What is tongue swallowing in football?

Tongue swallowing is not uncommon in sports. So what is tongue swallowing, what is tongue swallowing in football? Let’s learn about this dangerous phenomenon in the article below.

What is tongue swallowing?

According to medicine, tongue swallowing is the folk name for the phenomenon of “tongue receding or tongue muscle mass”.

This tongue swallowing occurs when a person is unconscious, the tongue muscle relaxes, drops and can obstruct the airway, leading to difficulty breathing, especially when the victim is in the supine position. At that time, if not treated promptly, it can cause death.

This phenomenon often occurs with people with epilepsy, people with sleep apnea syndrome … or with strong collision cases, especially collisions in sports such as football.

What to do when a person has a seizure, the risk of “swallowing the tongue”?

• Keep a space large enough for the person having a seizure, and remove objects that could cause injury.
• Keep distance between people around you and the person having a seizure.
• Place a soft object under the convulsing person’s head to prevent the risk of head injury during a seizure.
• Loosen clothing around the neck, jewelry, tie so that the victim does not wrap tightly around the neck causing suffocation.
• Do not put anything in the victim’s mouth.
• Absolutely do not squeeze lemon into the victim’s mouth to prevent aspiration into the lungs, causing pneumonia and respiratory failure.
• Record the duration of the seizure if possible.
• When the patient has stopped convulsing, gently turn the patient to lie on their side so that the mucus will drain out of the mouth, opening the airway.
• Do not press down on the patient to avoid injury to the convulsive person.
• After the convulsive person regains consciousness, monitoring should continue until they are sure of recovery.

Hopefully, through the above article, you have understood what “tongue swallow” is and how to handle when a person has a seizure who has the ability to “swallow the tongue”.