What Happens When Something Goes Down The Wrong Hole? DEBUNKED

okay okay for anyone who's clicked on the video expecting in adults only smart fest I've got some bad news for you this is not a video about an awkward accident I had with my wife it's better than that it's a video about the human digestive system and it might just save your life so you're talking into a meal maybe a succulent Chinese one enjoying every tiny morsel you're really hitting it off with your date when all of a sudden a piece of one of those tasty dumplings goes down the wrong hole you've got two choices coffin splicer everywhere spitting a bit of chewed up dumpling in the face of what could be your future spouse or do everything in your power to hold in that cough and act incredibly cool seems like an easy decision right by suppressing that choking sensation really isn't a good idea for a start where does the wrong hole lead to does that chunk of fruits that end up in your stomach and if it doesn't or exactly does it go Plus what are the chances maker calls you serious damage I'm Stu this is debunked and we're here to solve the truths in the myths and the facts from the misconceptions so swallowing seems easy right you chew for a bit get that food down your throat and into your stomach job done but it's a bit more complicated than you might think let's head back to the start of that hot date when things were looking good when you first put that scrumptious dumpling into your mouth in under one second over 30 different muscles work together to get that food down to size before your tongue pushes it along and down your throat and taking a look at the back of your mouth it seems as though there's one huge pipe where everything is going but looks can be deceiving following that chewed up morsel we find that the throat actually splits into two pipes one of these is the esophagus otherwise known as the food pipe which leads to the stomach no prizes for guessing that's the direction that tasty meal should be heading in thing is even if your food takes the right exit on the throat highway it can still cause some discomfort this is usually an irritating feeling of fullness in your upper chest maybe firmer particularly bites you are trying to get down so it's perfectly reasonable to think that deadly dumpling from earlier is just going down the right hole the wrong way however this doesn't result in the frantic coughing spluttering and choking we all associate when food or drink goes down the wrong hole so let's head back up to that Junction in the throat because it's here where things can start to go wrong when you're eating remember that second pipe I mentioned earlier well that's called the trachea or as most people call it the windpipe and if we follow it all the way along it leads straight to your lungs having two pipes with very different jobs seems like a bit of a health hazard but thankfully we have a protection mechanism that stops eating from being a dangerous gamble the larynx which most of us called the voice box has a flap called the epiglottis this moves to block off the trachea whenever we swallow meaning food shouldn't be taking a wrong turn in your throat and while the epiglottis does a great job of stopping the mils we eat ending up in your lungs it doesn't always stop every single mouthful when you're distracted maybe you're talking at the table or not fully conscious then the brain can struggle to get everything in position in time all this means you guessed it food and drink end up going down the wrong pipe a phenomenon known as aspiration the results aren't exactly nice as dr. Clark Rosen a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine explains immediately after you feel that something went down the wrong way you feel like you can't breathe and your voice is really constricted or you have no voice at all that's because everything has gone into restriction shut down violation mode and while that might all seem a bit terrifying it's just your body trying to prevent additional problems the epiglottis kicks into action and shuts off the windpipe as fast as possible to stop more food or drink heading down your airway but what about that morsel of food that's already managed to sneak down your trachea if that goes any further you're going to be in a whole heap of trouble but luckily your body's got a solution for this in otherwise healthy people the presence of foreign material in the airway is extremely uncomfortable and will stimulate immediate gag and coughing reflexes while it is uncomfortable all that coughing serves an important purpose it clears the material out of your trachea and into your esophagus basically moving it from the wrong pipe to the right one once your body is happy that the airway is clear everything goes back to normal you'll stop coughing you can breathe clearly and speak again happy times except that isn't always the case sometimes without violent coughing just isn't enough to dislodge the offending food or drink and when that happens your body is all out of answers that troublesome mouth wall just keeps on traveling all the way along the trachea and into your lungs and that's where things can turn ugly for your health you don't need to be an expert to know that having a lung full of Pizza soda or dumplings isn't ideal for a start it can give you a chest infection which might not sound particularly scary but that infection is aspiration pneumonia so if you have a coughing fit while eating and then start to develop chest pain or get a dry or Flemmi cough then you might want to see a doctor more severe symptoms might include difficulty breathing or a temperature of 38 degrees Celsius or over 100 degrees Fahrenheit if you prefer now the good news is that the infection might just irritate your lungs and your doctor can treat it with the course of antibiotics the bad news aspiration pneumonia is way more common than you think and it can be fatal according to a 2015 study approximately 10% of all people hospitalized with pneumonia get it through aspiration given that approximately 1 million adults are admitted hospital every year with pneumonia in the US alone it means 100,000 of those visits are likely caused by pesky bits of food or drink going down the wrong hole perhaps more terrifying on the results of a study published in the Journal of hospital medicine in 2013 of 628 patients recorded in the study all with aspiration pneumonia an unbelievable 21% died within 30 days now this might seem incredibly high and it is but that's because the average age of those patients was 77 years old by the time most of us get to that age food going down the wrong hole becomes far more common this happens more frequently as we age too because our muscles don't react as quickly and our sensation isn't as good as it was when we were younger plus many of the elderly patients in this study already had underlying medical conditions getting a lung infection simply puts additional pressure on their bodies which they were sadly unable to handle nevertheless if you think you have aspiration pneumonia whatever your age seek medical help as soon as you can and even if it's not aspiration pneumonia you could still find yourself in a very complicated situation when food goes down the wrong way because the lung is a warm and moist environment it's a surprisingly fertile ground for seeds you can see where this is going so if you accidentally inhale one of them down into your lung and don't cough it back out it can theoretically sprout in there especially a seed stone need light to germinate is this common no has it happened yes in 2010 75 year old Ron schweden was admitted hospital having difficulty breathing and with a severely infected lung when the surgeon opened him up he found a one and a quarter centimeter long pea seedling growing in there thankfully it was a simple case of removing the pesky seedling and sending the man home to recover so whether you're eating popcorn in a cinema or peas in a restaurant when something goes down the wrong hole the worst thing you can do is stifle that cough for fear of embarrassment you need to clear that airway to get Hawking and hacking and get the food out of the wrong hole and into the right one fast our next video will be released on December 23rd and it will be available in the lower right hand side of the screen we're still finding our feet with debunked but we're planning to release a new video every month and the more successful our videos become the more time we can afford to dedicate to them we have a patreon page if you'd like to support us in this endeavor and in doing so become part of something great thanks for watching

Channel: Debunked

Views: 162,184

Rating: 4.8740678 out of 5

Keywords: debunked, fake news, conspiracy, myth, urban legend, fact, myth busters, lies, science, life hack, debunk, wrong hole, pneumonia, seed in lung, can a seed grow in your body, what happens when you inhale, when something goes down the wrong hole, medical, doctor, lungs, swallow, choking, health, documentary, lies taught at school, debunking, can a seed grow inside you, biology, biology explained, wrong, fail, infographic, inhale, can a tree grow in your stomach, heimlich, growing in lung, kurzgesagt

Id: 0YJ8Mc8jT68

Length: 8min 41sec (521 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 09 2017