared that i will die that time. 😢😢
I've been telling people for years that I'm certain I'll die by "choking on my on spit". It's not just like a single cough or two, I choke a fair bit when it happens and my breathing pattern and speech is uncomfortable for several minutes after the choking stops.
I tell people that about myself too 😂
Ditto!!
I'll die this way because I'd be too embarrassed to cough up a lung. I will literally die from embarrassment
This. Well, this, plus I aspirate my food randomly but regularly, and have for the last nearly 6 decades. I will either die from my own fluids, or from a spoonful of soup, or a forkful of salad, or something similar. My body hates me. 🤷♀️
Stop saying that to yourself! Your words have power, especially about yourself.
Fun fact! My soft pallet is slightly too short to completely block off my nasal cavity so sometimes food gets stuck in my nose only to be shot out at high velocity later 😊
💀
Once I got a ramen noodle up my nose somehow
man Im sorry but this sounds so funny the way you say it
😄that is a fun fact!
I shot a pea out my nose 17 feet. My husband, an engineer, had to measure that out and estimate the speed the pea traveled. I choked on that pea eating fried rice and while coughing the pea out of my throat it ended up too high into the back of my nasal passage and I thought I’d have to go to the hospital. After a minute of panic, I had the biggest sneeze and the pea shot out across the room. My kids say I’m a pea shooter like some creature in a game they play. 🫛😋
When I was in elementary school, my friend and I had the bright idea to hold our spit in our mouths for the whole busride home. Our goal was to see how many divots we could fill on a manhole cover. When I was about one stop away from getting off the bus, while my mouth felt absolutely full of spit, I choked on it. I choked so violently . Then the disgust set in. I almost started to vomit. The choking turned into dry heaving. So yes, to this day spit has a tendency to gross me out. It was brutal when my kid was teething.
Do you have ADHD? I have ADHD and before I was diagnosed I decided to see how long I could go without swallowing while I was in the middle of a Karate class. I ended up drooling everywhere and the Sensei got upset with me. For some reason my autistic self interpreted his distress about it as him telling me it’s specifically against the rules of karate to drool and I ended up getting into an argument with him about it, insisting he was lying and there’s no such thing as an anti-drooling rule in karate. I was a weird kid.
@@thepip3599 Immediately reminds me of something similar that happened to me, except it was with my school's social worker not my karate teacher, and it wasn't drooling it was "not opening your eyes all the way". I noticed one morning on the bus that some kid's face just naturally looked like his eyes were only half-open. Think kinda like Sylvester Stallone's neutral expression. So while I was talking with the social worker that day, I thought I'd try making that same face the whole time. Because obviously it was allowed, and really how could she prove that it wasn't just my relaxed expression too? She told me to stop, and I pretended to have no idea what she was talking about until she got so frustrated that she brought me to the principal's office.
20-ish years later it turns out I'm autistic with a PDA profile.
I didn't realize just how much B Roll there was about people choking on their own spit
If this happens to you just stay calm and remember that you can still breathe through your nose.
I've nearly passed out from this stupid condition. Saw something on reddit about the nose and bam, it works. Started to freak out, told myself to chill and breathe through my nose and voila! I survived and was able to recover from choking in less than a minute. Usually takes me nearly 10 minutes of wheezing and struggling.
I’ve tried this and it doesn’t work for me🫠
@@abbyb6958 well crap. Sorry.
@@ChaoticOrcPaladin
I could not breathe nor talk for about 10 seconds. I only got "S" and "K" from my mouth. I legit thought I was gonna end up in hospital.
@@David-eb1im it's a horrible feeling, no doubt.
@@ChaoticOrcPaladin It feelt like the Larynx or maybe the Trachea was completly closed for me.
Oh my god I am a speech therapist in a nursing home, and a big part of my job is helping folks with swallowing problems. This is honestly the best video I’ve ever found explaining and showing the swallowing mechanism. Can’t wait to show this to patients and their families!
