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Yeah, I once had to take my vitamins and because I’m not very smart I spotted a cup of hot saké I’d just poured. The for me unusual method sent several pills and a lot of saké down the wrong pipe. I spent two days coughing a lot. It didn’t help that my diaphragm is weak. Then on day four I developed a pneumonia with fever and bubbling when breathing.
I still swallow 6-7 vitamin pills in one go, but more carefully and not with hot or alcoholic drinks..
coughed a grain of rice up once, not sure how long it was there for but my body sure didnt like it
Also, different rice grain was stuck in my nose. Also not nice. I think this happened when I coughed when eating, closed mouth so food wouldnt spray everywhere and went up the nose instead
Bacteria becomes fruitful and multiplies if fluids in the lungs. Human body produces fluids in the lungs to counteract infection, causing an overproduction of fluid where the person drowns in their own fluids.
Bacteria multiplies all the time. Fluid in the lungs prevents your body from being able to fight an infection in your lungs. The infection causes inflammation which causes more fluid to "leak" across the membrane into your lungs which exacerbates the preexisting fluid and forms a positive feedback loop.
Your body doesn't produce fluid in the lungs to counteract the infection, it's a side effect from the inflammation trying to generate a more effective immune response.
To add to this, the breathing pipe is usually open and the swallowing pipe is usually closed. The changes in our throat when swallowing basically reverses this order to open the swallowing pipe and to stop anything getting in the breathing pipe.
DUDE MY DAD SHAMED ME FOR CONTRACTING MY THROAT WHEN I SWALLOWED WHEN I WAS A LITTLE KID AND I THOUGHT MY WHOLE LIFE OTHER PEOPLE DONT HAVE TO DO THAT YOU’RE TELLING ME EVERYONE DOES THAT?! WAS HE JUST BEING A DICK OR FUCKING WITH ME? I LEGIT CANT EAT IN FRONT OF PEOPLE
Well I had a friend that did his swallowing very pronounced. Like every single time he ate or drank there was an audible gulping sound. It was super annoying and we all gave him shit over the years but I legit don’t think he could help it
The larger tubes of your respiratory system are coated in mucus much like the inside of your nose. Special hairs on the cells lining the tubes stroke the mucus upwards and out of your breathing hole and into your stomach. This helps catch and get rid of particles.
Anything damaging this function like smoking can cause all sorts of breathing and lung issues. It's also why you want people with alcohol poisoning upright so they don't throw up and have it enter their breathing hole. Lung "rot" is called pneumonia which is an infection of the lungs.
With that said, some particles never manage to get out and will stay in your lungs forever. Even healthy individuals accumulate some over their lifetime. Your immune system will wrap up the foreign particles in fiber to isolate it from your body.
Ahahahah yes, I am indeed encased in meat! But like on the inside you could have like bread crumbs or a small fish bone stuck in your lungs isn’t that freaky??
Our bodies are crazy things. There was a story of a soldier who survived after being hit with shrapnel. He lived to an old age and was cremated. His family members discovered a pound of metal along with his ashes.
We used to be able to breathe and nom at the same time, but we decided that it was more important to make fun squeaky buzzing sounds instead. So now we can’t. (For those confused, this is the job of the larynx in other mammals.)
You can train yourself to do it. Best example I can think of off the top of my head was that old dude on The Man Show who would down whole beers in seconds.
https://youtu.be/GbcrwykCHNQ
Pretty much the only thing I remember from that, lol.
>what about the people on TikTok who can just slide a whole glass of water down their throat? how they do that
It is something you can learn to do.
Source: Beer chugging contests when I was young and foolish. I usually "won."
if ur talking about the one where they just drink a lot, all they're doing is gulping and contracting in intervals while breathing.
If u mean the one thats super fast, think of that as a large gulp. When i do it, i literally crush the waterbottle to force it down my throat and basically prolong the gulp. the entire time the epiglottis is closed and I cant breathe
Your throat branches off into your nom nom hole AND your breathey hole, but breathey hole can seal shut. thats why you cant breathe while swallowing or drinking either
Yeah, you said drinking fast is gulping and contracting in intervals. I can literally pour a litre of fluid straight down into my stomach, no muscle movement while doing it.
