Fizzy Drinks for Dysphagia are great. Well that’s what I thought. I had no evidence for it.

It just seemed logical.

Fortunately, just this week I discovered two pieces of independent research that supports this idea:

Fizzy drinks by their nature have an extra dimension. The bubbles put a pleasant tingling sensation on your tongue; leave a pleasant after taste and feel lighter to swallow.

The problem was trying to make them safer to swallow and finding a reliable way to make them to a specific consistency.

When you add ordinary thickeners to fizzy drinks they produce a volcano of undrinkable froth. It can only be avoided by beating all the bubbles out of a fizzy drink before adding the thickener.

However, the drinker is left facing a very sweet, lumpy drink; and that defeats the object of using a fizzy drink in the first place!

We’ve changed that forever,

Using our Slõ Fizzy sachet any fizzy/carbonated drink can be changed to the specific, desired consistency. The look good and taste like ordinary fizzy drinks – they just flow Slõwly.

So now we’ve made that possible, why not use them to help hydrate those with dysphagia?

Fizzy drinks are made with water and they contain sugar. For those with limited oral intake every sip counts and a small amount of sugar can be helpful.

Combine this with the findings above demonstrating that those with dysphagia can benefit from consuming fizzy drinks, there are huge advantages to incorporating them into nutritional regimes.

Once you accept that fizzy drink; tonic water, sparkling water etc. can be made safer to swallow , a whole new world opens up for those with dysphagia of legal drinking age. They can change the carbonated drinks they want into Slõ Drinks…Slõ Cider, Slõ Beer, Slõ Lager or Slõ Bubbly!

So what do you think? Should dysphagia patients be offered fizzy drinks?

Mathew Done: Founder of Slõ Drinks