Mouse experiments reveal the brain-heart connections that cause fainting
nature.com
nature.com
Fainted for the first time, because of a nose bleed, in front of my high school physics class, literally.
My wife has had to these for years. The only treatment we’ve found helpful is transcutaneous vagus nerve stimulation (tVNS) with a tool like a Neuvana Xen - or you can go the expensive prescription route. We were actually treating her gastroparesis with this and found that modulating the signal worked for all sorts of misfirings - like when getting shots.
TLDR: You can’t avoid them, but you can mitigate them by sitting in a chair, leaning back, and bringing your feet closer to your heart. If anyone is watching, it just looks like you are trying out the recline function of the chair. If your Vagus Nerve issues are bad, you can try tVNS (under the supervision of your doctor, of course).
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/21778-nose
There is a number of sinus decongesting massage moves that work well. These use pressure and blood flow to force the liquid out of your sinuses and then uses gravity to take it away. I use these to help relieve sinus pressure.
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/sinus-massage/
But, to answer the original question, this is only related tangentially. Laying down, picking up your feet, and breathing generates a signal in your Vagus Nerve complex that essentially overrides the fainting signal. It’s still there, but you’ve added a new stronger signal to dominate the nerve and the fainting signal starts to fade. Simple meditative breathing does the same, but usually not fast or strong enough to stop you from syncope.
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/what-does-the-vagus-nerve...
Oh, no; the motion I'm referring to doesn't involve moving my head at all. I meant that I raise my right knee while balancing on my left leg, to scrub my right calf by bringing it into reach. (Is this not how most people clean their legs in the shower?) Doing this — and holding the pose for at least a few seconds — almost always unplugs my right sinus. (And only the right sinus. Have to raise my left leg to unplug my left sinus!)
Luckily I only fainted a few times in my life but the last one was most vivid as in some time had clearly passed and I was injured. That scares me now thinking under what circumstances it could happen again.
It's been 2 years since my last episode and now I don't feel that anxious anymore, but it feels like there is something in the back of my mind telling me that it can happen again.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/fainting.html
This is no doubt because of the possibility of such events.
My gut feeling is that there is a refractory period but it would still feel like shit because it takes time until my blood pressure returns to normal.
100 students participated in the blood tests out of which I think atleast 4 fainted. The test was done by just piercing a small needle, & not the actual extraction of large amount of blood. The analogy is slightly different than a vaccine shot, but nonetheless the setup is same by using needle.
Also if I pass a crisis without fainting, I get immunity for a good while
I give blood and get vaccinations easily. But yes, this Botox was rather painful so maybe “needle shock”
So I figured out watching blood come out of me causes me to feel faint, so I don't watch. I've seen blood and other person's blood, but my blood seems to be some special case.
What I've figured out is - if you are bleeding, maybe your brain helps you collapse to the ground in a faint, where you will be level, have a low heart rate, and not bleed out all your blood through a wound.
Could this be the evolutionary reason we faint at the sight of our own blood?
Dropping on the floor is not very helpful. It's never a good time to just collapse and risk crashing your head on a rock.
So, there must be some other things at play here.
Very cool. I did not check to see if the authors of this paper are affiialted, but reserchers contributing to data at the NeMO Archive (https://nemoarchive.org/) have recently discovered over 3000 different types of cells in the brain, most of which are in the brain stem. This has added a whole new layer of complexity to explore.
Exciting times to be involved in neuroscience!
On the other hand, my mother who could be actively busy in the kitchen and talking to me across the room behind her, then if I'm standing close behind her as she turns around surprised to see me standing there, will fall flat on her ass. She doesn't pass out but it's definitely something along the lines of the mechanism described here.
Looking up the relationship of mg sodium vs mmol: To convert mmol to mg of sodium, chloride, or of sodium chloride, multiply mmol by 23, 35.5, or 58.5 (the molecular weights of sodium, chloride, and sodium chloride), respectively. So 150 and 250 mmol of sodium is 8775-14625 mg sodium or 4.4-7.3 times the normal daily recommended amount.
This makes sense now that one morning I was feeling off and I did the usual things like eat something, drink water, even some coffee. The only thing that fixed it was eating a bag of chips.
It was an extremely interesting moment of observing conscious awareness that I think about all the time.
There's also a "gradual fade-to-white" fainting (vasovagal syncope).
Never fainted but seconds after that I’ve completely lost hearing then tunnel vision started kicking in, and I was 100% certain I’m going to die.
I guess it was the needle shock, eh? The hearing loss was so peculiar though, I remember yelling like crazy and couldn’t even hear my own voice. Scary.
If someone passes out in a chair, try and gently lie them down on the ground (obviously assuming it's a safe place...) - I've had a few patients who passed out in an airplane seat, and they are often out for much longer with much slower recovery than those who just crumple to the ground and end up horizontal.
It was my own fault I suppose, cleaning so far from the rack, but I wondered what mechanism exactly led to that moment. If I took the bar straight from the rack to my shoulders I could walk around with it no problem, but the clean motion itself probably caused those neurons to activate.