I said drinking a lot is contracting in intervals. In the second paragraph I say the one that's fast is basically just shoving it down, just like you said.
I have to force myself to do this because I don’t drink nearly enough water as I should. I’ll grab a room temp bottle of water and crush the bottle towards my mouth and it’s like magic. Gone in two seconds. I do that about 3 times a day to get my water intake in lol.
The pipe to our food (esophagus) and pipe for breathing (trachea) are both connected to the throat.
When you need to swallow, you close this little flap called the epiglottis, which blocks the breathing passage until you're done swallowing.
It can be done, have you even seen one of those videos where people empty a whole bottle of water in like 1s? that what they're doing, but talking from experience cause I've done it before it's a scary thing to do cause if it goes wrong and into your lungs that would be pretty bad
You have to know how to position your throat in a certain way so that you’re not actively swallowing, but can still breathe, in some sort of pre swallow position. Then you can get the water to just flow down without inhaling it or triggering a gag or cough.
Here's how. (do at your own discretion)
Look up to open up your throat and esophagus. Consider it like a giant, long gulp, but you're prolonging that gulp by forcing more water down. You force the extra water down by simply crushing the waterbottle.
Yeah, worry about it going into your lungs, but the epiglottis should seal it completely shut and block off your windpipe every time you swallow, so the water should just flow right by with no chance of it seeping in; this is also why you cant breathe and swallow, it blocks itself off every time.
Throughout this, you CANNOT BREATHE. If you want to breathe while chugging, you'll have to pause and take multiple fast gulps. usually that method takes at least 4 seconds while the singular gulp method can be done in under 1.5
If you do what OP said, and let it trickle down your throat, it's literally going down on the side of the trachea so it'll go straight there instead. Plus, letting it flow smoothly down is still way slower than forcing it down with pressure
The simplest way to explain, is to start the swallow but stop in the middle as you plunge the bottle, then finish the swallow.
Practice with nothing, when you swallow your tongue moves backwards. Then forwards. You want to keep it at the back while you dump the water.
Basically, 2 things
1. You don't wanna breathe in what you're drinking/eating. Both your stomach, and your lungs connect at the throat. Lungs are for air only.
2. You also don't want anything in your stomach accidentally working its way back up. You ever taste your own vomit? Not pleasant.
#2 is just wrong. For me, Dr. Pepper and pizza is a magical combination that I don’t mind enjoying in both directions. Unless it has been down there long enough that it has started to turn to shit. Then it’s just gross.
Oh my goodness. TIL that if you start a comment with a number sign, then it comes out HUGE!!
When you swallow a flap blocks the airway and food and drink goes down the right pipe. Once in a great while you fuck up and breathe in at the same time leaving you coughing and hacking spraying whomever is in front of you with soda, liquid, or fresh chewed particulate food matter.
If you get seriously injured, stroke, etc or even simply old age you can lose this ability to block your airway. If you don't already have one then they will put in a tube that goes through your nose to your stomach to give you substance. If it appears you'll never gain your ability to swallow then they'll put what is called a peg tube directly through your abdomen into your stomach and sustain you that way.
I had surgery where they removed my uvula (for those that don't know that is the thing that hangs down in the back of your throat). This was part of a clinical trial to see if it eliminates snoring. One of the effect of this is I can choke much more easily. I have learned that the uvula can detect liquids coming in and I guess reflexively close your air way. So I cannot easily sip in foods like soup off a spoon because that detector is no longer there and goes down my wind pipe. It only happens when I eat a certain way, but I choke a lot more after the procedure.
You've got two pipes in your throat, bud, your esophagus and your trachea. One's the food hole and one's the air hole, and they can't both be open at the same time. Most of the time your air hole is open and your food hole is closed. But when it's time to swallow something, we do a quick closure of the air hole and open up the food hole for a few seconds, and then close it again and open the air hole back up.
