May 10, 2018 • 51 mins
Hundreds of thousands of people drown around the world every year, and yet it can be easily prevented and is widely misunderstood – like how you can officially drown but live to tell the tale, or how you can drown but die days later.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there,
so that makes this stuff you Should Know? Hi, how
(00:23):
are you feeling kind of upbeat? Positive? Well? I will
say that this topic, I felt like I was having
a panic attack researching and reading this stuff me too,
like I had noticed I was. I felt like I
couldn't breathe at some points. Yeah, it was, and we
covered a little bit of this and Worse Ways to
Die many years ago. But boy, oh boy, drowning is
(00:49):
no picnic. No, it's not. And one of the things
that I've always heard about drowning is that like it
was actually a very peaceful experience. I don't think that's
the case. Yeah, I don't. I don't like obviously, no
one can say for certain, but it doesn't seem to
be no um at all, and it seems to be like,
actually not a good way to go. Well, actually, I
mean you probably could if you um. And this is
(01:11):
a this is giving something away early, but one of
the possible outcomes aside from death and morbidity, which is
you develop an injury or disability because of what happened.
Aren't you on record for hating that word morbidity? Yeah,
I don't know. I don't like it. Well, my apologies. Uh,
(01:31):
and no morbidity. So you could ask someone who suffered
drowning with no morbidity, like, was it peaceful? And they'll
probably be like, nope, Well that's where I got that from.
Was you know online? If you go and you got
to take it all with a grain of salt, because
there's plenty of fourteen year old who like to just
make stuff up. But there are you know, threads on
(01:53):
Reddit and other other places that basically are are supposedly
people who have survived outing, and I didn't find any
that were like, it was actually very peaceful. My brain
flooded with endorphins and I was ready to go into
the light. Instead, it was more like, you know, I
saw one that said it burned like lava, which I mean,
(02:14):
if you think about it, you know, if you've ever
had something go down the wrong pipe or whatever, how
much that hurts your chest. Well, Chuck, we're here to
tell everybody that what you experienced where you took a
drink of coke and it went down the wrong pipe.
That was not that didn't go anywhere near your lungs.
That was the least of what can happen to you.
(02:35):
And that was it just hit your epiglottis, which is
that flap that converts your trachea into your esophagus. Right, Yeah,
that flap. That's like sometimes I want to work and
sometimes I want to scare you to death. Right, But
zero zero coke went into your lungs and that happened
that that so imagine how bad that is. That was
(02:55):
just your epiglots. It actually gets way way worse when
you actually are drowning. And you you said something that
we really need to point out here, because there's a
for as long as people have been drowning, basically, yeah,
since people have been people, right exactly, So for as
long as people have been drowning, we still have only
very recently begun to make universal definitions of what drowning is. Yeah,
(03:19):
it's two thousand two, the World Congress of Drowning. That's
a thing. Then they at least had the good sense
to hold it in Amsterdam at least so they could
get their good time on afterwards. After the meetings, they're awful.
But what they did there was they decided, hey, we
(03:42):
need to really codify this because three and fifty thousand
people a year die and it's the third most common
cause of accidental death around the world. So let's like
really kind of classify this stuff. So everyone's on the
same page moving forward, Yeah, because everyone wasn't on the
same page, and actually, if you follow media reports, people
(04:05):
still aren't on the same page. There's a lot of
a lot of um uncleared terminology that the medical community
doesn't recognize but that the media uses pretty frequently. Um.
There's pretty widespread misunderstanding that drowning is not death. It's
a way you can die, but it's actually a specific
type of injury that starts with your epiglottis as we'll
(04:29):
see um or your larynx. I'm sorry, but it's it's
it's like an injury that can happen to you that
you can die from, but you can actually have drowned
and survived. Yeah, that's you know, that's very misleading because
that's the the actual definition. But in in everyday parlance,
(04:50):
if you say, you know, I went to the pool
last weekend and my child drowned, and someone said oh
my god, you know another fine, right, Like, it's not
it's not a very fair thing to say to to
a friend. No it's not. But if you're following the
definition of the two thousand two World Congress of Drowning,
(05:11):
that would be the right thing for you to say. Yeah,
but that that kind of pedantry and just everyday conversation.
You should lead by saying I had a close call.
My child technically drowned according to the World Congress of Drowning, right,
and then pushing, fine, push the glasses up your nose.
It's just exactly so, Um, I gave away a little
(05:34):
bit here. With drowning. The whole process starts when water
or liquid comes in contact with your larynx, your voice box.
That something as far as human evolution goes something about that, Philips,
Your reptilian brain out and you're your motor takes over, like,
(05:59):
your motor instincts take over, and there's very little you
can do from that point on as far as conscious
thought and movement. Yeah, I mean, we'll we'll get to
that last part later. But um, you're totally right, man,
Like your body is trying to do one thing and
that is survived this experience. Um, And, like I said,
we'll get in a little more of what drowning looks like.
(06:22):
But during drowning, you're right that that first contact with
water and the larynx, you have that gasp initially, and
then you you are in charge for a short time
because you try and hold your breath voluntarily, But then
your larynx just starts spasming. And Hi, Hi hypoxemia, hypoxemia,
(06:45):
hypo xmia, hypoxemia, hypoxemia, Bet hypoxemia, No, hypoxemia, hypoxemia, that's
what I said, right, Oh my god, hypoxemia. It's funny.
I looked up a bunch of word pronunciations today, but
that one that just flew right by it. I'll tell
(07:06):
you when I've got down is kinsieta. Yeah, that's that's next. Right.
