What happens if food or water gets in your lungs?

When food, drink, or stomach contents make their way into your lungs, they can damage the tissues there. The damage can sometimes be severe. Aspiration also increases your risk of pneumonia. This is an infection of the lungs that causes fluid to build up in the lungs.

What happens if you swallow water down your windpipe?

Pulmonary aspiration is the medical term for a person accidentally inhaling an object or fluid into their windpipe and lungs. This can lead to coughing, difficulty breathing, discomfort, and sometimes choking.

What should you do if food gets in your windpipe?

Ways to remove food stuck in throat

1. The ‘Coca-Cola’ trick. Research suggests that drinking a can of Coke, or another carbonated beverage, can help dislodge food stuck in the esophagus.
2. Simethicone.
3. Water.
4. A moist piece of food.
5. Alka-Seltzer or baking soda.
6. Butter.
7. Wait it out.

How do you clear your windpipe?

A person who cannot speak, cough, or breathe may require the Heimlich maneuver. This procedure, also known as abdominal thrusts, involves forcefully applying pressure to the abdomen to dislodge a blockage in the windpipe.

What happens when your food goes down the wrong pipe?

What Happens When Your Food Goes ‘Down The Wrong Pipe’ 1 After you’re done chewing, that’s where the “pipes” come in. 2 Liquids are trickier than solid food. 3 Sometimes, food is just stuck in the right “pipe.” Discomfort while swallowing can also be caused when food goes down the esophagus like it’s supposed to — it’s that feeling

What does it mean when something goes down the wrong pipe?

Since your mouth has to do double-duty — breathing air in and out and swallowing food — things don’t always run smoothly. When somebody feels like something went down the wrong pipe, it usually means that it went into his or her trachea, a process known as aspiration.

Why can’t water go down the airway?

Water going down the airway is not the same as swallowing down the esophagus. Other stuff going into the airway can block it or get hung up at the epiglottis (which is the flap that normally guards the airway while you’re swallowing).

What happens if you swallow a lot of water?

Normally, fluid going into your larynx triggers the choking reflex. Your body will gag the offending fluid out of your throat. If some water does get through that and enters your lungs, the amount will be small and usually, in a sound body, will absorb through the alveoli into the blood.