**3. The physiology of the swallow**

This is a brief description of the four different physiological phases of the swallowing process, the following section will look at the neurology of the swallow in detail [5, 25].

During a day, a normal person swallows approximately 600 times: 350 of these are during the day, 200 when eating or drinking, and 50 times when asleep. We use our voluntary muscles to transfer food to our mouths and chew it, after this our reflexive systems take over to complete the swallow unconsciously. When we swallow whilst asleep it is, of course, an entirely reflexive process.