How about hypo e simia. Sure, Basically what that is
is decreased levels of oxygen in your bloodstream. Your body
is trying to fight that. Right, So your larynx, whether
you like it or not, your larynx has closed. You're
(07:28):
not breathing, You're holding your breath because your larynx is
trying to prevent liquid from going into your lungs. Right,
And So as this is going on, you're losing oxygen concentration,
and your lungs you're having a build up of c
O two. And then and I got this from a
reference to a passage from the book The Perfect Storm.
(07:51):
But supposedly studies have shown that after about eighty seven seconds,
your your body says is okay, to hell with this. Um,
I'm I can't spasm any longer. I'm gonna try to
take a breath. If you happen to be underwater, then
you've just taken in water. And now a whole different
(08:13):
set of events is happening. Right, So you're already starting
to um, to to become sluggish, to lose consciousness a
little bit from that lack of oxygen because you haven't
been breathing for say, the last almost minute and a half.
But now you've taken in water onto your lungs, and
like I said, this this changes things and it makes
it way way worse. Well. Yeah, and before that even happens,
(08:35):
your body becomes something called acidotic. How would you pronounce that? Uh?
That probably that way. I would actually listen to that one.
That's okay, what is it? It's acidotic? Oh? It is, Yeah,
I actually probably would have made it a long oh yeah,
no longer apparently, Okay, well thanks for going the extra
(08:58):
mile on that one. I had to make up for
the last one. Um. But that's basically when like, if
that happens, it can disrupt the electrical you're you're you're
wiring to your heart and you can go into cardiac arrest.
And that's sort of near the beginning of this process, right,
So just just bookmark that, everybody, because all of this
(09:20):
is happening before your laying stop spasming and you open
up your airway and take a deep breath, and then
you're you If you happen to be underwater or your
mouth is just below water level, then you've just taken
in a bunch of water and your lungs not good.
So what happens when you take water into your lungs
is when you look at your um, your lungs if
(09:42):
you can, if you can just peer at your lungs
everyone for a second, you're going to find that they
are actually branching increasingly smaller tubes. Right. Yeah, this is
like elementary school science, Like everyone learned about the bronchi
the bronchioles that alveoli's. That was all kind of elementary
school stuff, right. The point is that the in the
(10:04):
alveolis or the alveola, the little tiny air sacks where
you exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide with the capillaries that
bring blood to your lungs, there's a little something called surfactant,
and it's this chemical coating around your little tiny air
sacks that allow them to open and close, which pumps
the oxygen and carbon dioxide in and out right. It
(10:27):
allows for gas exchange. It's a very key part of
the whole system of staying alive. Yeah, because if you're
surfactin isn't working, then that alveola can't or alveolas can't
open or close, and so you're not breathing because that's
really where the rubber meets the road when you breathe.
So if the surfactant is damaged, you can't breathe. And
(10:48):
when you take water into your lungs, it goes to
the end to those air sacks and it, depending on
the type of water, it messes with the surfactant one
way or another, and all of a sudden, now you
are not exchanging um oxygen and carbon dioxide, which you
weren't doing very well already for the last minute and
a half, but now the water is totally screwing up
(11:10):
that jam. Well. Yeah, in the case of fresh water,
and this is something I didn't know, it is different
depending on saltwater fresh water. But freshwater, if you're in
a swimming pool or a lake or something, it actually
destroys that surfactant and the alveoli collapse, right, they're just
kind of destroyed. Uh. And saltwater, Uh, it actually doesn't
destroy the surfactant, but it washes it away, which to
(11:33):
me is sort of like splitting hairs. It makes the
surfactant um it doesn't work anymore, no matter which way
slice it right exactly. And so there's um a couple
of different, two real differences between taking in freshwater and
taking in saltwater in your looks, because freshwater bears a
(11:53):
pretty strong resemblance to the water in your body and
specifically in your blood. When that water in your lungs,
it actually passes very easily from your lungs into your bloodstream.
And so what happens is the the dilution, the concentration
of water in your blood. Um, it becomes overrun with water.
(12:16):
So where you end up. I saw apparently one World
War two study found that people's blood or animals blood,
which I hate to think of how they found this out,
you know how they found that out. But animals blood
within three minutes had an equal part of water and
blood or whatever is not water in the blood within
(12:37):
three minutes, which is way more of a dilution than
we normally have. So you've gone from not breathing very
well because you're holding your breath to suddenly not only
are you not exchanging air, your blood is diluted within
like three minutes. In a fresh water drowning, yeah, you're
really disrupting the balance of of your blood and the
(12:57):
water in your body. Everything is just thrown out whack.
And then with saltwater, something else different happens to um
your that that saltiness in the water in your lungs
actually draws water out of your blood, so that your
blood becomes more concentrated rather than more dilute if you
drown in saltwater. The upshot of all of this is
(13:17):
you are in big trouble once water hits your lungs. Yeah,
in the case of saltwater, again in three minutes and
you know what's happening to the animals because they called
it experimental animals. So in other words, they drowned animals.
I was hoping to dance around that, but yeah, that's
what they did. That's the reality. Uh. In three minutes
(13:38):
with saltwater, experimental animals lost of their normal, normal water
volume in their blood. Yeah, it's just thickened, which can't
feel good. The thing is, is it took. It takes
like from when I saw eight minutes to die. This
is actually as as bad as that sounds. This is
actually a less quickly fatal process than what happens to
(13:59):
you with ushwater in your lungs. But get this, Chuck,
here's where drowning gets really odd. You can die of
drowning without a single drop of water ever touching your lungs.
That sounds like a good place to take a break.
Oh are we going to cliffhanger? This? It's just mamma, jamma.
