• Question: why do people faint ??

    Asked by anon-200540 to Rosemary, Oliver, Leigh, Jordan, Hannah, David on 6 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Oliver Gordon

      Oliver Gordon answered on 6 Mar 2019:


      I spoke with my GP and researched this quite a bit last year – I managed to faint right outside a university room with 150 people in it right before they were going to come out. My timing was, as always, perfect! One of the nice things about being a researcher is you feel comfortable researching things – it certainly helped while I was waiting for my appointment!
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      Anyway, fainting is partly the bodies way of protecting itself. It’s normally caused by low blood pressure to the brain, or a lack of blood to the brain, or basically anything that stops the brain from getting oxygen to it. It goes “crikey, I’m in trouble here. I don’t know where my resources are, but I know I need to make sure whatever is left goes to all my vital organs like heart, lungs, etc. I’m not wasting energy thinking!” If you’ve ever had a powercut while using a computer, it boots into recovery mode. It’s kind of the bodies equivalent!
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      It’s also quite useful – fainting also triggers your heart to beat faster and your lungs to breath faster. Plus, because you’ll now probably be lying flat on the floor, the heart has to work less hard to get that blood to your brain, and resume normal service.
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      Fainting isn’t a fluke – it’s evolution keeping you alive.
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      Also, fun fact(s) – fainting doesn’t have to mean anything is wrong with you (they didn’t seem particularly worried about me!), and isn’t like a cartoon – you don’t go all stiff. You just go limp and flop to the floor.
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      Having said all that, I don’t recommend fainting!

    • Photo: David Walker-Sünderhauf

      David Walker-Sünderhauf answered on 12 Mar 2019:


      Just wanted to say really interesting answer from Oliver, I definitely just learnt something 🙂

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