Pneumonia due to potentially inhaling toothpaste?
I was brushing my teeth the day before yesterday in a completely sober, alert and conscious state of mind (young male) before going to bed, when suddenly there was an extremely loud, really unnerving sound near-by. As a result of it being so sudden and disturbing, my toothbrush slipped, my heartbeat and fast breathing were clearly over the top because of this intense spontaneous sound interfering with routine normal toothbrushing. So for almost 10 seconds the toothbrush with paste on it was in my mouth while my breathing and heartbeat were so immense I was trying to calm down and couldn’t even move toothbrush. Then I spit it all out, rinsed the mouth and took a cup of tea to relax, since it was really stressful due to surprise effect, but I thought there won’t be negative health effects.
However, both yesterday and still today I feel unpleasant stuff in my throat (even though I’m certain I didn’t swallow the toothpaste) and some strange aches from time to time near the chest. While researching online, I stumbled upon some scientific articles about aspiration pneumonia and, frankly, got rather scared, because I’m afraid I might have accidentally inhaled some toothpaste due to my fast breathing, hyperventilation and heartbeat which were immediately triggered for 10 seconds after that unexpected occurrence while brushing…
Will be grateful if you can either dispel my fears about aspiration pneumonia or any other health problems which might (not) happen due to this stressful toothbrushing event, or confirm otherwise and share some advice from personal knowledge/experience.
Huge thanks in advance!
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@seekingunderstanding
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Regarding aspiration pneumonia- very doubtful that you will show any symptoms of aspiration pneumonia.
If any toothpaste liquid was heading for your trachea/ bronchi airway, the epiglottis would close off the trachea, preventing anything from entering.
Aspiration pneumonia is also more common with people who have other serious illnesses.
If you aspirated anything you would have a lot of cough, plus you would start feeling sick. If anything like that happens, please have a doctor check you.
Personally, I have felt like something went down the wrong pipe and had continuous cough until everything calms down. I’m careless eating at times.
My doctor was worried that one of my rejections was caused by aspirating into my lungs. However, it would be caused by acid reflux and not something going down. It turned out that nothing is coming up so this was not the cause of my rejections. From my understanding, aspiration into the lungs is usually caused by the acid or food coming back up from your stomach.