May 1, 2024 • 11 mins
Getting the wind knocked out of you is scary, but passes quickly. Learn exactly what's happening with all that today.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and
there's Chuck and it's just us. But we're going to
do it no problem. Everybody just calmed down.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Just the short stuff, that's right. I thought about getting
one together about this topic because my daughter Ruby got
the wind knocked out of her for the first time,
oh no, a couple of weeks ago and told me
about it. I wasn't there when it happened. It happened
at school, and she said it was scary, and I
was like, hey, listen, kiddo, that happened to me. I
(00:32):
think she got hit in the chest or something. But I,
when I was young, fell out of a tree about
probably about I mean, it wasn't super high, but it
was probably like seven or eight feet like directly on
my back and got the wind knocked out of me
really bad. I think maybe the only time that's happened.
And if you've never had it happen, it's a very panicky,
scary situation because you literally cannot get a breath. You're
(00:57):
just like, I wish people could see me now because
I'm sort of silently freaking out. But you cannot inhale
or exhale for a very short period, for a period
of a few seconds until you go and get your
breath again finally. But I was like, what's going on there?
And we found out.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah. Also, that's funny that that coincided with somebody wrote
it in an email in the last week or so
asking for us to explain getting the really Yeah, so's
it's in the air right now? Apparently.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Well I wish we could name that person, but I
didn't realize that, So thank you too, whoever that was.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
So there's another another name for this. It's called frenospasm.
The reason why it involves your frontic nerve, which controls
your diaphragm, which is essentially at the center of this
whole thing. And to understand I guess how all this works,
you kind of have to understand how we breathe, right, yeah,
(01:53):
oh okay, I'll tell everybody how you breathe. So that
diaphragm is a huge mass of like muscle and tendon.
It's kind of like dome shaped. It almost looks like
the insignia for the Star Trek Federation right right underneath
your lungs. I'm trying to bring some of our nerdier
fans back okay. And when it expands like we exhale,
(02:17):
because it forces our lungs, it forces air out of
our lungs. When we inhale again, the diaphragm contracts and
gets smaller so our lungs can fill with air. Eventually
they reach a point where they're low enough in pressure.
The air inside of our lungs is low enough in
pressure compared to the outside air pressure that the outside
air is like I can't stand it anymore, and rushes
(02:38):
in to fill our lungs up, which allows us to
breathe again.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Exactly. And if we're just hanging out, if we're relaxed,
or even if we're doing something athletic, the diaphragm is
working as it should. Breathing is involuntary. It's an automatic
function of our nervous system. Our body's just doing it,
and there's really no problems that are happening. The problem
with getting winded happens when you get a either like
(03:06):
a sock to the chest. If you ever look up,
like like martial arts, like you know, where should I
hit somebody to take them down, they'll list a bunch
of things like the side of the neck or you know,
all these different places where you where you can punch
someone to kind of not paralyze them necessarily, but at
(03:26):
least stop them. And they always say, like, aim for
that solar plexus which is very near the diaphragm, and
it sort of acts like a bull's eye if you're
trying to say, like, punch there. And so if you
get socked right there, either by a fist or if
you fall out of that tree and land on your
back or something, it can potentially, you know, paralyze at
(03:50):
least temporarily paralyze that diaphragm because it's spasming to the
point where you're just nothing is working as it should
and it's it is super super scary.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah, So your diaphragm is either like you said, paralyzed
or else it's spasming. And when that happens, not only
can you not breathe in The reason you start panicking
immediately is part of getting the wind knocked out of you.
And the reason that name is so perfect is the
first part of it is all of the air in
your lungs is expelled suddenly, so you've got no air
in reserve and you can't breathe. That's why it sucks
(04:22):
so terribly terribly bad.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
You're like dying for a few seconds.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Yeah, pretty much, I mean you are. The thing is
is from everything I've seen, it's not a life threatening thing.
Your diaphragm stops spasming like clockwork in just a few seconds,
and you start breathing again. It takes a little while
for the panic to subside because your lizard brain is
on like overdrive, but you will start breathing again. And
(04:53):
talking about the solar plexus for a second, may I
send my soapbox for a second. Yeah, So, if you
read around the internet what causes the wind to get
knocked out of you or what happens, people will add
the solar plexus in and at base. The reason that
it gets added as exactly as you described it, that's
(05:14):
where your diaphragm is, right, Yeah, But the solar plexus
specifically is a bundle of nerves that controls like your
guts and your stomach and your spleen and your liver
and all that stuff. And it's actually the thing that
slows down digestion when you're in fight or flight mode.
It's that solar plexus bundle of nerves that's like, oh, Okay,
(05:34):
we'll just sit here for a little while while we
run the problem that I found, and this is why
I'm on my soapbox is plenty of people who have
written articles on this kind of thing go a step
further and say, well, your solar plexus is temporarily disabled,
and so your diaphragm doesn't work. Your solar plexus has
(05:56):
nothing to do with sending nerve signals to your diet.