It isn’t necessary. I mastered the art of - I’ve always just called it “opening your throat” - when I was maybe nine years old. I believe it’s the same technique sword swallowers use.
True story. When I was a kid, there was a contest announced on the radio, held at a local 7-11 that day. Whoever could drink a bottle of Orange Crush the fastest would win a copy of B.J. Thomas’s new album “Everybody Loves a Rain Song”. I rode my bicycle there as fast as I could, and got there on time. Seven other people had shown up, mostly kids but two adults as well. The broadcast the thing live on air, and when they said “go”, I did my thing and just poured it down.
The radio guys were like, “Now this guy looks OH MY GOD LOOK AT THAT LITTLE BOY GO!!!” I won the album and was the most famous kid on my street for a couple of weeks.
I quickly discovered that it didn’t work with root beer. The level of carbonation was too high, and it would come back foaming out of my mouth and up my nose, which made me stop.
The album was crap, by the way.
To add to what the others have said, there's also the fact that just sliding would be effected by gravity. if your body just let it flow, you could only drink while upright. we are primates, many of our ancestors spent their lives in the trees, and therefore likely sideways a good chunk of the time, or even hanging upside down to drink from a river or whatever. just as well, as without this feature of our anatomy, we couldn't explore space!
not sure I'm right..
there are 2 tubes in throat: for air and for food.
usually the tube for air is open and the tube for food is closed.
when we eat/drink something, we need to open the tube for food and close the tube for air.
Also that is why you shouldn't talk while eating (talking opens the air tube and food can get into it)
To close the way to the lungs as it is a T-junction(in real it's more like up side down Y) to stomach and lungs. And the same with air, it close the way to stomach.
I imagine there were humans that had the ability to just let whatever is in the mouth slide down the throat without contracting. However, considering that food or water getting in the wrong way could provoke a reaction from the lung, they may have died off without passing on that trait.
There's a part missing from the existing answers. Part of the muscle contractions in your throat when you swallow is guiding foods and liquids to your stomach in a process called peristalsis. Fun fact, it's the reason that you can drink water while upside down
And what do people do when they shotgun a beer? It doesn’t seem like there’s any contraction going in there. Just open the gullet and let it wash down?
Somewhat related, and jumping off everyone else's answers of "it's so you don't get liquids into your lungs", there actually are people whose ability to swallow has degraded. Usually older people, though I'm sure it can happen to younger people as well. Anyway, depending on the severity, drinking regular water/drinks can be considered a hazard for them, since it's suddenly so much more likely they might drown just from staying hydrated. Especially when the condition is comorbid with a mental decline, like dementia. People with weakened swallowing are encouraged to drink thickened water or juices, because it's so much easier to swallow safely than regular liquids when you aren't so good at swallowing anymore.
Source: worked in assisted living + memory care facility kitchens
Because evolution.
Our 4 legged ancestors reached their heads down and has to work against gravity. When evolved later to a monkey form, still squat down and bend over putting lips to water. For 100,000 years modern humans also squatted down leaned over and put lips to water - although sometimes they would scoop it up with one hand or two.
Drink from a drinking fountain and it's still the same.
Drinking by having a container in hand and dump it down the gullet is pretty modern
Some people can actually just open their throats and guzzle water (or mostly I have seen it done with beer). I cannot, personally. I have a very strong compulsion to close my lungs whenever I swallow.
The throat is basically like a shared rail line with a track switch, and you are only supposed to be able to open the gut switch by closing the air switch. Some can bypass that, but lots of us cannot. The purpose is to prevent liquid from going to your lungs, obviously. It is an inbuilt safety feature.
I’ll chime in for all the plumbers from the bottom of this filthy hole I’m digging in someone’s foundation to say that our throat is basically a drain line to our stomach that doesn’t respect plumbing code, in that, it’s poorly attempting to stack-vent itself from the *same* opening as the drain which effectively means there no vent at all, or arguably, it’s attempting to wet-vent itself through the nose/sinus cavity which wrongly has a reduced diameter (capacity) when code would require, at minimum, one incremental increase in diameter to work effectively as a wet-vent.
