27: What is Dysphagia and Aspiration? And what does that mean for my child's swallowing?

The big question here is, what is dysphagia? Dysphagia, with a G, is about swallowing.

Phagia, or this is about the Latin root of to swallow, and dys is meaning that it's disordered swallowing.

This means that there's a concern with how a child is able to mechanically process food and get the food down to the stomach in that swallow mechanism.

Now, swallowing is actually very complex.

I'm a medical speech language pathologist by trade, and I had three swallowing classes in my graduate program.

Three whole classes, a year and a half if you wanna count it by semesters, about swallowing.

Swallowing is a very complex system that has to coordinate not just getting the food to the mouth, managing the food in the mouth, and getting it down to the stomach, but we're working with the same systems that have to do with breathing.

And so we have to do all of this while still managing to breathe and not, hopefully, interfere with our breathing mechanisms and our breathing reflexes that are supposed to be happening at the same time or kinda switching back and forth.

So it's really complex, and breathing is our number one survival and necessity, but it's the same parts of the mouth, the same parts of the body for breathing and for eating.

So that's why there can be this overlap and concern, especially when we're thinking about the term, uh, aspiration.

So I'll get into that in just a second.

But dysphagia is a swallowing disorder or it's a concern around how a person swallows, that there is something that's not necessarily working out as expected, and that can produce a risk or a challenge or a problem in their eating or, um, nutrition or breathing needs.

So with dysphagia, with swallowing, there's actually four steps.

The first one is the oral preparatory, which means getting food to the mouth.

This could look at hands and how do we get it to the mouth.

It could look at bottling and how are we positioning and getting it to the mouth.

And this is as we're getting it before it happens in the mouth, preparing our mouth for food.

This could be looking at our posture, our seating, our body readiness, our understanding, and a lot of it could be even our aversions, um, or for childs having concerns around that, that even the association of feeding is creating this upset in not wanting to get food to the mouth.

So oral preparatory and then oral.

Oral is mouth, so whatever's happening in the mouth.

I say mouth is for, you know, drinking, chewing, processing food.

So whether it's drinking, that could be a bottle or a straw or a cup, how does liquid move through the mouth? And if it's a solid, usually we're going to have to either suckle on it or move it to the sides and chew on it.

And so if there are some delays or need for support with chewing, that could also be the oral swallowing side, that the mouth is not doing what it needs to do before it goes to swallow.

The third step is the pharyngeal phase of swallowing.

Pharyngeal means throat.

The big question here is, what is dysphagia? Dysphagia, with a G, is about swallowing.

Phagia, or this is about the Latin root of to swallow, and dys is meaning that it's disordered swallowing.

This means that there's a concern with how a child is able to mechanically process food and get the food down to the stomach in that swallow mechanism.

Now, swallowing is actually very complex.

I'm a medical speech language pathologist by trade, and I had three swallowing classes in my graduate program.

Three whole classes, a year and a half if you wanna count it by semesters, about swallowing.

Swallowing is a very complex system that has to coordinate not just getting the food to the mouth, managing the food in the mouth, and getting it down to the stomach, but we're working with the same systems that have to do with breathing.

And so we have to do all of this while still managing to breathe and not, hopefully, interfere with our breathing mechanisms and our breathing reflexes that are supposed to be happening at the same time or kinda switching back and forth.

So it's really complex, and breathing is our number one survival and necessity, but it's the same parts of the mouth, the same parts of the body for breathing and for eating.

So that's why there can be this overlap and concern, especially when we're thinking about the term, uh, aspiration.

So I'll get into that in just a second.

But dysphagia is a swallowing disorder or it's a concern around how a person swallows, that there is something that's not necessarily working out as expected, and that can produce a risk or a challenge or a problem in their eating or, um, nutrition or breathing needs.

So with dysphagia, with swallowing, there's actually four steps.

The first one is the oral preparatory, which means getting food to the mouth.

This could look at hands and how do we get it to the mouth.

It could look at bottling and how are we positioning and getting it to the mouth.

And this is as we're getting it before it happens in the mouth, preparing our mouth for food.

This could be looking at our posture, our seating, our body readiness, our understanding, and a lot of it could be even our aversions, um, or for childs having concerns around that, that even the association of feeding is creating this upset in not wanting to get food to the mouth.

So oral preparatory and then oral.

Oral is mouth, so whatever's happening in the mouth.

I say mouth is for, you know, drinking, chewing, processing food.

So whether it's drinking, that could be a bottle or a straw or a cup, how does liquid move through the mouth? And if it's a solid, usually we're going to have to either suckle on it or move it to the sides and chew on it.

And so if there are some delays or need for support with chewing, that could also be the oral swallowing side, that the mouth is not doing what it needs to do before it goes to swallow.

The third step is the pharyngeal phase of swallowing.

Pharyngeal means throat.