Savannah is an excellent presenter! Glad to have them on this channel nowadays
My mouth created so much saliva during this video. Probably swallowed more in the last 5 minutes than the last hour lol The body is so fascinating!
My mouth wasn’t until I read this comment, thanks
@@Jessepigman69 lol oh no! So sorry, welcome to the mild suffering 😂
You are now manually breathing.
@@General12th Thanks I hate it🙃
@@General12th i hate that. I can't just breathe normally when i realized i had to breathe manually, i had to inhale like an entire planet or else i won't feel it's enough. I had to inhale so deep to the point that i feel it down into my belly, only then i'll feel it's enough and sometimes it hurt my ribs.
Can you make a video on why some people (myself included) get their eyelashes in their eyes so often? I can't go a week without having to stare myself at the mirror in weird angles to try getting them off my eye ball. Last time I went to an ophthalmologist, I was asked if I injured my eye. The only thing to get in my eye in years are the damn lashes.
I have the same problem! But I usually notice before they fall into my eye because they either overlap or touch my bottom lashes and that feeling bothers me and I end up pulling like 5 lashes out in one pull 😳 no idea why it happens tho
Oh next can you do a video on why we accidentally bite our tongues/cheeks when eating?
My mom literally just choked on her spit right before I saw the upload. Perfect timing.
They're watching you!
@@ChromicQuanta I know right? lmao
Calm down Mom it's good for you
Never take swallowing without choking for granted. With ecolasia (probably spelling it wrong) I occasionally have to throw up in restaurants. My wife loves it.
I entered a bar with my gf at the time and a friend invited us to sit at his table, where he was with another guy we didn't know. Minutes later, I took a sip of beer and choked, spitting nearly the entire mouthful across the table. The guy said it was all right, no harm done, but I suspect he wishes me a painful death to this day.
from how you describe it, i had that too. it's spelled achalasia. i had to have my lower esophageal sphincter removed because it wasn't opening. on omeprazole for the rest of my life now to keep my stomach acid under control.
Hahaha you're awesome
Chugged an Irish Car Bomb with my mates after a very heavy Irish meal at the Dublin Pub. Hit my gag reflex and gracefully walked to the sidewalk outside to puke out my entire meal of meats, breads, potatoes and Guinness and Bailey's and rum 😅
I have achalasia type 3 and I’m waiting for surgery, it’s no fun at all eh! 💜
I've never clicked a scishow vid so fast. CHOKING ON SPIT??? HAPPENS TO ME ALL THE TIME 🙄🙄
Omg I with u
Saaaaame 😂
Whenever it happens to me I always fantasize how lame it would be if I choked to death on my own spit. People be at my funeral like "what he die of a high speed car crash? No. Was he skydiving and both chutes failed? Nope. Did he fall while climbing a sheer mountain wall? Nada. Did he get run over in traffic riding his bicycle? Not that either. Well then what exciting activity was it, what brave and daring thing was he doing that killed him? Nothing, he just choked to death on his own spit. Kind of dumb, really. Sort of an idiot, basically"
I've always wondered this, and thank you for your videos!
I have dealt with this problem so many times and for so many years I have often said my epitaph will read "died on spit!"
Semi-interesting side note; the ball of chewed up food your mouth and tongue make just before you swallow has a name! It's called a bolus.
I was very conscious of my spit swallowing throughout this video 😂
This happens to me in my sleep, and it's terrifying. I wake up gasping for air.
You should get that checked out. I had the same thing for the longest time, but it turned out it was sleep apnea causing that muscle to relax too much and block my airway.
Are you sure it's not sleep apnea?
Sounds like you have sleep apnea 😅
Can confirm, if you wake up coughing, that is sleep apnea. They make fantastic machines nowadays that help you breath smoothly throughout the night.
You absolutely need to see a doctor about that
Me: **repeatedly swallowing for no reason throughout the video**
Thank you! I have always been curious about this quirk. Recovering after the cough is difficult when you've then lost your voice for a bit, too, lol. Bodies!
I love this.
