How CPR Works

You have a golden opportunity to make yourself into a worthwhile human being simply by learning how to perform CPR. The chances are you'll never need to use it, but knowing how just in case never hurts. Listen to this episode to get you primed to take a course on real-life life-savin'.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, and you put the two of us together.

(00:20):
It doesn't matter what, You're still gonna come up with
stuff you should know. That's right. You're better or for worse.
That's right, man, you're stuck with me. How are you, sir? Tickled?
How are you? I'm great? I'm ready to to save
some lives with it's your podcast today. You know, it's
entirely possible that we could you never know, like we

(00:42):
could tell somebody how to do the basics of CPR
and we should see O A, I see you even
have it written down, Like if you are interested in
being a above average human being by taking the time
to be taught how to UM save someone's life using
car your pulmonary resuscitation, you should do that, totally should

(01:04):
genuinely you are a better person for that. UM. You
can go to heart dot org, the American Heart Association's website,
type in your zip code and it will bring up
tons of free classes that you can go to at
your convenience and become certified in CPR. Yeah you should
do that because not only could you maybe be a

(01:25):
hero and save some stranger's life, but if you care
about the people around you, wouldn't you love to be
able to save their life exactly at a moment's notice. Exactly,
Like it's almost to me, it's like giving blood. It's
like it's almost a human requirement in this day and age.
You give blood. Of course I do. I keep mind blood,
give me gives blood. She's always like, don't you want

(01:46):
to too? Yeah, you should get blood? I know I should. Yeah. Um,
I don't even know what my blood type is. There's
a pretty good reason to give blood just to find out. Yeah, yeah,
can you test that too? Yeah? How am I doing?
Might do? And where's the nutter butters? Yeah that's a
that's a bonus too. I always feel guilty when you
me shares their nutter butters with you, Like I didn't

(02:08):
earn these? These are yours? What did she bring him home?
Or do you like go and drop her off and
then just sit with your arm scrossed while she gives blood?
Be all right ready? Yeah, man, let's let's CPR. Oh so,
we're still in the middle of the c o A
UM like this is no way intended to replace one
of those classes. Like you listen to this podcast. You're

(02:29):
not certified, pal, you're possibly a bigger danger than you
know before. You're certifiable, but you're not certified. So this
is intended to, I guess maybe just kind of go
over the absolute basics of CPR UM and hopefully pique
you're interested enough to get you to go out and
take a real class. That's what we're doing here today. Yeah.
I took when I life Lifeguarded. Obviously took CPR then,

(02:52):
but it's been that's been a while. Yeah, it was
like twenty years old, you know. So why are you
always walking around and nothing but a bathing suit? I
don't know, man, Yeah, I thought you still What are
you doing then? I don't know. I just like to
keep it the skin Mountain Malibu style, Malibu style. UM

(03:13):
Skin to win is my friend says, are you ready? Yeah? Okay,
So are you familiar with the heart? I am okay. Well,
then this won't come as any surprise. The heart has
a little part of it that's called the pacemaking area,
the sinoatrial node the essay node, and the essay node

(03:33):
produces a burst of electricity that stimulates the muscles in
the heart that calls it to pump, usually about on
the low side, once a second. That would mean that
you have a heartbeat of about sixty beats per minute,
which is low on the that's good for resting. Um,
if you're active, it's a little low. But you have

(03:55):
this this thing, this essay no, that that produces electricity,
and it produces it in a reliable rhythm. But certain conditions,
say like dehydration, uh, stress, all sorts of things can
cause your essay no to go a little haywire and
all of a sudden, it's shooting out bursts of electricity
in a really weird pattern, no pattern at all. And

(04:19):
when that happens, usually your heart, the pump weakens, the
pump mechanism weakens, so it's going to do and it's
not really beating at all. I mean it's beating, but
it's not really pumping any blood. What you're in the
middle of is called sudden cardiac arrest. Yes, and that
is uh different, this article points out than a heart attack. Right, Um,

(04:41):
if you have a heart attack, that is something that
happens very slowly over time. Uh, and then you will
eventually have the heart attack. That's sort of the end
result of that slow build. And usually it's your heart's
not pumping blood because it's backed up. Yeah, with the
sudden cardiac arrest, your heart is going haywire. It's trying
to pump blood, but it doesn't have the strength to