(14:20):
I think we should hang it off the cliff. Okay,
let's do it all right, We'll be right back, man, Chuck.
(14:45):
Good call, because even I'm like a little on the
edge of my seat and I know it's coming next,
and you know how this thing ends. Yeah, well, you're
exactly right. You don't have to uh like that can happen.
But to d round and die, you don't need to
be the TV or movie drowning where you're where you're
(15:05):
floating in the water, you're fully submerged, right, you went
down with the ship or something like that. Yeah, I
mean there's They used to call it dry drowning in
in the media. They still call it dry drowning. It
was coined in the nineteen seventies. But those are drowning
deaths in which the larynx spasmed from exposure to water,
but they died from asphyxiation. No water entered the lungs,
(15:28):
and it's very it makes sense to call it dry drowning.
But the CDC and everyone else basically said this, this
is just drowning. It's drowning. Just because there's not water
in your lungs doesn't mean you didn't drown, right, because
whether it's the water in your lungs or the um,
the fact that you haven't been breathing, you're dying from asphyxiation,
(15:49):
and it's a water related asphyxiation, right, correct, But it
doesn't have to be water in your lungs. But that
happens to something like ten to people who um, who
die of drown Yeah, they don't have any any water
in their lungs whatsoever. They just they died before their
layering stopped spasm ing. Yeah, and there's there have been
some really sad cases. This one this referenced in the
(16:10):
article you sent just last year. In two thousand seventeen,
a four year old boy in Texas was knocked over
by wave just playing out in the ocean, like knee
deep in water. His head did go under for a
few seconds, but dad brings him out of the water.
The kid recovers, He gets smacked on the butt and
goes off in plays and everything seems fine. Over the
(16:33):
next few days, he um. They think he has the
stomach flu. He complains of a pain in his shoulder,
and the parents did not get him to the doctor
fast enough and he died in his sleep. And then
doctors found a very small amount of water in his lungs. Yeah,
apparently it doesn't take much something like um that most
drowning victims have something like four ccs per kilogram of
(16:55):
water in their lungs. So if you're a kid who
weighs fifty pounds, that's three ounces of water. Her right
to die from that, right. But the thing that scared everybody,
scared the but Jesus out of parents everywhere about this
poor kid named Frankie Delgado. Um, he died like days
after he had his drowning incident. Right, No one knew
(17:16):
that could happen. And this is one of the ways
the media is not helping things. They call this dry
drowning too. That was never even called dry drowning. This
one is called secondary drowning. But again, if you go
to like the c d C or the World Health Organization,
they're like those those don't exist. Stop calling him that
it's it's drowning and you can actually die of drowning
(17:36):
days afterward. But the thing that was really misreported about
Frankie Delgado and then other kids like him, is that
it gives the impression that, you know, Dad picked him up,
spanked him on the bottom, and he went along his
way and he was totally fine. Then all of a
sudden drops dead three days later. That's not how it works. You.
The kids starts, their health starts to decline, and usually
(18:00):
in cases where this is happening, where it's like a
delayed drowning death. Um. They their health declines very obviously
within two or three hours of the incident, and it's
really bad. It's like they become sluggish because they're becoming hypoxic. Um,
they throw up a lot, they vomit a lot, they
(18:20):
might defecate themselves. Um, they just their behavior changes. It's
very obvious that something's very wrong with them. But the
problem is his Most parents don't say, oh, yeah, my
kid took in some water in the pool. It's a
day before, and they don't think to to They just think,
like Frankie Delgado's parents did that, it's a stomach bug
or something like that, when in fact they're actually dying
(18:42):
from drowning right in front of their very eyes. Yeah.
It's like the the head injury that you die of
a week later, um, because of whatever, some kind of
internal hemorrhaging that you don't even know what's going on. Right, Yeah,
it is very much like that, right, yes, right, she
died like a ski accident, right, yeah. Natasha Richardson and
(19:02):
I I didn't look it up, but I know it
was it was not that day. Oh, I didn't know that.
I don't know how many days later it was. But
the same kind of thing where UM, there's a there's
something going on in the body because of an incident
that you don't realize that's going on. And in UH,
in this kid's case, I think his uh, he had
(19:23):
a DIMA. Right, his lung tissues started um swelling right swell,
and they could no longer like a collapse, a little
a v O like collapse that the gas exchange wasn't
going on, and so he had a decrease in oxygen
and an increase in CEO two. And that's what you
ultimately die from from drowning right, Right, But you can
also get injured UM. Brain damage is usually the major complication.
(19:46):
If you don't die from drowning UM, you can have
that tissue damage in your lungs. You can get pneumonia
or something called a r d S acute respiratory distress syndrome. Right.
And there's also usually a code well not usually, but
it's frequently there's a code morbidity with a drowning UM,
which is like a head or neck injury, a spinal
(20:09):
injury that if you dive into the shallow into the
pool and you break your neck you're gonna start drowning
like immediately because you just lost consciousness and you're underwater.
Um So there's, as we'll see in talking about treating drowning,
you wanna you want to be aware that there's a
good possibility that the person's neck is not quite right.
(20:30):
Um So, here's one other thing that I knew before,
but I had learned at one point and it really
opened my eyes. Every every representation of drowning I've ever
seen in any movie, on every TV show, in every book,
in every song about drowning, there they they got it wrong.
It's just wrong. It doesn't look anything like what we've
(20:54):
all been led to believe. It looks like or sounds like, well, yeah,
I mean that is true if you are actually drowning.