On my mother's side, the entire family has this problem (including me), to the point of being able to point it out as it happens basically once per day to all of us.
I understand now that it seems to be universal, but I do wonder if there's something in out genes that makes us choke more often, I wish there was a way to do research on that.
I don't know if this maybe applies to you or your family, but I noticed myself choking randomly a lot more when I started having issues with acid reflux- I guess my body is trying to protect my throat by covering it in slime, but it causes more harm than good. I can feel the coating in my throat, sometimes to the point of being unable to sleep or compelled to swallow multiple times in a row until it shifts. And when it shifts (or when it doesn't) it has a pretty high chance of causing me to start choking and coughing. I'd hypothesize that it irritates the area around the epiglottis and makes my body think we've gotten something "down the wrong pipe" when in fact, it is our own mucous. Lovely.
@@animeartist888this actually makes a lot of sense! I have GERD (chronic acid reflux) and also frequently choke on my saliva even while sleeping. My mom also has GERD and frequently chokes on saliva
I do this often and it makes me so dang mad. Like, learn where your spit goes, body!
I've choked on my own spit pretty frequently for the last few months, to the point where I could taste blood at one point from coughing so hard. Glad to know it's necessary.
If it’s happening frequently and you can taste blood then you will definitely want to get that checked out. Could be nothing but could also be the sign of something that needs attention before it gets worse.
@@MeppyMan Agreed! Kind of wish I had healthcare!
@@HuntingSunder oh :( America?
@@MeppyMan Yep!
I always recall a professor telling me “evolution uses whatever’s already there” and ever flaw brings this to mind.
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or will they?
Impressed that Savannah could even manage to keep speaking while talking about speaking; even just listening to them talking about the whole speech apparatus made me uncomfortably aware of my mouth and mildly creeped out by my very normal Round Tongue
I have another change in my throat that can cause me to choke. I have a subglottic stenosis right below my vocal cords. This stenosis is made of hard scar and now impinges on my esophagus. Usually it's not an issue as long as I have small bites and chew well, but too large a piece of food, or a capsule that turned going down can get stuck there. It requires some careful adaptations. I also have tracheomalacia witch adds to the fun.
Thanks, Savannah! I feel a whole lot better about my entire throat now!!
Those animations really helped with visualization! Way better than a text book
This is a question I've had since I was a kid😂
I literally saw the thumbnail just as I started choking on my own.
What I'm curious about is how does swallowing water help? After choking on my own spit, I go for water and feel tons better - why is that?
It actually makes me feel better knowing that it happens to everyone.
love the video, but did you HAVE to make the swallowed substance white?
THIS HAPPENS TO OTHER PEOPLE TOO?? People always look at me like I'm a weirdo when this happens and I've never seen others randomly start coughing out of nowhere, like not when talking or drinking.
Usually I choke when eating or drinking but once I choked on my own spit.
I love this channel; answering all the important questions I have 😅
I'd just like to give props to Savanah for being a really good host. She sounds very natural and not like she's reading from a cue card.
I have a chronically stuffy nose so often have to breath through my mouth, which causes me to do so unthinkingly sometimes while eating and I suck food “down the wrong hole” more than the average person. I also choke on my saliva quite often because of my breathing through mouth… it sucks, but the larynx and windpipe are good blockers from keeping food from getting to lungs as the small pieces of food do t usually go far down and a couple well managed coughs can displace it
I think it would have been much more natuaral to use kind of bluish color for the "thing being swallaed" that also behaved like a fluid.
i myself have some questions about the chosen color for that animation.
I still have a question. Why does this tend to happen more frequently as we age?
Do our structures get thicker and slower?
I'm only 52, and I already feel as if my entire body is rebelling against me.
Not necessarily thicker, but certainly slower, weaker and less elastic. That makes it easier for us to get a step wrong in the complex dance that allows us to swallow and speak -- not at the same time, please.
Just like a gym can help maintain the quality of arms and legs, there are speech therapy exercises that help with choking, in addition to several other aspects of vocal health. I'm sure there are good guides on the internet, just remember to check the source's credibility and consult a doctor for proper advice.