(05:03):
anymore because the electrical current is being distributed incorrectly. Are
you familiar with defibrillators. I am. You know they have
one here in the office in a d well. They
save lives. Um, if you hit somebody with an a
d with a defibrillator, which is another thing you need
to be trained on before you really try using it.
Clear that's all I can do. And you want to

(05:26):
be clear to you don't want to be touching the
body when it goes off. But you put one paddle
over the heart and one paddle over the other side,
so the middle of the chest, and then on the
left side of the person, and you, you know, shoot
the charge through and what you're doing is not starting
the heart, You're actually turning the heart off. Yeah. I
think everybody that doesn't know about the defibrillators know it's

(05:48):
gonna have trouble that. It's a tough word. I think
most people think that, Yeah, your heart stopped and it
kicks it back, kick starts it back up, right. Not true. No,
it turns it off in the hopes that it will
start back up at a norm normal rhythm. Yeah, like
it resets the pace right, and it frequently works. Um,
but that's just so surprising to mean, it's such a gamble.
It's like, well, the heart's not doing very well right now,

(06:09):
so it's gonna shut it off and see what happened. Yeah,
that is weird. Um. Sadly, if you have a sudden
cardiac arrest, you have about a five percent chance of
surviving because it is out of the blue. It can
occur to a very healthy person. Um. It can occur
with young people, old people, any kind of person. Yeah,

(06:30):
it's not just like heart disease. It's not. It's a
part of heart disease frequently. But like like I said,
it can result from dehydration when your electrolytes are off. Yeah. Um.
The good news if if you have a heart attack
or a myocardial infarction, um, is that you have pretty
good chance of surviving. That actually, and you know, turning
your life around with diet and maybe get some stints

(06:52):
thrown in there and teaching English to prisoners. Maybe so. Uh,
But all of this is leading up to the fact
that CPR is something that you can increase somebody's chances
who has sudden cardiac arrest. Right, here's the whole point
of CPR, the moment somebody drops dead in front of

(07:13):
you or you come across somebody who's dying or dead
or unconscious. I guess it is a better way to
put it, Like time is of the essence. Their blood
is no longer pumping through their body, their brain is
becoming starved. There they they're at risk of becoming brain damage.
And usually you hear it's there's like a five minute
window where like you really have the opportunity to save

(07:34):
someone's life. Right, So, whether it's running, if somebody's running
and get the defibrillator, or waiting for nine one one
to arrive, waiting for the paramedics to arrive, the whole
point of CPR is to pump blood through the body
to keep this person in this basic, minimal, artificial state
of life so that real medical help can be administered. Yeah,

(07:58):
you're just trying to dave off uh death basically for
as long as you can until you can get some help.
And and this is nothing new, right, No, it's not. Uh,
there's a little bit of history I dug up. Apparently
the prophet Elisha in the Bible is described as performing
mouth to mouth on a child. Who knows what that meant? Uh?

(08:21):
In seventeen forty, the Paris Academy of Science is like,
you know, it's the Bible. It said he placed his
mouth upon the child's mouth and stuff like that. But
who knows if it was you know, did they describe
what was wrong with the child or you know, I
don't know. I'm sure child was not doing well. Uh.
In the seventeen forty the Paris Academy of Sciences first

(08:43):
recommended mouth to mouth for drowning victims. Yeah, because apparently
up to that point, I was like, Oh, you're drowned,
so that's it for you. We're not even gonna try anything.
Maybe we'll hit you with some sticks. Eight ninety one,
Dr Frederick Moss performed the first documented chess compressions to
human and sadly it was nineteen wenty three years later.