And it just drove me nuts to see it over
and over and over again because they wouldn't they wouldn't
explain it. Yeah, they wouldn't go any further. They just
tossed that out. And for anybody who doesn't know or
doesn't care to look further, like that's that's some somebody
who knows what they're talking about wrote this fact based,
(06:19):
researched article and it's just wrong. And that drives me
so crazy. Man. It's everywhere. It's just so lazy, and
it's it's just a form of spreading this information through laziness.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yeah, and I think, well, first of all, I don't
think it's very big deal, so.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
It's it's not collectively cumulatively it is.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yeah, but it's uh, I think it's just sort of
a more specific bullseye and a shorthand. For like, instead
of saying, punch someone in the diaphragm or punch someone
in the stomach, it's it's a little bit higher than that.
The solar plexus is sort of midway between your navel
and I guess what is it, Yeah, the bottom of
your pecks. So I think it's just sort of shorthand.
(07:00):
But it's such such a thing, such a shorthand, that
getting the wind knocked out of you, like a doctor
might even call it a solar plexus attack.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
You go see a different doctor. The doctor I want
to shout out a guy named Kevin Tokoff t O
k O p h at Catalyst University. Yeah, he did
a great video on all this and went to the
trouble explaining all that that the solar plexus really doesn't
have anything to do with it. It just happens to
be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Basically, he didn't get it worked up like you though.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Huh No, No.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
He was a cool pretty cool all right. Go check
out the video because it explains this in a pretty
cool way with visuals. But we'll be back to talk
about what you might do if you have found that
you have had a solar plexus attack right after this man,
(08:10):
All right, what can you do buddy if you get
if you get socked in land on your back or something.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Well, the stuff that we found is basically talking to
the coach of the little league team. Basically, what you
want to do is you have your your the person
who had the wind knocked out of them, take a
knee right, so when he's on the ground, when knees forward,
have them raise their hands above their head and arch
their back and stick their chest out. You want to
(08:35):
hold their hands up and kind of pull it back
a little bit and tell them to breathe deeply, long inhalations,
short inhalations, long exhalations, and very quickly you will start
breathing normally or the kid will.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Yeah, if you're by yourself, try to get into that
you know position and raise your arms yourself. But if
you're too freaked out, maybe just sit up and in
like a crowd's position. Try and again breathe through your mouth.
Breathe in through your mouth, that is, push your stomach out,
then suck your stomach back like try and be real,
(09:09):
just intentional with your breathing and try and relax, try
and stay calm. That's like the biggest thing is like,
all right, I know what's happened to me, and that
I will breathe again, So try and kind of dim
the panic a little bit. I've also seen where if
you're near a pillow, if you follow a tree, you're
kind of out of look, I guess, But if there
is a pillow, you can put a pillow under your
(09:30):
knees and head and that will, I guess, get you
in a better position. But again, if you're with someone,
try try to get them to help you or hopefully
they'll know to help you with the over the head stuff.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Right. I guess you could be a kid who knew
they were going to fall over a tree by they
were jumping out of a tree, so they strapped a
pillow to their front and back and then found it
didn't work. But then you have the pillow sandy, when
you're trying to get to the breath back in here.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Yeah yeah, but just know that you'll start breathe. You'll
get that big inhale in a matter of seconds and
then you'll be just sort of breathing normally in a
few minutes. Usually I saw like ten to fifteen, but
I haven't seen that. It really even takes that long.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Really long.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
I don't remember when I or what the circumstances were
for me getting the wind knocked on me, but I
definitely have. It feels like a rite of passage.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
I think so, and hopefully it does not happen to you.
But if it does, stay calm.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
One other thing though, If the breathing does not return
to normal within several minutes or ten to fifteen minutes,
go to the hospital because you have like a frated,
fractured rib or a collapse long totally something worse could
have happened, but that's how you tell.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yeah. Absolutely, I have a tailbone bruise from the spring break,
like two and a half weeks ago that just will
not go away.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Man, those hurt.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah, It's just every time I'm sitting for a while
and I get up and walk, I just feels like
someone's stabbing me in my right butt cheek.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Oh, you need one of those inflatable donuts.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I guess that would help. It's just I think that
a deep tailbone brush just takes a long long time.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Yeah, to gaway. You're gonna tell us how you got that.
Was it through rope trauma?
Speaker 2 (11:10):
No golf cart injury, one of those deals. You know,
golf carts when you're sitting there, they have the little
handrail that's very hard on the side right by your hip.
If your going to sit down and your golf cart
buddy hits the gas and it just it just drove
right into my butt bone. Oh my god. Yeah, I'm
all right though.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
That's a great way to end this one, all right.