@@IKSRotarran Ha! I'm half your age and have been feeling that for a while. I've got a thyroid condition and what feels like several undiagnosed comorbidities.
And having gerd, is less helpful when choking happens.
😮 Shivering black bell thumbs up
Where my fellow Speech-Language Pathologists at?! A good general overview of our profession 😂
Great! We've got butt hair and we're choking on our own spit... if we're lucky our appendices won't get inflamed!
Butt is legs.
Birds can made all kind of sounds even Human sounds and they don't ever have to worry about choking.
Birds have a very different breathing system than mammals.
Just before Christmas, last year, I was eating pork scratchings. Got down to the last small piece tipped that and some small pieces of scratching into my hand. I ate the small piece, and bent over my hand to lick the last bits up, and for some reason inhaled. Down into my lungs they went, after a half hour I managed to hack up what I thought was all the small bits. Wrong! About five days later I was feeling very grim, phoned my doctor, described how I was feeling, she sent me for a chest x-ray. As I was leaving the polyclinic, I got a message from my quack which said, "Do not pass Go, do not collect £200, go straight to Accident & Emergency. Myself and my SO, jumped in the car and took off to our local hospital. I remember walking into A&E, but nothing after that for two days! I woke up in ITU with bilateral lung abscesses!
When they got the results of culturing the crap they'd drained from my lungs, it was a bug that's pretty much exclusively carried by pigs. That was when the penny dropped. I told the docs what had happened with the pork scratchings. One of the junior doctors, asked me if it ok to write up my case for publication. Of course I said yes. That my experience of this phenomenon!
Wow!
I’ve always said my epiglottis is trying to unalive me
I'm so glad to know it's not just me
👍....been there, done that. Didn't know about this till now. Thanks
Everytime it happens I hope I dont die because that would be a pretty sad way to go out
I have a hypothesis that human language as we know it is a by product of vocal mimicry. Humans mimicked the sounds of prey animals to get closer or attract them to the hunter. Being able to mimic a predator during persistence hunting is also an advantage in causing the hunted creature to exert more energy trying to escape. This same skill is useful for taming and domestication. Copying the calls of other animals to create trust or stress is an evolutionary advantage.
Many people today have the talent to copy the calls of various animals almost flawlessly. Being able to copy almost any sound you hear opens the door up to creating unique sounds that describes the concept you're trying to express.
TL/DR
We used the survival strategy of mimicking sound and transformed it into a method of communication.
Get out of my head man! I literally was searching this yesterday on reddit 😂
It is actually possible to train manually closing the soft pallet, making it much easier to dive since you don't have to use an entire limb just to make sure you don't snort half a lake. It allows for more vocal control too which is nice. Make weird noises weeee
So interesting thanks sci show! 💚
Idk if this fulling explains why I choke on saliva as much as I do, and why other people think it's weird when I do, like it never happens to them
Maybe some people don't choke on saliva?😊
Not sure who the new person is, I like em, Excellent delivery!
Thanks!!!! Lifelong problem.
It can be bad... I have woken up TOTALLY unable to cough/weeze and started to understand what death might feel like
I think I saw somewhere that humans ability to make complex sounds may have developed from mimicry, duplicating the sounds of other animals to hunt or distract them. Not nearly as well as some other animals but definitely with purpose outside of attracting mates.
Good. One of the better SciShow videos.
Are we the only ones here absolutely fascinated that evolution put the wind pipe in front of the swallow tube .
Granted, the wind pipe is also piggybacking support to remain open with the assistance of the cartilage in the throat -- but there isn't anything stopping evolution from reversing the order to give that same structure on the other side, right ?
I’d like to just take a moment to appreciate the artistry of the assonance that went into “a pretty fancy dance for your dinner to do.” Beautiful lol
Her hair looks great this video! I know that’s really unrelated but like look at her! ❤
I thought I was gonna die the other day! The stuff slide and stuck at the worse spot. I couldn't breath!