(09:08):
Four years later that Dr George Cryle first reported a
successful resuscitation from chess compression. Well, yeah, it's a it's
a it was a working progress. It was very much
was because and it wasn't until even though mouth to
mouth was a thing that Peter H. Saffar and James
Elam are credited with inventing it as modern CPR in

(09:32):
the fifties and sixties is where they really uh perfected it.
Like nineteen sixties when CPR was officially like named and developed, right,
and then shortly after that came RASA ay, yeah, and
the little kid with the jumpsuit, that's right. Um, all right,
so that's just a little background, right, So it's it's
been around for a little while, but the points always
been the same. It's like somebody's in an emergency situation

(09:56):
and you need to basically stave off death. That's right.
So Chuck, let's say that you come into the podcast
recording booth and uh, you see me just laying on
the floor. What what are you gonna do? Well? I
would scream and cry out and in agony and shock. Firstly,

(10:17):
I'll be very upset, and then the first thing I
would do would say would be to say, Jerry, for
God's sakes, put down the beer and call Mine one
one immediately. See, I would I would suspect that Jerry
would have known I was in here unconscious. That's why
she's drinking the beer. She's just she's celebrating. She got
it from my desk. Yeah, uh so, yeah. First first

(10:40):
thing you want to do is is call mine one
one and get some experienced, some experience help there from
a Well that's that's after you've poked me in the
face and said Josh, Josh and looked at my chest
seeing that it's not rising or falling, and noted that
I'm little more blue than usual. Yeah, I would yell

(11:01):
the call, and I went to one first. But yeah,
you're supposed to check the person. If it's a child
or a baby. They say, never ever shake them, just
stroke them and see if they respond. Baby. Yeah, do
something like that. See if you get a response, and
if it is clear that this person is not breathing

(11:22):
and they're don't look like their heart is beating. Another
big one is that chest rising and following make sure
you could come across somebody and they're just dead drunk,
that's different from dead. Yeah, that's true. And I've seen
that took not from you, but not in the podcast. Uh.
And there's a couple of different types of or there's
different types of CPR. UM, and depending on how trained

(11:44):
you are, is one you would which one you would undertake? Right?
So you've just you've determined I'm unconscious. Yeah, you don't
know what's wrong with me, but I'm blue. Um. Jerry
as off dialing nine on one, finishing her beer. Um.
And you are Let's say that you have never done
anything but heard of CPR. What kind of CPR should

(12:06):
you employ? That means and this is from the Mayo Clinic.
They know a thing or two about this. That would
be what's known as an untrained person. And I would
only perform the hands only resuscitation, which will will describe
in detail. That's right. Um. And then let's say that
you've had some training before, but it's been a while.
Well that's me. I'm trained, but rusty. Um. And they say,

(12:29):
still just use the hands only. Don't get cocky, Yeah,
don't don't think you remember all that lifeguarding stuff. Let's
say you had just gotten out of a CPR class
and this happened. You would be trained but confident. That
is right, and that means that you can perform full
CPR with rescue breathing, and you know that's great. That

(12:52):
means you're confident and you're delivering of your knowledge. Right.
And then if you have access to an A E D.
Where is the one in this office? Well, I know
where it used to be until we redid the kitchen.
Used to be in the break right by the don't
massage your coworker poster. What's that called the you know

(13:17):
when you the warning basically like the drawings and all
that inappropriate touching. I always, I always was caught. My
my um attention was always gotten by the labor laws
poster for some reason. Yeah, yeah, I don't know why.
Maybe yeah, Um, that's where it was. I don't know
where it is now. It's probably in there in our

(13:37):
new smaller break around. Yeah, you're right. Um, So if
you have access to an A D you want to
actually deliver one shock and then start CPR. And that's
if you know absolutely in your train you know what
you're doing, but you don't want to waste time looking
for a pulse. They used to always say, check for
a pulse, don't bother no, because they found out that

(13:59):
people we're spending a lot more time than they should
trying to find a pulse and just basically wasting time.
I think basically, if you can look at somebody, see
their chess isn't moving, you don't need to look for
a pulse. Yeah. I mean, if I was on the ground,
the last thing I would want to hear is I'm
fading out. Is I can't quite tell us that of pulse?
All right, come here, what does that feel like? A pulse?
What do you call pulse? Thread? Yeah? And then you're

(14:21):
down there just going just please start compressions. So the
the American Heart Association said, you know what, let's just
go around this and really focus on the chests compressions.
Over time, they've they've in two thousand ten, they really
changed everything. And so just do chess compressions. Anything else
is like additional, but just do chess compressions. And um,