Short stuffed out.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and
there's Chuck and it's just us. But we're going to
do it no problem. Everybody just calmed down.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Just the short stuff, that's right. I thought about getting
one together about this topic because my daughter Ruby got
the wind knocked out of her for the first time,
oh no, a couple of weeks ago and told me
about it. I wasn't there when it happened. It happened
at school, and she said it was scary, and I
was like, hey, listen, kiddo, that happened to me. I
(00:32):
think she got hit in the chest or something. But I,
when I was young, fell out of a tree about
probably about I mean, it wasn't super high, but it
was probably like seven or eight feet like directly on
my back and got the wind knocked out of me
really bad. I think maybe the only time that's happened.
And if you've never had it happen, it's a very panicky,
scary situation because you literally cannot get a breath. You're
(00:57):
just like, I wish people could see me now because
I'm sort of silently freaking out. But you cannot inhale
or exhale for a very short period, for a period
of a few seconds until you go and get your
breath again finally. But I was like, what's going on there?
And we found out.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah. Also, that's funny that that coincided with somebody wrote
it in an email in the last week or so
asking for us to explain getting the really Yeah, so's
it's in the air right now? Apparently.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Well I wish we could name that person, but I
didn't realize that, So thank you too, whoever that was.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
So there's another another name for this. It's called frenospasm.
The reason why it involves your frontic nerve, which controls
your diaphragm, which is essentially at the center of this
whole thing. And to understand I guess how all this works,
you kind of have to understand how we breathe, right, yeah,
(01:53):
oh okay, I'll tell everybody how you breathe. So that
diaphragm is a huge mass of like muscle and tendon.
It's kind of like dome shaped. It almost looks like
the insignia for the Star Trek Federation right right underneath
your lungs. I'm trying to bring some of our nerdier
fans back okay. And when it expands like we exhale,
(02:17):
because it forces our lungs, it forces air out of
our lungs. When we inhale again, the diaphragm contracts and
gets smaller so our lungs can fill with air. Eventually
they reach a point where they're low enough in pressure.
The air inside of our lungs is low enough in
pressure compared to the outside air pressure that the outside
air is like I can't stand it anymore, and rushes
(02:38):
in to fill our lungs up, which allows us to
breathe again.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Exactly. And if we're just hanging out, if we're relaxed,
or even if we're doing something athletic, the diaphragm is
working as it should. Breathing is involuntary. It's an automatic
function of our nervous system. Our body's just doing it,
and there's really no problems that are happening. The problem
with getting winded happens when you get a either like
(03:06):
a sock to the chest. If you ever look up,
like like martial arts, like you know, where should I
hit somebody to take them down, they'll list a bunch
of things like the side of the neck or you know,
all these different places where you where you can punch
someone to kind of not paralyze them necessarily, but at
(03:26):
least stop them. And they always say, like, aim for
that solar plexus which is very near the diaphragm, and
it sort of acts like a bull's eye if you're
trying to say, like, punch there. And so if you
get socked right there, either by a fist or if
you fall out of that tree and land on your
back or something, it can potentially, you know, paralyze at
(03:50):
least temporarily paralyze that diaphragm because it's spasming to the
point where you're just nothing is working as it should
and it's it is super super scary.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah, So your diaphragm is either like you said, paralyzed
or else it's spasming. And when that happens, not only
can you not breathe in The reason you start panicking
immediately is part of getting the wind knocked out of you.
And the reason that name is so perfect is the
first part of it is all of the air in
your lungs is expelled suddenly, so you've got no air
in reserve and you can't breathe. That's why it sucks
(04:22):
so terribly terribly bad.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
You're like dying for a few seconds.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Yeah, pretty much, I mean you are. The thing is
is from everything I've seen, it's not a life threatening thing.
Your diaphragm stops spasming like clockwork in just a few seconds,
and you start breathing again. It takes a little while
for the panic to subside because your lizard brain is
on like overdrive, but you will start breathing again. And
(04:53):
talking about the solar plexus for a second, may I
send my soapbox for a second. Yeah, So, if you
read around the internet what causes the wind to get
knocked out of you or what happens, people will add
the solar plexus in and at base. The reason that
it gets added as exactly as you described it, that's
(05:14):
where your diaphragm is, right, Yeah, But the solar plexus
specifically is a bundle of nerves that controls like your
guts and your stomach and your spleen and your liver
and all that stuff. And it's actually the thing that
slows down digestion when you're in fight or flight mode.
It's that solar plexus bundle of nerves that's like, oh, Okay,
(05:34):
we'll just sit here for a little while while we
run the problem that I found, and this is why
I'm on my soapbox is plenty of people who have
written articles on this kind of thing go a step
further and say, well, your solar plexus is temporarily disabled,
and so your diaphragm doesn't work. Your solar plexus has
(05:56):
nothing to do with sending nerve signals to your diet.