But what you're talking about that you usually see in
the movies if they end up getting pulled out of
water and they're fine. It's just called aquatic distress. So
when you're splashing around and yelling, you aren't drowning at
(21:15):
that point. No, you're you could call it pre drowning. Yeah,
it's aquatic distress. That means you're you can't swim, you're panicking,
and you feel like I'm in big trouble, So you're
waving your arms and screaming when you actually start drowning.
This guy named Francesco A Pia, he's a PhD. He
defined what's called the instinctive drowning response, which is nothing
(21:38):
like you see in the movies. It's very quiet, and
your body, like we mentioned earlier, your body's instinct kicks
into gear and it's not trying to wait for help
or yell. It's just trying to survive and get another
breath and keep that face above water. Right. It's it's
like all hands are on deck to keep your you
(21:58):
upright in the water. That's the literally, all hands are
on deck if the deck is the water, right you know. Yeah, no,
that's true. That's why I said it. So the thing is, though, Chuck,
with that aquatic distress thing, it doesn't always precede drowning
so much so that drowning can come on without aquatic distress.
And people are so conditioned to think of drowning as
(22:21):
aquatic distress or vice versa, that there's this is about
the most heartbreaking thing I've ever heard. There are kids
who will drown a substantial amount of kids who drowned,
drown within twenty five yards of a parent or whoever
is supposed to be watching them, and a significant portion
of those kids drown with the parent or or supervising
(22:43):
adult actually watching them drown and not realizing what they're
seeing because it doesn't look like what they think drowning
looks like. I wouldn't overstated, but yeah, ten percent of
the parents actually watched this happening, right, So this is
this is what drowning looks like. Right. If you you're
not going to once the once drowning starts, if they've
(23:04):
gone through aquatic distress, once the drowning starts, you are um.
You have your head, your mouth is about at water level,
and you can't call out for help because there's one
of two things going on. Either you are trying to
catch your breath every time your mouth comes above water,
(23:25):
and it's happening so infrequently that all you can do
is work on inhaling and exhaling, or your larynx is
spasm ng and you're not breathing at all. And if
you're not breathing at all, you you obviously physiologically can't
shout or speak or do anything. But either way you're
not um. You're not able to shout or yell or
(23:48):
call for help or say anything. Yeah. I mean the
way I read it though, is it's not like you're
working on breathing. You have no choice in the matter. Yeah,
Like your body has taken over, and it's not like
you're like, oh, I need to get my breath. You're you.
You may want to yell, right, but your body is
saying no. Breathing is speeches secondary in this whole situation.
(24:08):
We need, we need to get you to breathe ye
and then um. Very similarly, your body you're not on.
You can't control your arms any longer. Whatever you want
to do with your arms, you can't. All you can
do is kind of flap at the water, and the
whole point of that is to keep your head above
(24:28):
water as much as possible. One thing that I saw
it chuck that I don't know if you've figured out.
I can't figure it out. But one of the things
about the instinctive drowning responses, you're not kicking, You're just
using your arms. I don't get that at all. Yeah,
I mean, it says no evidence of a supporting kick.
I'm I don't know about that. It just seems weird
(24:51):
that your body would be like, oh, yeah, let's get
the legs in on this too, and maybe that'll actually
help keep us above water, and that's kind of the
most important part of treading water. I wonder also if
it be if it's because as you're you're getting a
lower concentration of oxygen and you're becoming a little more sluggish.
Kicking your legs is actually harder than flapping your arms,
(25:14):
so you just can't, like your muscles won't do it.
I don't know, it's weird. It seems like that would
be part of that natural instinct. Um. I would think
so too. But another part of the fact that you
can't control your arms is that if somebody holds a
pole out right in front of your hand, you can't
say hand grab pole. Um, you can't grab like a
(25:37):
lifesaver ring like there's you you can't do anything but
flap your arms up and down. And you're not doing that.
Your your body has taken over. And this is this
instinctive response that dr P is talking about. Yeah, and
when they say you're not using your legs, that you're
completely vertical in water. Um, I don't know. That's the
part that doesn't make sense to me. You can still
(25:58):
be vertical in water and like you know, dreading water
and kicking. Yeah, I don't understand it either. Yeah, maybe
someone can fill us in on that one. So, um,
this this whole instinctive drowning response. Supposedly the most people
can last between twenty and sixty seconds of doing this
basically bobbing and using every bit of your strength to
(26:22):
to get your mouth above water. But eventually you start
to lose that battle and your mouth comes above water
less and less frequently, and then eventually you you were submerged.
And if you are if you see somebody whose head
is low in the water and they um, their mouth
is is at water level and their eyes are closed,
(26:44):
or they're just kind of blank and glassy, or their
hair is over their eyes, you're looking at drowning person
and you want to help them. Yeah. I thought that
hair over the eyes was interesting because there must be
just an immediate response when you get out of water
to wipe the hair from your eyes. Think about how
annoying it is. What's gotta be it. So if you
(27:07):
see someone come out like the creature of the Black Lagoon,
that's not a good sign. Yep. If they're gasping and
they're doing this, that's another one too. If they're trying
to swim but they're not actually moving anywhere really, or
if they're trying to roll over on their back and
they're unsuccessful, these are all signs of drowning. Yeah, I
mean that was a lifeguard for a few years, and it's, um,
(27:30):
I think you're and they tell you in class. You
know that you're used to the movies, and um, you
gotta really keep your eyes out. You can't just be
flirting with the girls. Oh yeah, uh, waiting for someone
to yell and scream because they're kicking in in aquatic distress.
You have to keep your eyes peel. A good lifeguard
is very vigilant. Well, I remember hearing that that. Like,
(27:51):
you know, when they interview most lifeguards about, you know,
somebody who drowned in their pool, they're like, they had
no idea, they were there second and then they were
gone and I didn't even notice. It didn't make a sound,
you know. So yeah, you just hit the nail and head.