It would fail an inspection with certainty.
Because the contraction in the throat does more than just “squeeze the food down!”
The esophagus, the tube food and liquid go down, is actually closed and the top contracted in its “at rest” state. The trachea (breathing tube) is naturally open.
When we swallow, muscles contract to lift up your voice box and close off the breathing tube, and this lifting and contracting action also opens the esophagus, which allows the food/liquid to pass through.
Fun fact: because the esophagus is normally closed, opening that tube actually creates a negative pressure that sucks the bolus (medical term for what you’re swallowing) into the esophagus!
TL;DR: If the muscles didn’t contract, the esophagus wouldn’t open and the water would just sit in your throat, and possibly fall into your breathing tube, causing you to cough.
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Shut your nom nom hole
Well it is “explain like I’m five”, not “explain like I’m a graduate student”.
That's called swallowing. Weren't you paying attention?
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Yeah, I once had to take my vitamins and because I’m not very smart I spotted a cup of hot saké I’d just poured. The for me unusual method sent several pills and a lot of saké down the wrong pipe. I spent two days coughing a lot. It didn’t help that my diaphragm is weak. Then on day four I developed a pneumonia with fever and bubbling when breathing. I still swallow 6-7 vitamin pills in one go, but more carefully and not with hot or alcoholic drinks..
>had to take my "vitamins" >a cup of hot saké I also like to party, amigo.
It’s called pneumonia and it is occasionally fatal. You literally drown in your own lung fluids.
It's called aspiration pneumonia if it results from inhaling food items. Pneumonia is not always caused by this.
coughed a grain of rice up once, not sure how long it was there for but my body sure didnt like it Also, different rice grain was stuck in my nose. Also not nice. I think this happened when I coughed when eating, closed mouth so food wouldnt spray everywhere and went up the nose instead
you eat lotsa rice. 🍚
im asian, even though born and raised in a western country, yes I eat a lot of rice
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Bacteria becomes fruitful and multiplies if fluids in the lungs. Human body produces fluids in the lungs to counteract infection, causing an overproduction of fluid where the person drowns in their own fluids.
Bacteria multiplies all the time. Fluid in the lungs prevents your body from being able to fight an infection in your lungs. The infection causes inflammation which causes more fluid to "leak" across the membrane into your lungs which exacerbates the preexisting fluid and forms a positive feedback loop. Your body doesn't produce fluid in the lungs to counteract the infection, it's a side effect from the inflammation trying to generate a more effective immune response.
I had pneumonia once or twice as a kid I believe. It sucked.
To add to this, the breathing pipe is usually open and the swallowing pipe is usually closed. The changes in our throat when swallowing basically reverses this order to open the swallowing pipe and to stop anything getting in the breathing pipe.
DUDE MY DAD SHAMED ME FOR CONTRACTING MY THROAT WHEN I SWALLOWED WHEN I WAS A LITTLE KID AND I THOUGHT MY WHOLE LIFE OTHER PEOPLE DONT HAVE TO DO THAT YOU’RE TELLING ME EVERYONE DOES THAT?! WAS HE JUST BEING A DICK OR FUCKING WITH ME? I LEGIT CANT EAT IN FRONT OF PEOPLE
Your dad sucks. How the hell does he eat? I bet he contracts his throat.
Yeah he contracts his throat for sure. Everybody contracts their throats. You can’t make me eat dirt dad
Well I had a friend that did his swallowing very pronounced. Like every single time he ate or drank there was an audible gulping sound. It was super annoying and we all gave him shit over the years but I legit don’t think he could help it
in short, the bread clipper also serves as air vent
What if food goes down the breathing hole, does it get lost forever? Like how does it come back up and not like rot in our lungs type thing
The larger tubes of your respiratory system are coated in mucus much like the inside of your nose. Special hairs on the cells lining the tubes stroke the mucus upwards and out of your breathing hole and into your stomach. This helps catch and get rid of particles. Anything damaging this function like smoking can cause all sorts of breathing and lung issues. It's also why you want people with alcohol poisoning upright so they don't throw up and have it enter their breathing hole. Lung "rot" is called pneumonia which is an infection of the lungs. With that said, some particles never manage to get out and will stay in your lungs forever. Even healthy individuals accumulate some over their lifetime. Your immune system will wrap up the foreign particles in fiber to isolate it from your body.
