4 ms·

How easy is it to tell the difference between an elevated heartbeat due to imminent drowning, and an elevated heartbeat due to having fun?

• trhway 11y ago
  just hold your breath for couple minutes (or even better - ask somebody physically stronger to "help" you to keep the plastic bag over you head to make sure that you make the time :) and i think you'll learn the difference. There is an extremely huge biological difference between "panic" and "fun/excitement". Specifically to drowning there is also oxygen blood content difference - harder to detect from outside, yet an unmistakable indicator.
  • jacquesm 11y ago
    > just hold your breath for couple minutes (or even better - ask somebody physically stronger to "help" you to keep the plastic bag over you head to make sure that you make the time :) and i think you'll learn the difference. That could easily kill someone, this is totally crazy advice.
    • trhway 11y ago
      man, I've put a smile there for a reason... The "help" is brought up as a device to illustrate the difference between at-will fun excitement and against-will panic. No sane person would be forcing another to not breath ( until of course it is a part of the job, ie. like police - chockholding into submission - or military investigators - waterboarding and the like) Edit: to "mdup" below - i've specifically mentioned "until of course it is a part of the job" above - the major aspect of Milgram experiment was to present to the experiment subjects the shock delivery as a "duty".
      • mdup 11y ago
        Would you say no sane person would inflict 450-volt electric shocks to someone else? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
    • Dylan16807 11y ago
      It could? I mean it's obviously a terrible idea, but how is forcing someone to hold a full breath for two minutes going to cause them actual major harm? Can oxygen levels actually drop dangerously low that fast? People can hold their breath for that long with barely any setup or practice. Plus having a plastic bag to breathe in and out of should remove a lot of the discomfort and panic since mechanically you're still breathing. Again, not saying it's a good idea, but the idea that it would kill someone suggests that I'm missing something I should know.
      • Nadya 11y ago
        Very similar to blackout. [0] Depriving the brain of oxygen, in general, is a terrible idea and yes it can kill you. Regardless if it is in a semi-controlled setting and if the intent isn't to continue until you black out but only until you begin breathing in a panic it's still very dangerous. [1] [0] http://www.today.com/parents/kids-are-passing-out-deadly-high-2D80555127 http://www.today.com/parents/kids-are-passing-out-deadly-hig... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_hypoxia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_hypoxia
        • Dylan16807 11y ago
          Well your first link reads like media extrapolating a nationwide trend from next to nothing, and only really talks about the danger of doing it to yourself. The second link doesn't mention timing except the standard 'five minutes' thing, while holding your breath for two minutes is probably going to lead to somewhere between 60 and 0 seconds of oxygen deprivation. So I'm still unsure where the risk of dying comes from.
          • jacquesm 11y ago
            > ask somebody physically stronger to "help" you to keep the plastic bag over you head to make sure that you make the time
            • Dylan16807 11y ago
  • outworlder 11y ago
    Not going to mention the dangerous advice, already covered by another comment. I'd like to mention this though: > Specifically to drowning there is also oxygen blood content difference - harder to detect from outside, yet an unmistakable indicator. CO2 buildup should be a more reliable indicator.
• ska 11y ago
  Drowning can drop heart rate also. I suspect it isn't as simple to detect with low false positives as suggested.