Whether you're a lifeguard or whether you're a mom or
dad or oh pair or whoever, Um, your focus has
(28:12):
to be on the person in the pool that you're
you're in charge of. Should we take a break, Yeah,
all right, we'll come back. We'll talk about what to
do and how to treat a drowning victim if you
are so unlucky. All right, So let's say someone has drowned. Um,
(28:50):
let's just say you're at a pool, just to make
this easy, because that's kind of best case scenario. Because
it's contained, there is usually some sort of rescue equipment
on hand. Um, it's not like you're on the beach
and you're like, I need a defribulator. Yeah, most pools
have this kind of stuff. Now, Plus you can also
see the bottom. There's not usually like an underwater hazard
(29:11):
or anything like that. It is about a best case scenario. Yeah.
So the a h A, the American Heart Association said that, um,
if possible, like if you're not by yourself, do the
do the common sense thing, which is to send one
person for help or to call mine one one. Uh.
These days with phones everywhere, it's it's I'm sure increased
response times. But uh, and if you have a defribulator,
(29:35):
go get that thing or have you know, have your
have your buddy, do it bring it to the victim's side,
um assess the situation, like are they breathing? Do they
have a pulse? Uh? And this is one of the
few situations they point out where because I know we
covered CPR and the hands only CPR is kind of
what's recommended now, but that is not the case with drowning. No,
(29:56):
apparently you still want to do mouth to mouth, is
how I took that right? Yeah, think so, which has
never made sense to me, because if you're blowing into
somebody's mouth, aren't you blowing carbon dioxide into their body?
What's the point of that? Is it just to get
the lungs opening and closing. I don't know, maybe I've
never understood that, Yeah, because I don't think it's I
(30:17):
think that's the case, Like it's not saying your body
needs CEO two. I think your lungs need to be
expanding and contracting. It's been a while though, since I lifeguarded. Yeah,
but I mean, and it used to be like, yeah,
you do chest compressions in the mouth to mouth, and
then they said, no, just do chest compressions. So I
was surprised to see that with drowning, there like do
(30:38):
both they're back with that, and then also don't forget
while you're doing all this, keep in mind that the
person's neck might need to be supported or kept at
a certain straight angle. Um, because they may have injured
themselves that may have caused the drowning to begin with. Yeah,
like if they dove in or whatever. Right, So, if
(30:59):
they're breathing but they're not awake, then roll them over
on their side, because you know they might vomit and
and affixiate that way, which, um, you know the way
Bond Scott went out, and I believe some other rock
stars have gone out that way. John Bonham, Janice Joplin.
Oh did they all affixiate from vomit? Yeah? Really, I
(31:25):
don't know. I was just trying to think of musician
least likely to asphyxiate on his own vomit. Well, I
think that's uh Benny Goodman, Yeah, yeah, yeah, although he parted,
did he? I'm just speaking countrary? Okay, we have to
lightnessing up a little bit, right. I know, it's it's
(31:46):
hard looking for jokes in here. It's tough. So let's see,
you've got somebody who's breathing but but unconscious. Roll them
on their side. Uh, somebody who's not breathing and doesn't
have a pulse, you do EPR. You want them the
e m s to get there as fast as possible.
But CPR for you know, whether it's a heart attack
(32:08):
or whether it's a drowning. If you can do CPR,
you can prolong the amount of time it takes for
the e m s to get there. You're just staving
off like irreversible damage by by doing it at the
very least Chess compressions. Absolutely. So. One thing that um
I did not know that I ran across Chuck is
(32:31):
there's actually a tremendous amount of racial disparities when it
comes to drowning. UM there are far greater numbers of
UM African Americans and this is the US strictly African Americans,
and then Native Americans and Alaskan Natives who drown compared
(32:52):
to white kids. And depending on the venue in the
age group, it can actually get shocking how how great
the differences. Yeah, between the age range of eleven to
twelve years old, UM African Americans drowned in swimming pools
ten times the rate of white kids ten times. And
(33:13):
this is something I did know because the pool I lifeguarded,
where a lifeguarded for three years was uh majority African
American kids, and they you know, we got not special training,
but we got um we were told that by the
lifeguard company. Like it was a huge lifeguard company that
supplied lifeguards all over the city exactly, so at my
(33:37):
pool and pools like that, they you know, we had
a little breakout sessions for us. We were like, hey, listen,
it is a systemic thing in this country where little
black kids don't learn how to swim as often. And
you know, the CDC has done studies and there's a
professor in Montana named Jeff Whilst who wrote Contested Waters
Colon a Social History of Swimming Pools in America, And
(34:01):
it all makes perfect sense. Because of discrimination and segregation.
When swimming pools and recreational swimming and sports swimming started
to come around, these black families couldn't go to the pools,
so they didn't take swim lessons, they didn't learn how
to swim. If your grandparents didn't learn how to swim,
then there what is it like? I think they even
have a stat you have a thirteen percent chance to
(34:23):
take swimming lessons and learn how to swim if your
parents did not, only a thirteen percent chance, right, So
let's just passed down. Yeah, And it's just odd that
it coincided where a surge and popularity of pools and
swimming in America coincided with two of the um times
when segregation was most strictly enforced in America, to the
(34:46):
twenties and thirties and the fifties and sixties, and so yeah,
as a result, African Americans missed out on swimming, and
and it's intergenerational and passed down still to this day, um,
among African American families. Not all of them obviously, but um,
there are plenty out there who are like, I don't
know how to swim, and I'm very much afraid that
(35:06):
if I get you near a pool, you're going to drown.