Eating and breathing through the same orifice seems like a major design flaw to me and a good example of evolution proceeding blindly by small steps.
Another new host, awesome!
They're not new, they've been with SciShow for like half a year at least
@@narnigrin I watch nearly every vid, I've never seen'em.
I did this like four times yesterday. Good timing.
don't eat while watching this video, you become self conscious and start to choke up
Also don't try to say words, I can't not be uncomfortably aware of my tongue
I got this episode of choking on spit frequently; worst part is, it coincide with me tasting a wasabi.
The burn that clears your nose is now being felt deep in the throat.
YAY!!! You did the thing!!!
Thank you.
I like the burning sensation in the throat when liquids go into the airpipe. It can take so many hours to disappear and you can cough for quite a while depending on what it was you swallowed. Worst case you'll start coughing up blood. I guess that's when you've been violently coughing for a while and something has been damaged in the throat, like a sore or something. Lovely times.
I had to go to the ER after choking on a bit of a pea. I coughed so much I threw up quite a bit. It took me hours and hours to stop coughing. They said the bit of pea was stuck in my lung but since I wasn't elderly it probably wouldn't turn into pneumonia.
I choke on my own spit frequently. It’s embarrassing bits as bad as tripping over nothing
Love your jacket!
I hate it when this happens to me cause i always have trouble breathing and gasping for air. I'm watching to learn what to do
Leave it to SciShow to take a truly embarrassing social moment into an amazing lesson beyond spit to language, evolution, and physiology. Amazing! Now, when I choke, I can turn it into "see how smart I am" rather than "I can't control my own saliva."
I scrolled passed this video this morning then at night I almost died choking on my spit
Is it ever life threatening? Cause it sure feels like it sometimes.
Our first sergeant hated our Captain so much, she once said, "I wouldn't swab out her throat if she was choking on her own spit." Not lying.
Saliva, or Dave's Insanity Sauce? Larynx doesn't care; you're about to be hacking up both lungs for the next five minutes.
I ask this of myself every time it happens. Whhhhy am I so disorganized.
Buddy, I choke so often I know how to regulate my non breathing and coughs until I can clear my airways enough to breathe. I no longer panic and wave away anyone trying to help.
and here I thought I was simply getting old. good to know!
You are now entering manual breathing mode.
You are now entering manual swallowing mode.
You are now entering manual blinking mode.
You are welcome. Have a great day.
I hate when this happens🙀
Hi Savannah!
I've never choked on my spit...
Me either, I have no idea WTF this video's talking about.
Be glad. It sucks hardcore.
Also why do we bite our tongues or lips while eating? Can’t we figure out how to NOT do that?!
OH MAN, I do that all the time. It hurts. I think for me it is age. But what a pain...Thank you for this vid, it answers a concern for me...
Spit can go down the windpipe.
Imagine having unilateral vocal cord paralysis and choke on everything or nothing several times a day.
I'm eating while watching this, hope I don't choke, lol.
This happens to me a bit often, and just glad to know it's something normal
This sucks when you have eaten a menthol candy drop, been there. This happened alot with a specific brand of drops so I stopped eating them.
This makes me feel like I’m about to die.
2:25 if bonobos are just as closely related to us, why are chimps quoted more often
Guess 1: Easier to pronounce within a sentence.
Guess 2: More widely/commonly known.
My mother used to have this at least once nearly every time I visited her. I used to think "C'mon Mum. it's just having a sip of tea, get your act together."
Now I am getting to her age then, and it's starting to happen to me more and more. Karma serves me right. Sorry, Mum.
HI, IF YOU ARE CHOKING ON A DROP OF WATER OR SALIVA, LOOK STRAIGHT AHEAD HOLD YOUR CHIN FIRM TO KEEP IT FROM MOVING AND WITH YOUR EYES LOOK UP TOWARDS THE CEILING, HOLD, REPEAT UNTIL IT CLEARS. IT WORKED FOR ME.