![]() It is normal for your swallowing muscles to feel tired afterwards and need a rest. Imagine you are swallowing a golf ball! Start with 2 sets of 10 repetitions and build it from there. It is like doing an ordinary swallow, but you must squeeze your tongue and throat muscles as hard as you can, pushing your tongue into the back of your soft palate. This exercise is aimed at improving the contraction of your throat muscles. If safe to do so, this exercise can also be done with food. Your speech pathologist can make sure you are doing this properly with biofeedback such as videofluoroscopy. To do this exercise, keep your Adam’s apple elevated for about 2-5 seconds each time. Feel the Adam’s apple (part of the larynx or voice box) move up then down. Place your fingers on your Adam’s apple (the hard area halfway down the front of your neck) and swallow your saliva. This exercise is aimed at prolonging the upward movement of the voice box (larynx) and keep the top of your oesophagus (the cricopharyngeus) open for longer. This exercise is not done with food in your mouth. ![]() It is normal to feel muscle fatigue (but not pain) after this exercise. This exercise can be done up to 3 times per day, 5 days per week (2 rest days in between).Īs you improve, you can prolong the duration of each head lift and increase the number of repetitions. Hold your head for up to 1 minute (no longer), then relax for a minute. While you do this, keep your shoulders on the floor/bed. To do this exercise, lie flat on your back and raise your head as though you were trying to fixate your gaze on your toes. This exercise aims to strengthen your throat muscles to improve swallowing. Some of these exercises may include Shaker Exercise Your Speech Pathologist is a good person to help you decide which exercises will be beneficial for you. It is important to only do exercises specific to your swallowing problem as some exercises can make swallowing function worse. Therapies designed to improve swallowing are focused on strengthening muscles and building coordination of the nerves and muscles involved in swallowing. While there is no quick fix, and no one exercise to cure dysphagia, it is generally understood that basic neuroplasticity principals such as use it or lose it, muscle loading intensity and specificity (practising the act of swallowing itself) is a good place to start to get swallowing back on track.Īt Melbourne Swallow Analysis Centre, we keep up to date with the latest research in dysphagia rehabilitation and swallowing exercises and develop a program tailored to the problem you are having. Whilst we are getting better at diagnosing the cause of the problem, rehabilitating swallowing function is more complicated. Swallowing can be damaged by neurological injury, head and neck cancers, structural changes and other causes. Swallowing is actually quite a complicated and coordinated manoeuvre that involves many muscles and nerves. ![]() That is, until it goes wrong and you end up with a problem known as dysphagia. For most of us, swallowing is an automatic act that we don’t put much thought into.
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