So I don't even want you taking swimming lessons because
I don't want to mess with that kind of thing.
And so, like you said, it becomes intergenerational. Yeah, And
there are plenty of programs now, thankfully. Uh. And even
when I was lifeguarding, you know, a thousand years ago, um,
plenty of programs to try and give reduced rate or
(35:28):
free swimming lessons in communities like that and basically get
every get everyone trained up swimming lessons help. It is
one of the ways to prevent drownings is knowing how
to swim. Yeah, it sounds like a no brainer. It does.
But you can drown even when you can swim. So
that's the reason they point out that one of the
best ways to prevent drowning is learning how to swim. Right,
(35:49):
it is. But they also make a very big point
if once your kid knows how to swim, you can't
just be like, oh, you're fine, you go to the
pool by yourself, like the this this one article put
it like, learning to swim doesn't drown proof your kid.
Something like a quarter of deaths by drowning are from
(36:09):
kids who knew how to swim or people who knew
how to swim. So, um, it's good to know how
to swim, and it probably will help at some point,
like anytime you get into a pool, but it doesn't
drown proof for you, and you need to also be
smart in other ways to Yeah, I mean, we're literally
right in the middle of swim lessons for our daughter
and um, at you know, approaching three years old and
(36:34):
it's tough man. She's she doesn't like getting her face
in the water. So there's a that's just smart. Well, yeah,
that's a good instinct probably, but not when you're trying
to teach your kid how to swim. That's problematic. So
it's a slow process in our case. Other kids, um
take to it like a duck in the water as
(36:54):
they say, yeah, I I did. I still remember taking
swim lessons, and I was a pretty little kid myself,
but I remember. I remember. The one thing I hated
about swim lessons is that that came I had to
leave in the middle of Thunder the Barbarian on Saturday
Morning Cartoons, so I never really got to watch a
(37:15):
single full episode of Thunder. Then the other thing I
remember is realizing that as I was swimming towards the
swim instructor, I wasn't getting any closer. And it finally
dawned on me. I was like, you're moving further away
that old trick, and she was like, no, I'm not.
And suddenly I was like there, you know. Um, But
(37:36):
I remember being like, oh, there's such a thing as
guile in deception. I had no idea. Now I learned
it thanks to my swim instructor. Yeah. My deal was,
I was terrified of swimming and swim class. What were
you terrified about drowning? Oh? Were you okay? Um? Yeah,
(37:56):
I just my brother and sister went to swim class.
They learned how to swim. I refused. I was really scared.
I would not go out of the shallow in for
many years. I know I was a little scaredy cat.
But I my mom, I remember very distinctly when I
was I guess I was like, I was kind of
old man, I was like six years old. And she
(38:19):
she didn't threaten me, but she said, hey, listen, you're
gonna take swim lessons. Uh, in like July. It's you've
got to learn how to swim. And this was uh
and I'm making updates, but let's say it was July.
And then in June we went to visit my grandparents,
whose neighborhood of pool, and we were doing that thing
where you hold on to the edge of the pool
(38:41):
to get a bunch of kids and go around and
around and create like a little whirlpool. And I remember
very distinctly taking my hands off earlier and earlier and
taught myself to swim that day cool and it was
because it was kind of a current and people in
front of me and behind me, and I just started
didn't go a little sooner and a little sooner in
(39:01):
the deep end, and before you know what, I was
doing a very rudimentary dog paddle and that led to
very poor swimming, which I still still have today. Were
you swimming around and you're like self taught, Yeah at
his at his t shirt that had self taught back
off swimmer. I'm still not a good swimmer. I mean,
I can swim fine, but I'm not as far as
(39:24):
swimming strokes and proper swimming, I'm terrible. I I can
do a swimming stroke, it's not any good, but I
can do the technique of it. But I was on
a swim team and see I never was. It was
the worst swim team in the league and I was
the worst member of the team. Yes, so, um swimmer
(39:45):
in the county, that was your nickname. My worst was
pretty much. My worst was the backstroke, and um, the
coaches would always put me in a back stret could
be like, please don't like, why are you doing this?
And now, as a grown up by note, because they
were just like, we're losing anyway, We're go to watch
Josh do the backstroke. Every time I did the backstroke,
I would end up like two lanes over. Yeah, and
(40:10):
when I bumped to the other kid, they would inevitably
stand up, and so we'd both be disqualified because I
couldn't stay in my own lane. And then the coaches
just thought that was hilarious. Yeah, I was never on
a swim team, and that's where you learned how to
do it properly, you know. I mean I can I
can ape those strokes from watching the Olympics, but um,
(40:31):
it's it's nothing close to I mean, I can't do
butterfly obviously, because I'll teach you this summer. Okay, butterfly
is definitely the hardest man. But the breaststroke, it's nice.
It's a good it's a good stroke. I'm gonna I'm
I'm teaching you to swim this summer some some strokes. Okay, Yeah,
I mean I can do a rudimentary breaststroke, but it
looks more like I'm just kind of bobbing up and down.
(40:51):
I'm really not going very far. Yeah, but once you,
once you, if you do it you're like, oh, this
is what it's supposed to feel like. I know what
you're talking about it. I've had that sensation before too.
But you're just like a like a frog that ain't
quite right, you know. All right, So here's some other
handy rules. Um, if you have a newborn or a
(41:13):
toddler or anybody anyone basically up to about four um,
they say to uh, they call it touch supervision. So like,
never be more than an arm link away because it
can happen very fast in a swimming pool and a bathtub.
