Parkinson's Drooling When You Talk: Why It Happens and How to Stop It

You wipe, and by the time you are wiping, your mouth is already full. If you have Parkinson's and you drool when you talk, you have probably been told you are making too much saliva. You are not. Talking does not cause the drooling. Talking exposes it. This page explains why, gives you a five-second way to prove it sitting where you are, and shows you the one move that changes it.

This page is for the person with Parkinson's and for whoever sits across the table from them. Both of you have a job in this.

I am a speech-language pathologist with more than ten years of clinical experience, and drooling and swallowing are what I have spent years on.

Where the saliva actually comes from

Saliva is made slowly and continuously all day. Normally your mouth clears itself, because you swallow without thinking hundreds of times a day. In Parkinson's, that automatic swallow happens less often. Not never. Less. So saliva sits in your mouth longer than it used to. It builds until it finds the corner of your mouth.

Why talking is where it shows

Here is the piece nobody explains. While you are talking, you cannot swallow. Nobody can. Your wife is not drooling right now. Neither am I. But if either of us had a mouthful of saliva when we started a sentence, it would still be there at the end of it, because nothing drains mid-sentence.

That is what comes out when you talk. Not new saliva. Old saliva that never got swallowed before you opened your mouth. Talking does not cause it. Talking exposes it.

Prove it in five seconds

Try this now. Start saying a word, any word, and in the middle of it, swallow. You cannot. The word stops. That is the whole mechanism, and you just felt it. If the problem were too much saliva, that would not matter. But the problem is that the whole time you are talking, nothing can go down, so whatever was already there comes out.

And this is not only when you are talking. Even when you are just listening, the same clock is running.

What wiping turns into

Here is what happens at the table. You feel it coming. You wipe. What got out is gone from the corner of your mouth, and every bit that is still in there is exactly where it was. So the next one is already on its way.

After enough of that, you stop wiping and start holding. Lips tight, chin down. You cannot hold saliva in and talk at the same time, and you are not really listening either. So you go quiet.

Then you start deciding which invitations are worth it. Getting ready, the drive, sitting down, all for the thirty minutes you get before it shows and you leave. More and more, the answer is no. Not talking means you start wondering why you are even there, and that is when you leave.

Every one of those was the reasonable move with the strategies you had. Wipe it away once it got out, or hold it in so it would not. Nobody told you there was a third option.

I wrote the mechanism and the free first step in a short guide at www.everydayslp.org. It takes about five minutes and there is nothing to buy.

The one move: wipe, then swallow

The next time you wipe, swallow. The wipe is the cue, not the fix. Your hand is already moving, your mouth is already full. Let the wipe be the trigger for a swallow. Wipe, then swallow, every time.

Over days the two start to feel like one motion. Over weeks, many people notice the swallow starting to arrive before the hand does. That is the automatic swallow coming back online.

If you are the one across the table

Every now and then you will notice it looks like he is holding the saliva in. Chin drops a little, lips go tight, and he stops talking. He has not drifted off. His mouth is full, and if he opens it, saliva comes out.

Do not fill the silence. Do not hand him the napkin. Say one word: swallow.

Early on, you will have to remind him. That is fine. You are the cue until the wipe becomes the cue.

Why "just swallow it" has never worked

You have probably been told to just swallow. It is not a knowledge problem. You know how to swallow. It is a trigger problem. Telling someone to swallow more asks them to think about swallowing all day, and nobody can hold a thought all day. Wipe-then-swallow works because it does not ask you to remember. It attaches the swallow to something you are already doing.

Wipe-then-swallow is the free version, and it is the version you have to think about every time. There is a fuller version that attaches swallowing to the events in your day that used to trigger it automatically, so it runs in the background again and you go back to never thinking about when to swallow. That is what I teach in The Drooling Reset Private Program, a short education program delivered over three calls. It is education, not therapy, and it is not a substitute for a swallowing evaluation. You can find out whether it fits at www.everydayslp.org/fit-call.

When this is not the right page for you

If any of these are true, see your physician or a speech-language pathologist before trying anything here:

You cough or choke during meals or when drinking

Your voice sounds wet or gurgly after you swallow

You have had pneumonia, or a doctor has mentioned aspiration

You are losing weight without trying

Those are signs the swallow itself may not be safe, and that is a different problem with a different answer.

So here is the whole thing

You do not make too much saliva. You can still swallow it. You are not, because the automatic swallow fires less often, and while you are talking nothing can go down at all. Wiping clears what escaped and leaves the rest. Holding costs you the conversation. Wipe, then swallow. And the person across the table has one word.

Parkinson's takes so many things. This does not have to be one of them.

Frequently asked questions

This page is education, not medical advice. It is not a substitute for an evaluation by your own speech-language pathologist or physician. Robert is a speech-language pathologist (M.S., CCC-SLP) with more than ten years of clinical experience. EverydaySLP is where he puts the explanations his clients could never find anywhere else.