(14:44):
so let's let's talk about chess compressions. Well before we
do the chess compressions. If I came in here, luckily
we have a nice flat, uh first grade carpet type
of scene in here, um so I would not have
to move you. Um, but I do want to get
you on your back on a flat, hard surface. If
you're face down, then that's sad for you, and I

(15:06):
would gently roll you. Actually, i'd probably do it like quicker. Well,
you want to really be careful to support the neck,
because if somebody already has a neck injury, you can
make it way worse if you just flop them around.
Or if they have a you know, a piece of
steak stuck in their throat, you know you don't want
to get it lodged further. So you want to support
the head and neck as you pull the person towards

(15:28):
you so that they're on their back. Now, that's right,
all right. And since two thousand and ten, it used
to be the A B C method airway breathing circulation.
They have now revised that to the CAB method. Yeah,
airway meant that you would stick your finger down the
person's throat to see if there was anything you could dislodge,
but they passed out from choking. Now it's just basically

(15:51):
chest compressions in the A b um come second, Yeah,
and like like scraping out the airway and then breathing
rescue breathing. You don't even do those. If you don't
know what you're doing, it's all chest compression, that's right.
But the new order once again, just remember thank cab,
I gotta call a cab. Don't don't call a cabin.
Just waste time. They won't know what you're talking about.

(16:13):
That's right. So with chest compressions, we talked a lot
about it. What you want to do is you want
to kneel near the neck and shoulders. You've probably seen
this on TV. It's pretty accurate. Usually. Uh, put the
heel of your hands on top of one another in
the center of the chest, midway between the nipples. So
one palm down, the heel of your hand in the

(16:34):
middle of the chest, your other hand over it. It's
really forming this really solid piece of hand. That's right. Uh.
You want to keep your elbow straight like they do
on TV, so you're not using all of your arms.
You're actually using your body weight to compress the chest. Um.
I think how many inches one to two inches for

(16:55):
an adult? You want to compress it down one to
two inches, which that's gotta seem like a lot. What
if you're the person on the ground, No, if you
like yeah, if you're making a compression like pushing somebody's
chest in two inches. That's significant, you know, and that's
why you gotta put all your body into it. Keep
those arms, elbows locked and uh nice and rigid. Oh
and if you're in Canada or the UK, you want

(17:17):
to compress someone's chest two point five four centimeters to
five point eight centimeters, that's what that's what we're saying.
When we're saying when the two inches it's in this
case it is much easier to learn inches, I think. So, uh,
you want to make these chess compressions about a hundred
times a minute, which is not We have a what
a base sixty minute sixty second minute, so a hundred

(17:39):
seems weird to us. Right, how do you how do
you keep that rhythm in your head? It sounds unbelievable,
but you want to hum the song in your head
Staying Alive by the Beaches, right, It actually is a
hundred and three beats per minute. So if you can
hit that song, stay at pump, you will pump, stay

(18:03):
in a love pump, pump pump, And don't like that,
don't hold that pump on the a lot. You want
to keep it going. You're gonna hit a hundred a
hundred and three chest compressions a minute. It's so awesome
that it's staying alive, I know. And they they chose
a great song because most people know that song, and
they say most people can remember the pace of that song.

(18:25):
And it's right, you know, kind of right at the
hundred to one or three beats per minute. So you're
doing pretty well there. And if you have a baby
on your hands, um, you want to do chest compressions
using the same techniques, but you only want to compress
the chest about um, one inch I believe one and
a half inches, and you're using your two your middle

(18:47):
finger in your index finger rather than you're the heels
of your hands. But you're still doing it in the
middle of the chest, in between the nipples. One and
a half inch compressions a hundred a minute, yeah, and
just less aggressive, you know. And you want to support
the baby's head while you're doing it too. Basically you
want to lay them across like the length of your
forearm with their head in your hand. I cannot imagine

(19:09):
anything more horrifying than performing CPR on a baby, but
it's good to know for sure, um, what you're doing
here is you are basically squeezing the heart between the
breastbone and the backbone to artificially get blood out of
it moving through the body that oxygen eated blood and