Get off your cell phone, put down your Marie Claire
(41:34):
and your Red Book, and your Reader's Digest or your
Men's Health Sure or your Bodybuilders Weekly or your Mad magazine.
Pay attention to your kid. Uh. If you have a pool,
you need to have that thing fenced in or even
better these days they have those excellent. Um. It's not
(41:56):
a hard top, but it's between hard and the little
soft up that that are retractable. So you get out
and you go inside and you can you can cover
that pool right up. Yeah, although I think by law
you have to have a fence around, like four sided fence, um,
with like a self closing gate that also self latches too. Yeah,
(42:17):
and you have to grease it with crisco so little
kids can't climb it. Well, you do that anyway, right,
but it is it's fun to watch him try. You
should learn CPR. You should have all the little life
saving implements at your pool. Oh another one I had
not thought about this, but if you have a pool,
you want to have a landline too, because you need
(42:38):
to keep a phone that works right by your pool
at all times. Yes, you need to be like Thurston
Howell and have a pool that made out of a
clamshell that a guy in a in a white tuxedo
can bring over and sit down on a side table,
or like Hunter Thompson at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I
(42:59):
need bring up or Thompson at some point in this.
One other thing I want to say to also, if
your kid has like an episode that looks like a
close call to you, but they seem fine, then yes,
keep an eye on them for that the idea that
they could conceivably have drowned and they could be developing symptoms.
(43:19):
And if they start to develop any symptoms and take
them to the e R and the e R doctors
will very kindly listen to their lungs to see if
they hear any water. Easy peasy, right. At the same time,
don't freak out, Like if your kid just coughs and
sputters a little bit and they're fine and they don't
develop any symptoms at all, they're fine most likely, right,
(43:42):
But it does pay to be vigilant, and it's it's
it is better safe than sorry. Just don't be terrified
if you're your kid. You know, as long as they
didn't have anything that you could be like that was
kind of a drowning episode that just happened. Um, you're
probably in the clear. Yeah, it's it's a rare case
that kid in Texas, but because it does happen, keep
(44:04):
an eye out for sure. On the other hand, though
the media like talking about this stuff, supposedly is saved
at least one other kid's life. Um from the publicity
that went on that case, that that it happened to
another kid later on and the parents had heard about
this and took their kid into the e R and
saved saved her life. I believe. There you have it. Um,
(44:25):
you also don't necessarily just drown in a pool either. No,
I mean this stuff is horrifying. The thought of an
infant drowning and a dog water bowl is a nightmare scenario. Yeah,
dropped um, dog water bowl, open cooler that has melted ice, um, toilets,
(44:46):
cleaning bucket, anything that can hold something like one inch
of water is um is is enough to drown and
an infant and possibly a toddler, I think too. Um
cars people drowning cars as well. Bathtubs are actually another one.
So get this man. So usually, uh, people who drown
(45:08):
in bathtubs are infants, are the elderly. Um. But there's
a lot of adults who drown in bathtubs and specifically
hot tubs. Did you know about this well, I mean, yeah,
you get a little drunk, you're stand up too fast,
and you're dizzy from the temperature. It's not good and
it's not a good combo. No, And that's supposedly what
(45:30):
happened to Orville Reddenbocker. He was in a hot bath
and suffered a heart attack and ended up drowning. Whinney
Houston died in a bathtub. And I think every year
in the US about three hundred and thirty people drowning
their bathtub in a year. It seems like a normal amount, right, Yeah.
I guess how many die in bathtubs in Japan in
(45:52):
a year? How many? Fourteen thousand? Why? I don't know.
I think they take more hot bath They have the
soaker tubs too, Yeah, as part of it's like part
of the culture. That's the only thing I can think of.
Because they also have like one third of the population
of the US too, that's a lot of drowning deaths
(46:13):
and bathtubs man. Man. Yeah, well they did say too,
like more people die in Florida in car drownings just
because there are more waterfront roadways. And then earlier when
we talked about the racial aspect the whole deal, we
kind of just kind of flew past it. But Native
(46:34):
Alaskans and indigenous people's um died more than white people
because they are more often in bodies of water that
are probably far away and have logs and rocks and
things underneath, so they they have more exposure to natural
bodies of water than the average American. Yeah, you got
(46:56):
anything else, Nope, Well that's drowning. Hopefully we helped in
some way because summer's coming, Okay, that's right, And I'm
going to teach you the breaststroke. Sweet. If you want
to know more about drowning, you can type that sad
said word into the search bar at how stuff works
and it'll bring up something. And since I said that
it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call this first
(47:19):
thing I just pulled up on my phone right here.
Look at that nice But it's about the Steve Miller
band and peaches. Remember the emojis episode. One of us
probably you, I didn't say Steve Miller, I said, all
my brothers, Oh well, he said, someone mentioned the line
from Steve Miller band, I really like your peaches. I
(47:42):
want to shake your tree. Didn't one of us not
mentioned that. Now this person is out of their mind.
Well he has an email. Regardless, we all love the
Steve Miller ban. Uh. Now, this story is probably not true,
but I want you to believe it. Back in college,
when my youngest daughter was born, I was driving a
delivery truck for a small auto parts company. I worked
with this old guy and he was probably like forty two. Uh,
(48:07):
and his stories. Uh. I worked with this old guy.
He's probably like forty two. That's me talking. So one
time he told me that he worked in this auto
shop years ago and it was owned by this husband
and wife. Uh, and he had played bass for a
little while with Steve Miller band and her name was Peaches,
his wife. So the story was that the line from
(48:30):
Steve Miller really like your peaches want to shake your tree,
was Steve Miller taunting his own bass player. Mean, he says,
I don't know if he's true, but the story is like,
it rang true enough. So I like to think that
somewhere there's a couple that owns an auto parts parts
store in Arizona and uh to stick it to Steve Miller,
who doesn't want to stick it to Steve Miller, you know.
