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To: Flying Circus
Who "taught" you the swallow reflex?
8 posted on 11/19/2003 1:29:30 PM PST by ArneFufkin
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To: ArneFufkin
No one. However eating and swallowing are a different class of behaviors than breathing. I need to make a voluntary decision to get food, chew and after an appropriate amount of time swallow. Breathing, on the other hand, is something happens without any decisions on my part to make it happen.

The mechanisms for eating are instinctive, but the steps to doing them require I be conscious and physically able to take the required actions. For any conscious effort I make to change my breathing, I must fight against the automatic drives of my body.

If I decide to stop breathing, as soon as I pass out my lungs go right back to breating on its own. If I choose to stop eating, I will not eat again until I decide to. If I pass out from thirst or hunger I will die where I lay (barring the intercession of someone else).

I do not eat asleep, but when we sleep, we don't stop breathing.

For every human being there is a period in our lives when we are dependent on another to take many of the steps for us to eat and drink or we would die of thirst or starvation. Within moments of birth babies begin breathing on their own or they are in serious trouble. If parents don't feel their children, they are legally responsible for neglect. If a child stops breathing, parents are only legaly negligent if by direct action, or knowing inaction they allowed the child to stop breathing.
10 posted on 11/19/2003 2:05:24 PM PST by Flying Circus (As you do pray, so you do believe)
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