(19:29):
uh like, are you literally trying to get the heart
going again or just deliver oxygen until someone gets there?
Is what gets the heart going. All you're doing is
distributing oxygenated blood through the body. Like when the heart pumps,
it doesn't make a whole circuit through your body. It
just pumps the blood a little bit, a little bit,

(19:50):
a little bit, and then eventually this little segment of
blood which with each pump will follow the course through
the body. So you are um oxygen eating you You're
pumping oxygenated blood through the body. And you can go
to hands only CPR dot org. It's a good website
to reinforce this. But again, American Red Cross is where

(20:10):
you want to go to get a regular class, get certified,
and they will teach you also rescue breathing too, because
you're I guess then oxygen eating the blur. You're allowing
the blood to be oxygen eated by introducing air into
the lungs. That is very true. So yeah, all you're
doing is just keeping like the body, like probably specifically

(20:33):
the brain fed with blood CPR, that's what you're doing. So, um,
why wouldn't somebody want to do this? Uh? Well, one
of the first things I looked up was lawsuits because
I don't I never knew if it was true or not.
But you always hear about people like I'm not you know,
I don't want to get sued. I don't want to

(20:54):
perform CPR on that person. There's something called the Good
Samaritan laws. Have you heard of these? The remember the
last episode of Seinfeld they all got law. Yeah, there's
various uh incarnations of Good Samaritan laws. But in the
case of CPR, it protects people that perform CPR if
they are generally if they are UM medically trained. Oh

(21:20):
so like if you have a CPR certification, you'd be protected,
you would be protected and um, and it has to
be uh, it must be the persons just it must
be like if you try to save me, it's gotta
be your idea, like, Hey, I'm just gonna go save
this guy. And someone didn't drag you over there and
say he's a doctor, and you can't actually be a doctor.
And be still be protected like in the hospital. Like

(21:42):
it doesn't cover you know, hospitals and stuff obviously, because
that's their job. They're not SENI. Yeah, it's gotta be
entirely voluntary. And um, certain states is a state thing. Obviously,
certain states are now enacting laws that protect anyone. I
know Pennsylvania passed one last year that even if you're
not certified, if you give it the old college try,

(22:03):
then you can't be sued. That's good, which is which
is great. You know you want people diving in there.
Thank you. Imagine like you saved my life. But I
didn't ask you too, so I'm suing you. Um. I
also went to the freakonomics site because you know how
they always break things down in interesting ways like racially
in and as far as like income goes, and out
of fourteen thousand two cardiac arrest patients, by standard initiated

(22:27):
CPR was provided point six percent of the time, and uh,
that's it. Yeah, And in low income black neighborhoods, low
income white neighborhoods, and low income integrated neighborhoods, and high
income black neighborhoods, your odds of getting CPR perform were
way less um than high income white neighborhoods and high

(22:53):
income integrated neighborhoods. I don't know, but freeconomics is always
studying all that stuff and how it affects, you know,
the United States, like economically and racially, So I thought
that was kind of interesting. Um, you know, there's a
lot of people who also, for a long time worried
about catching a disease from mouth to mouth, Yeah, which

(23:14):
is another reason. Apparently the Heart Association said, let's just
do chest compressions only, like you're to catch anything. But
supposedly there's no documented case of anyone catching anything serious
from giving mouth to mouth and rescue breathing, So nothing
to worry about there either. That's good, although I think
if you do that to a drowning victim, and you're
drowning victim, like they often spit up stuff, so you

(23:35):
might get a face full of sea water. But frankly,
it's a small price to pay for being a hero.
Have you ever seen this go downpr or anything yet? Know?
Not in person. I haven't either. I can't imagine that
would be And I have friends who have like seen
stuff like this and like in restaurants or I think
I had one friend that saw some guy like dropped

(23:56):
dead on the beach and some guy brought him back
to life. Yeah, I would love to be there. I'd
love to do it. But yeah, well we can start
looking for situations. Would you jump in there? Oh yeah,
I like to think I would. Sure, I would. I
think if someone else was really confident ahead of me,
I wouldn't like shove them aside, step aside. I'm gonna
try my hand at this, but I would sure. I would. Definitely,

