Living with any type of medical condition is never easy. There are additional barriers to overcome and a consistent level of discomfort that most people don’t carry with them. It can make you feel isolated, misunderstood and exhausted too and all of these feelings are valid.
However, when it comes to conditions like dysphagia, there are proven ways to enable your day to go a little better depending upon what is causing it to happen in the first place.
Cut Up Your Food
The most common way to combat problems with swallowing is to cut up your food, yes, just like you would for a toddler or baby. Now, while this is in no way intended to infantilize you, it will be extremely helpful for your swallowing technique in the long-run healing trajectory. Leaning on strategies that work for smaller mouths and throats is useful, because it represents what you’re struggling with. Swallowing something smaller that has been chopped up and cooled off is one of the smartest decisions that you’ll thank yourself for immediately.
Embrace the Thickener
Some of the solutions for dysphagia lie in thickener products. These exist to make food and drink easier to swallow and therefore digest, and they combat particular risk factors for people diagnosed with this condition, such as malnutrition and so on. The consequences of malnutrition are quite debilitating and can even cause early death, so the problem needs tackling head on in order to fight against the typical barriers.
Learn Your Triggers
That being said, there is little point in adding a thickener product into a meal that is going to trigger you regardless. That is why there is a lot of value in getting to know what makes your dysphagia symptoms worse and what makes it feel tolerable. It will be helpful to jot down what you ate when particularly bad symptoms crop up and see if there are any persistent links between the two events.
Re-Learn How to Eat
None of these things will matter if you don’t know how to eat in the best way possible for your symptoms and condition status. Discovering small bites in small doses is life changing because it can be enough to reconnect you with food and tasting, instead of just eating because you have to. Re-learning how to eat means taking your time over the process and discovering optimum posture positions, and when you should be having meals too. There is a lot to think about, but it is worth diving into so that you create a better approach that works for you.
Try Not to Ignore Downhill Curves
The biggest thing to remember about dysphagia is that it can start off as subtle but turn into something chronic fairly quickly, especially when left unchecked. So, try to always tap into what’s going on physically so that you don’t get left behind and caught out if you happen to ignore a red flag.
Dysphagia impacts lots of different areas that anyone dealing with this condition will be well aware of. It is life changing, but it can be managed in the majority of cases if you figure out what you need.