When to get help

Call emergency services now if

These are not wait-and-see situations. In the United States that is 911; elsewhere, your local emergency number.

• You cannot breathe, or your breathing is noisy or laboured.
• Food or a pill is stuck and will not go down.
• You cannot swallow your own saliva.
• You are choking and cannot clear it.

Contact your doctor or clinic soon if

None of these means something is seriously wrong. All of them mean the question is worth asking rather than sitting with.

• Swallowing is getting harder over weeks or months.
• You cough or choke at most meals, or with thin liquids like water.
• It hurts to swallow.
• You are losing weight without trying, or eating noticeably less.
• Your voice sounds wet or gurgly after eating or drinking.
• You have had pneumonia or repeated chest infections.
• You have cut out foods or whole textures, and your diet has narrowed.
• You are skipping medication because swallowing it is too difficult.
• Worry about eating is shrinking your life.

Who does what

It helps to know that more than one profession works on this, and that they do different jobs.

• A speech-language pathologist (SLP) assesses and treats swallowing. In many places they are the specialist for this, and an assessment may include imaging that shows the swallow as it happens.
• Your primary care doctor is usually the route in. They can rule things out and refer you on.
• A gastroenterologist handles the food pipe and the digestive system, which is where symptoms that are lower down and later often belong.
• An ENT (ear, nose and throat) doctor looks at the structures of the throat and voice box.
• A dentist matters more than people expect, because chewing depends on what you have to chew with.
• A pharmacist is the fastest answer for anything pill-related, and you do not need an appointment.

What to bring to the appointment

Specifics are worth more than a general description, and they are hard to produce on the spot. This is the practical argument for having written anything down at all.

• Which foods, drinks or pills are difficult. The actual ones.
• Where you feel it, and when relative to the swallow.
• How long it has been going on, and whether it is changing.
• Whether you cough, and with what.
• Any weight change.
• Your full medication list.
• Your Food Feel Profile, if you made one. Export it as a PDF and take it with you.

What Food Feel is and is not

Food Feel organises what you noticed into something you can read and show to someone. That is genuinely useful, and it is the whole of what it does.

It is not a screening test. It has not been validated against any clinical measure. It does not produce a score, a risk level or a diagnosis, and a profile full of difficult ratings does not mean something is wrong. Just as a profile with none does not mean nothing is.

If something feels wrong to you, that is reason enough to ask, whatever your profile says.