(24:19):
I would definitely get in there. And well, that's we
should also say that's probably accounts for a lot of
the reasons why people don't do it, is because they
think they would and then it happens and they are
frozen in panic or terror or whatever. So that's apparently
one of the things this article says is that's another
reason why people aren't thinking. Like you said to yourself

(24:40):
when you came into the podcast, but you screamed luckily
off for Jerry, right, But yeah, you shook it off
and started to think, but you screamed. Uh. If you
want to learn more about CPR, yeah, you can go
to how stuff works dot com and type that word
in the search part, we strongly urge you instead, were
in addition to to h www dot heart dot org,

(25:03):
look for a CPR course near you and take it, uh,
And I said org. So that means it's time for
listening mail or Ah yeah, Josh, this is uh perfect
timing for this email and it just came in actually
a couple of days ago. And it is sad, but
this guy wanted to get the message out. This from

(25:25):
Dan in Austin. Guys have been meaning to write for
ages with little bits and pieces that I picked up
working as a travel photographer in Indonesia for almost twenty years. However,
events this past summer UH made these seemike trivialities. Has
taken this long to complete the email. In July last year,
while playing with friends in the backyard, my sixteen year
old daughter suffered sudden cardiac arrest and collapse. Despite the

(25:50):
best efforts of those around her, they will not able
they were not able to recover her pulse and she
passed on. We would never know the exact nature of
the attack, but have since discovered such attacks, which can
be to a number of causes, are alarmingly and tragically frequent,
and healthy young adults, although broadly defined by either structural
defects or faults within the electrical circuits that coordinate the hearts, muscles,

(26:13):
essential beats. Sudden cardiac arrest, which what you've been talking
about here, uh strikes down between four thousand and seven
thousand children every year in the U. S A loans
you like we said, you know, like, this guy's daughter
was totally healthy sixteen year old. Unlike many of the
diseases and conditions that you have covered on the show.
With s c A, the first symptoms of a life

(26:35):
threatening condition maybe at the time of death. Even equipped
with resuscitation equipment, survival rates are terrifyingly small, and without
any equipment they're almost non existent. There are tests, however,
that can be done once kids reach a certain age
about fourteen, when the heart has reached its adult size,
but as individuals walking in off the street, the cost

(26:55):
of these tests may seem prohibitively expensive to parents who
are not at a quickly informed of the hidden dangers
that their children face. There are, however, incredible organizations out
there that are working to change both the public awareness
and the risks of s c A, and are also
conducting screening programs to get as many children as possible
check for no cost. So one of these coincidentally is

(27:18):
in Austin where he lives, and he came out to
our pariety show. By the way. Uh, it's called the
Championship Hearts Foundation, and that is Championships Hearts Foundation dot
org and that's hearts plural um. And they have the
express purpose of making cardiac screening affordable and accessible to
as many families as possible, and frequently conducts community screenings

(27:40):
around Central Texas where they see like five kids a day. Um. Well,
when I can tell you that they can find the
presence of some form of potentially fatal cardiac condition and
one out of every two hundred kids or less, you
can appreciate the value of their mission for all these
kids their families. This means the saving of a life
with proper diagnosis, a treatment many children identify going to

(28:02):
live healthy lives and active lives. So had I been
better informed guys of this potentially fatal yet silent dangerous
that look unseen, I would have made sure to have
my daughter scanned, just as I will have my son
scanned when they're old enough. I hope that every parent
listening does the same. So that is Dan, Thanks Dan,
And that is Championship Hearts Foundation dot org. And he

(28:25):
said there's lots of good organizations and I didn't know
about that. And if I ever have kids, that's something
that I am going to have done when they reached
the right age. Yeah, maybe we should just start grabbing
random kids off the street and having them screen. Have
you been checked. I've got a lot of parents have
no idea about this. It's very sad. Yeah. Well, I'm
thank you very much Dan for letting everybody know. That
was a great, great letter. Yeah, we corresponded a couple

(28:47):
of times over the past few days and just unbelievable.
We went through a very good guy. Yeah, well cool, Um,
thank you for writing in. If you have a story
that you think everybody needs to know about that no
one does. We want to help you get the word out. Um.
You can tweet to us at s y SK podcast.
You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff

(29:07):
you Should Know, send us an email to Stuff Podcast
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(29:33):
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