And it just drove me nuts to see it over
and over and over again because they wouldn't they wouldn't
explain it. Yeah, they wouldn't go any further. They just
tossed that out. And for anybody who doesn't know or
doesn't care to look further, like that's that's some somebody
who knows what they're talking about wrote this fact based,
(06:19):
researched article and it's just wrong. And that drives me
so crazy. Man. It's everywhere. It's just so lazy, and
it's it's just a form of spreading this information through laziness.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yeah, and I think, well, first of all, I don't
think it's very big deal, so.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
It's it's not collectively cumulatively it is.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yeah, but it's uh, I think it's just sort of
a more specific bullseye and a shorthand. For like, instead
of saying, punch someone in the diaphragm or punch someone
in the stomach, it's it's a little bit higher than that.
The solar plexus is sort of midway between your navel
and I guess what is it, Yeah, the bottom of
your pecks. So I think it's just sort of shorthand.
(07:00):
But it's such such a thing, such a shorthand, that
getting the wind knocked out of you, like a doctor
might even call it a solar plexus attack.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
You go see a different doctor. The doctor I want
to shout out a guy named Kevin Tokoff t O
k O p h at Catalyst University. Yeah, he did
a great video on all this and went to the
trouble explaining all that that the solar plexus really doesn't
have anything to do with it. It just happens to
be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Basically, he didn't get it worked up like you though.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Huh No, No.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
He was a cool pretty cool all right. Go check
out the video because it explains this in a pretty
cool way with visuals. But we'll be back to talk
about what you might do if you have found that
you have had a solar plexus attack right after this man,
(08:10):
All right, what can you do buddy if you get
if you get socked in land on your back or something.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Well, the stuff that we found is basically talking to
the coach of the little league team. Basically, what you
want to do is you have your your the person
who had the wind knocked out of them, take a
knee right, so when he's on the ground, when knees forward,
have them raise their hands above their head and arch
their back and stick their chest out. You want to
(08:35):
hold their hands up and kind of pull it back
a little bit and tell them to breathe deeply, long inhalations,
short inhalations, long exhalations, and very quickly you will start
breathing normally or the kid will.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Yeah, if you're by yourself, try to get into that
you know position and raise your arms yourself. But if
you're too freaked out, maybe just sit up and in
like a crowd's position. Try and again breathe through your mouth.
Breathe in through your mouth, that is, push your stomach out,
then suck your stomach back like try and be real,
(09:09):
just intentional with your breathing and try and relax, try
and stay calm. That's like the biggest thing is like,
all right, I know what's happened to me, and that
I will breathe again, So try and kind of dim
the panic a little bit. I've also seen where if
you're near a pillow, if you follow a tree, you're
kind of out of look, I guess, But if there
is a pillow, you can put a pillow under your
(09:30):
knees and head and that will, I guess, get you
in a better position. But again, if you're with someone,
try try to get them to help you or hopefully
they'll know to help you with the over the head stuff.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Right. I guess you could be a kid who knew
they were going to fall over a tree by they
were jumping out of a tree, so they strapped a
pillow to their front and back and then found it
didn't work. But then you have the pillow sandy, when
you're trying to get to the breath back in here.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Yeah yeah, but just know that you'll start breathe. You'll
get that big inhale in a matter of seconds and
then you'll be just sort of breathing normally in a
few minutes. Usually I saw like ten to fifteen, but
I haven't seen that. It really even takes that long.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Really long.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
I don't remember when I or what the circumstances were
for me getting the wind knocked on me, but I
definitely have. It feels like a rite of passage.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
I think so, and hopefully it does not happen to you.
But if it does, stay calm.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
One other thing though, If the breathing does not return
to normal within several minutes or ten to fifteen minutes,
go to the hospital because you have like a frated,
fractured rib or a collapse long totally something worse could
have happened, but that's how you tell.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yeah. Absolutely, I have a tailbone bruise from the spring break,
like two and a half weeks ago that just will
not go away.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Man, those hurt.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah, It's just every time I'm sitting for a while
and I get up and walk, I just feels like
someone's stabbing me in my right butt cheek.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Oh, you need one of those inflatable donuts.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I guess that would help. It's just I think that
a deep tailbone brush just takes a long long time.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Yeah, to gaway. You're gonna tell us how you got that.
Was it through rope trauma?
Speaker 2 (11:10):
No golf cart injury, one of those deals. You know,
golf carts when you're sitting there, they have the little
handrail that's very hard on the side right by your hip.
If your going to sit down and your golf cart
buddy hits the gas and it just it just drove
right into my butt bone. Oh my god. Yeah, I'm
all right though.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
That's a great way to end this one, all right.
Short stuffed out.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Stuff you should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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