The story teaser achieved my immediate curious attention and I quickly turned to Page 10 to read about the proper method to use when swallowing medications.
As a child I had an aversion to swallowing anything that I surmised would taste nasty or that would stick in that pathway that led to the area of the body that needed some medical assistance. A spoon of Wild Strawberry was hidden in the disgusting oatmeal, under the brown sugar, but I knew it was there. And the gob of Cod Liver Oil was sent off with a hefty gulp of milk.
Once I reached a certain age I learned that those tiny Aspirin pills should not be chewed or allowed to dissolve on the tongue. Thus began the ritual of drowning pills with gallons of liquids, throwing my head back and aiming the medicine straight to the back of my throat with the hope it would end where it would do the most good.
Pills larger than a baby Aspirin or those that aren’t gel caps continue to create problems for me, not just with taste, but with my ability to swallow properly so the cure for what ails me doesn’t hang around in my throat.
Thus the headline about learning the proper way to swallow pills caught my eye and I read to learn what I had been doing incorrectly. It seems that occasionally I have been letting my leftist leanings interfere with the absorption of the pill in my intestine.
A computational study at John Hopkins University revealed that leaning to one’s right side will speed the pill’s journey and absorption by about 13 minutes. In contrast, leaning to the left delays the healing process by more than an hour.
And in hospital, after the nurse has dropped off the regular regime of medications, the patient should swallow then turn onto one’s right side — no mention is made of how to do that if one is attached to other life-saving devices and equipment but maybe that will be solved in the next phase of the study, when more is known about computation.
The story was careful to explain that the right side works best because most stomachs hook in that direction and therefore the path is clear, with no roadblocks to the intestines. Even proper posture when sitting or standing aids in the pill getting to its most desirable location.
In the evening I tend to take my single pill while I’m seated. I promise not to hunch over the computer while I’m involved in the procedure.
After a good night’s sleep and I’m standing in the kitchen looking out the window, pill in one hand and bottled water in the other, I will attempt to lean toward the north wall which will be on my right hand side as I look out the window.
I am pleased that Housemate is unlikely to see me leaning at a 45 degree angle, standing there in my night shirt and gagging down a medicinal pill that’s supposed to relieve a pain in the extremities of my body.
I can’t help but wonder, if I’ve just eaten a meal of bacon and eggs, how that pill finds a pathway through all that food, whether I lean to the left or right.
If someone looks through the window and sees me leaning, hopefully they will think I’m involved in some sort of early morning yoga exercise and report to neighbours how much they admire my dedication to a healthy body.
They will never know that I likely have a pill caught in my throat.
Joyce Walter can be reached at [email protected].
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