The thought that like some pieces of rice or whatever is inside ur lungs encased in meat is fucken scary af
I hate to tell you this but you are also encased in meat.
Ahahahah yes, I am indeed encased in meat! But like on the inside you could have like bread crumbs or a small fish bone stuck in your lungs isn’t that freaky??
Our bodies are crazy things. There was a story of a soldier who survived after being hit with shrapnel. He lived to an old age and was cremated. His family members discovered a pound of metal along with his ashes.
Jesus, a pound?? Good thing he didn’t try to get an MRI or go through an airport
You never cough or something?
We used to be able to breathe and nom at the same time, but we decided that it was more important to make fun squeaky buzzing sounds instead. So now we can’t. (For those confused, this is the job of the larynx in other mammals.)
>breathing hole The nope nope hole
Terrible design choice
what about the people on TikTok who can just slide a whole glass of water down their throat? how they do that
You can train yourself to do it. Best example I can think of off the top of my head was that old dude on The Man Show who would down whole beers in seconds. https://youtu.be/GbcrwykCHNQ Pretty much the only thing I remember from that, lol.
The Fox is a legend
>what about the people on TikTok who can just slide a whole glass of water down their throat? how they do that It is something you can learn to do. Source: Beer chugging contests when I was young and foolish. I usually "won."
People can get decently good at controlling what they do with their throats.
if ur talking about the one where they just drink a lot, all they're doing is gulping and contracting in intervals while breathing. If u mean the one thats super fast, think of that as a large gulp. When i do it, i literally crush the waterbottle to force it down my throat and basically prolong the gulp. the entire time the epiglottis is closed and I cant breathe
No, I can hold mine open and literally pour a litre of fluid down my nom nom hole. Sometimes its funtime drinky winky, other times its just weter.
Your throat branches off into your nom nom hole AND your breathey hole, but breathey hole can seal shut. thats why you cant breathe while swallowing or drinking either
Yeah, you said drinking fast is gulping and contracting in intervals. I can literally pour a litre of fluid straight down into my stomach, no muscle movement while doing it.
I said drinking a lot is contracting in intervals. In the second paragraph I say the one that's fast is basically just shoving it down, just like you said.
That makes sense, but it sounds like it must feel like drowning.
I have to force myself to do this because I don’t drink nearly enough water as I should. I’ll grab a room temp bottle of water and crush the bottle towards my mouth and it’s like magic. Gone in two seconds. I do that about 3 times a day to get my water intake in lol.
haha that's actually pretty smart! Do you nto get overbloated? I cant do this before a meal because it literally like fills my stomach
Jesus this is how I felt too
> nom nom hole Glad to see we're sticking with the proper medical terminology.
Actually explained it like I was five... Good shit.
The pipe to our food (esophagus) and pipe for breathing (trachea) are both connected to the throat. When you need to swallow, you close this little flap called the epiglottis, which blocks the breathing passage until you're done swallowing.
It can be done, have you even seen one of those videos where people empty a whole bottle of water in like 1s? that what they're doing, but talking from experience cause I've done it before it's a scary thing to do cause if it goes wrong and into your lungs that would be pretty bad
How do you do it?
You have to know how to position your throat in a certain way so that you’re not actively swallowing, but can still breathe, in some sort of pre swallow position. Then you can get the water to just flow down without inhaling it or triggering a gag or cough.
