You are reading Syncope, do you know that you can avoid fainting by contracting your leg and arm muscles?

Heart and cardiovascular system

Syncope, do you know that you can avoid fainting by contracting your leg and arm muscles?

February 23, 2018

 

Contracting the muscles of the legs and arms when the symptoms of syncope occur – explains Dr. Raffaello Furlan, Head of the Medical Clinical Operating Unit at the Humanitas Clinical Institute – helps to activate the nerve pressure reflexes directed to the heart, which are abruptly interrupted in the syncope. The muscle contraction, therefore, favors a transitory increase in pressure that, in general, allows the subject to overcome the crisis without losing consciousness. Cases of benign syncope, are characterized by a fainting that can happen to both young and old people, for profoundly different reasons. However, in all patients there is a shared transient and short-lived loss of knowledge and muscle tone that leads the subject to fall to the ground. The sudden interruption of the nerve activity directed to the heart, which causes a slowing of the heartbeat and a drop in pressure, can be avoided with “isometric back-pressure” techniques, which involve muscular contractions of the legs and arms that help to reduce or, in some cases, resolve pre-syncope symptoms such as nausea, sweating, feeling faint, dizziness, and alterations in vision.

 

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