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Stuck in your throat
Name: Steve T Wera
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: N/A
Question:
Why is it that sometimes when you swallow, it feels as if part
is stuck in the back of your throat? (Even if you drink water
to try and 'wash' the feeling away.)
Replies:
The only time this happens to me is if I swallow something too quickly,
and it goes down in too-big chunks. If this is what you mean, the only
thing that occurs to me is the analogy with the feeling you get when
something is stuck in your eye (between eyeball and eyelid, that is) and
then it is removed: it still feels, for a while, that something is still
there. In that case, what happens is that the surface of the eyeball is
damaged slightly where the object was, and the same sensation of discomfort
continues to be sent to the brain for some time after the object is
removed. Presumably if you send something too big down the throat, it
irritates the throat and then perhaps the same thing can happen. Now why
the nervous system cannot distinguish in these cases between the presence
of both a damaging object and the damage it causes, on the one hand, and
just the damage itself, on the other, is something I don't know. Perhaps
the sensory nerves are just not too discriminating in these areas of the
body. There are other (more fun) tricks you can play on your nerves: put
your hand covered with a rubber glove into cold water and you'll swear your
hand is getting wet. Two fingers touched to the skin in certain places of
the body (back) will feel like just one finger if close enough, whereas in
other places (hand) with the same separation between fingers you'll feel
both (eyes closed for this experiment, of course).
Christopher Grayce
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Update: June 2012
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