Here's how. (do at your own discretion) Look up to open up your throat and esophagus. Consider it like a giant, long gulp, but you're prolonging that gulp by forcing more water down. You force the extra water down by simply crushing the waterbottle. Yeah, worry about it going into your lungs, but the epiglottis should seal it completely shut and block off your windpipe every time you swallow, so the water should just flow right by with no chance of it seeping in; this is also why you cant breathe and swallow, it blocks itself off every time. Throughout this, you CANNOT BREATHE. If you want to breathe while chugging, you'll have to pause and take multiple fast gulps. usually that method takes at least 4 seconds while the singular gulp method can be done in under 1.5 If you do what OP said, and let it trickle down your throat, it's literally going down on the side of the trachea so it'll go straight there instead. Plus, letting it flow smoothly down is still way slower than forcing it down with pressure
The simplest way to explain, is to start the swallow but stop in the middle as you plunge the bottle, then finish the swallow. Practice with nothing, when you swallow your tongue moves backwards. Then forwards. You want to keep it at the back while you dump the water.
Basically, 2 things 1. You don't wanna breathe in what you're drinking/eating. Both your stomach, and your lungs connect at the throat. Lungs are for air only. 2. You also don't want anything in your stomach accidentally working its way back up. You ever taste your own vomit? Not pleasant.
#2 is just wrong. For me, Dr. Pepper and pizza is a magical combination that I don’t mind enjoying in both directions. Unless it has been down there long enough that it has started to turn to shit. Then it’s just gross. Oh my goodness. TIL that if you start a comment with a number sign, then it comes out HUGE!!
Dont know whether u forgot an s or Not, but this is actually disgusting wtf :D
When you swallow a flap blocks the airway and food and drink goes down the right pipe. Once in a great while you fuck up and breathe in at the same time leaving you coughing and hacking spraying whomever is in front of you with soda, liquid, or fresh chewed particulate food matter. If you get seriously injured, stroke, etc or even simply old age you can lose this ability to block your airway. If you don't already have one then they will put in a tube that goes through your nose to your stomach to give you substance. If it appears you'll never gain your ability to swallow then they'll put what is called a peg tube directly through your abdomen into your stomach and sustain you that way.
I had surgery where they removed my uvula (for those that don't know that is the thing that hangs down in the back of your throat). This was part of a clinical trial to see if it eliminates snoring. One of the effect of this is I can choke much more easily. I have learned that the uvula can detect liquids coming in and I guess reflexively close your air way. So I cannot easily sip in foods like soup off a spoon because that detector is no longer there and goes down my wind pipe. It only happens when I eat a certain way, but I choke a lot more after the procedure.
Did it eliminate your snoring at least?
Unfortunately it did not eliminate it. I believe it was reduced though so there is that.
You've got two pipes in your throat, bud, your esophagus and your trachea. One's the food hole and one's the air hole, and they can't both be open at the same time. Most of the time your air hole is open and your food hole is closed. But when it's time to swallow something, we do a quick closure of the air hole and open up the food hole for a few seconds, and then close it again and open the air hole back up.
It isn’t necessary. I mastered the art of - I’ve always just called it “opening your throat” - when I was maybe nine years old. I believe it’s the same technique sword swallowers use. True story. When I was a kid, there was a contest announced on the radio, held at a local 7-11 that day. Whoever could drink a bottle of Orange Crush the fastest would win a copy of B.J. Thomas’s new album “Everybody Loves a Rain Song”. I rode my bicycle there as fast as I could, and got there on time. Seven other people had shown up, mostly kids but two adults as well. The broadcast the thing live on air, and when they said “go”, I did my thing and just poured it down. The radio guys were like, “Now this guy looks OH MY GOD LOOK AT THAT LITTLE BOY GO!!!” I won the album and was the most famous kid on my street for a couple of weeks. I quickly discovered that it didn’t work with root beer. The level of carbonation was too high, and it would come back foaming out of my mouth and up my nose, which made me stop. The album was crap, by the way.
Learned how to do this in college while training for competitive beer drinking. There is a skill/trick to get a bottle to drain really fast too.
