Causes of Dry Throat – Dr. Sreenivasa Murthy T M

Dry throat is a symptom with which patients can present for a mistaken meaning other symptoms, they will not be able to tell us what exactly their feeling and hence the cell is a dry throat. When somebody says their throat is dry means they become thirsty, they want to drink water to get some relief. Patients say that they have dry throat but they can actually be having an infection in the throat like pharyngitis, it’ll be sore. Some patients will have reflux disease which will be causing some soreness in the throat. Our throats lubricated by secretions, these are produced either in the nose in the form of mucus which can Trickle down constantly from the nose and sinuses into the stomach, which happens in every normal human being to the extent of between 1 to 1.5 litres per day and similar amount of saliva which is produce in the oral cavity from the salivary gland, which we tend to swallow when we speak or eat. So that both these Fluids tend to lubricate mouth, tongue, the back portion of throat and the throat in the hole. Now whenever there is a discrepancy or some sort of arrangement in production of the Fluids or the drying up off the fluids then you can have a dry throat. Supposing you have a nasal obstructions, you have a cold or your nose get blocked very frequently, then without your knowledge you’ll be actually breathing through the mouth. Now when dry air goes through the mouth it tends to dry of saliva more quickly than nasal secretions which causes dry throat. So dry throat means an indirect evidence of nasal obstruction, you might be having dry throat in the night mean that you are you might be a snower, you might be an obligatory mouth breather and will be snoring and hence you can have dry throat. You can also have dry throat especially in the elderly people who are on multiple medications, many of the medications have Side Effects, drugs which are like amitriptyline which is a tricyclic antidepressant or people who are hypertensive can have dry throat. Very rarely you pick up personally diabetic patient because the present with dry throat and say my throat gets very dry and I need to drink water very frequently and I also pass urine very frequently, this can be a very unusual presentation but they can be picked up.