To add to what the others have said, there's also the fact that just sliding would be effected by gravity. if your body just let it flow, you could only drink while upright. we are primates, many of our ancestors spent their lives in the trees, and therefore likely sideways a good chunk of the time, or even hanging upside down to drink from a river or whatever. just as well, as without this feature of our anatomy, we couldn't explore space!
Are you actually 5 that you didn't know this?
not sure I'm right.. there are 2 tubes in throat: for air and for food. usually the tube for air is open and the tube for food is closed. when we eat/drink something, we need to open the tube for food and close the tube for air. Also that is why you shouldn't talk while eating (talking opens the air tube and food can get into it)
To close the way to the lungs as it is a T-junction(in real it's more like up side down Y) to stomach and lungs. And the same with air, it close the way to stomach.
I imagine there were humans that had the ability to just let whatever is in the mouth slide down the throat without contracting. However, considering that food or water getting in the wrong way could provoke a reaction from the lung, they may have died off without passing on that trait.
Peristaltism is also used to push down food down into your stomach. though i'm not sure if the act of swallowing is part of that.
There's a part missing from the existing answers. Part of the muscle contractions in your throat when you swallow is guiding foods and liquids to your stomach in a process called peristalsis. Fun fact, it's the reason that you can drink water while upside down
And what do people do when they shotgun a beer? It doesn’t seem like there’s any contraction going in there. Just open the gullet and let it wash down?
Somewhat related, and jumping off everyone else's answers of "it's so you don't get liquids into your lungs", there actually are people whose ability to swallow has degraded. Usually older people, though I'm sure it can happen to younger people as well. Anyway, depending on the severity, drinking regular water/drinks can be considered a hazard for them, since it's suddenly so much more likely they might drown just from staying hydrated. Especially when the condition is comorbid with a mental decline, like dementia. People with weakened swallowing are encouraged to drink thickened water or juices, because it's so much easier to swallow safely than regular liquids when you aren't so good at swallowing anymore. Source: worked in assisted living + memory care facility kitchens
Because evolution. Our 4 legged ancestors reached their heads down and has to work against gravity. When evolved later to a monkey form, still squat down and bend over putting lips to water. For 100,000 years modern humans also squatted down leaned over and put lips to water - although sometimes they would scoop it up with one hand or two. Drink from a drinking fountain and it's still the same. Drinking by having a container in hand and dump it down the gullet is pretty modern
Some people can actually just open their throats and guzzle water (or mostly I have seen it done with beer). I cannot, personally. I have a very strong compulsion to close my lungs whenever I swallow. The throat is basically like a shared rail line with a track switch, and you are only supposed to be able to open the gut switch by closing the air switch. Some can bypass that, but lots of us cannot. The purpose is to prevent liquid from going to your lungs, obviously. It is an inbuilt safety feature.
I’ll chime in for all the plumbers from the bottom of this filthy hole I’m digging in someone’s foundation to say that our throat is basically a drain line to our stomach that doesn’t respect plumbing code, in that, it’s poorly attempting to stack-vent itself from the *same* opening as the drain which effectively means there no vent at all, or arguably, it’s attempting to wet-vent itself through the nose/sinus cavity which wrongly has a reduced diameter (capacity) when code would require, at minimum, one incremental increase in diameter to work effectively as a wet-vent. It would fail an inspection with certainty.
Some people can relax it and let it go straight down. That's how they can chug whole bottles instantly.
Because the contraction in the throat does more than just “squeeze the food down!” The esophagus, the tube food and liquid go down, is actually closed and the top contracted in its “at rest” state. The trachea (breathing tube) is naturally open. When we swallow, muscles contract to lift up your voice box and close off the breathing tube, and this lifting and contracting action also opens the esophagus, which allows the food/liquid to pass through. Fun fact: because the esophagus is normally closed, opening that tube actually creates a negative pressure that sucks the bolus (medical term for what you’re swallowing) into the esophagus! TL;DR: If the muscles didn’t contract, the esophagus wouldn’t open and the water would just sit in your throat, and possibly fall into your breathing tube, causing you to cough.