(48:53):
And that's from Jared Dude. I was in a the
local market near my house out a year ago and
some artisan tonic I know, uh, and my buddy Chris Cox,
you know, who plays bass in my band, we were
he happened to be in there. We were kind of
talking about music. His wife's name is Peaches too. No
(49:13):
it's not um. We're talking about music, and this guy
who looked like, uh, like an old Southern rocker came
up and he was like, you guys in a band. Yeah,
And he was like me too, It's like, oh yeah,
and I'm the flute player in the Marshall Tucker band. No,
And I was like whoa, Like, if Marshall Tucker band
(49:34):
is known for one thing, it's the flute. Like, for real,
what's the what's name off a couple of their flutey songs?
Well heard it in a love song. Can't be wrong
that one has that famous flute part. No, no, you
know that song, sure, but I can't think of the
flute part. I mean, this is the whole intro. Dude,
(49:55):
do do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do
Do do do doo doo doo doo. That's all flute.
Oh I guess I've never realized that. Anyway. A bunch
of their songs have the flute. And he is, granted
he was not the original flutist. Uh. He's one of these,
you know, Marshall Tucker bands, one of those deals where
like two original members, they've had twenty twenty flute players,
(50:17):
like the Temptations or something. Yeah, but I was still impressive, man,
that's that's amazing. It is impressive. And then like anchor man,
he whipped one out of his sleeve right there in
the store, kicked some candles off the tables and time. Yeah,
I'd say Marshall Tucker Band is second only to Jethro
Toll for flute innovation. Okay, that's who I'm thinking of.
(50:40):
They did like aqua long Hey, Hey, how about that?
We just came full circle. All right, let's just end it.
If you want to get in touch with Chuck and
me and Jerry, you can tweet to us. I'm at
josh Um Clark and s Y s K podcast, and
Chuck is at movie Crush Um Chuck Saw on Facebook,
at Facebook dot com, Slash Charles W. H. Bryant and
(51:01):
at slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us
an email to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot
com and has always joined us at at Home on
the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics. Is that how
Stuff Works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there,
so that makes this stuff you Should Know? Hi, how
(00:23):
are you feeling kind of upbeat? Positive? Well? I will
say that this topic, I felt like I was having
a panic attack researching and reading this stuff me too,
like I had noticed I was. I felt like I
couldn't breathe at some points. Yeah, it was, and we
covered a little bit of this and Worse Ways to
Die many years ago. But boy, oh boy, drowning is
(00:49):
no picnic. No, it's not. And one of the things
that I've always heard about drowning is that like it
was actually a very peaceful experience. I don't think that's
the case. Yeah, I don't. I don't like obviously, no
one can say for certain, but it doesn't seem to
be no um at all, and it seems to be like,
actually not a good way to go. Well, actually, I
mean you probably could if you um. And this is
(01:11):
a this is giving something away early, but one of
the possible outcomes aside from death and morbidity, which is
you develop an injury or disability because of what happened.
Aren't you on record for hating that word morbidity? Yeah,
I don't know. I don't like it. Well, my apologies. Uh,
(01:31):
and no morbidity. So you could ask someone who suffered
drowning with no morbidity, like, was it peaceful? And they'll
probably be like, nope, Well that's where I got that from.
Was you know online? If you go and you got
to take it all with a grain of salt, because
there's plenty of fourteen year old who like to just
make stuff up. But there are you know, threads on
(01:53):
Reddit and other other places that basically are are supposedly
people who have survived outing, and I didn't find any
that were like, it was actually very peaceful. My brain
flooded with endorphins and I was ready to go into
the light. Instead, it was more like, you know, I
saw one that said it burned like lava, which I mean,
(02:14):
if you think about it, you know, if you've ever
had something go down the wrong pipe or whatever, how
much that hurts your chest. Well, Chuck, we're here to
tell everybody that what you experienced where you took a
drink of coke and it went down the wrong pipe.
That was not that didn't go anywhere near your lungs.
That was the least of what can happen to you.
(02:35):
And that was it just hit your epiglottis, which is
that flap that converts your trachea into your esophagus. Right, Yeah,
that flap. That's like sometimes I want to work and
sometimes I want to scare you to death. Right, But
zero zero coke went into your lungs and that happened
that that so imagine how bad that is. That was
(02:55):
just your epiglots. It actually gets way way worse when
you actually are drowning. And you you said something that
we really need to point out here, because there's a
for as long as people have been drowning, basically, yeah,
since people have been people, right exactly, So for as
long as people have been drowning, we still have only
very recently begun to make universal definitions of what drowning is. Yeah,
(03:19):
it's two thousand two, the World Congress of Drowning. That's
a thing. Then they at least had the good sense
to hold it in Amsterdam at least so they could
get their good time on afterwards. After the meetings, they're awful.
But what they did there was they decided, hey, we
(03:42):
need to really codify this because three and fifty thousand
people a year die and it's the third most common
cause of accidental death around the world. So let's like
really kind of classify this stuff. So everyone's on the
same page moving forward, Yeah, because everyone wasn't on the
same page, and actually, if you follow media reports, people
(04:05):
still aren't on the same page. There's a lot of
a lot of um uncleared terminology that the medical community
doesn't recognize but that the media uses pretty frequently. Um.
There's pretty widespread misunderstanding that drowning is not death. It's
a way you can die, but it's actually a specific
type of injury that starts with your epiglottis as we'll
(04:29):
see um or your larynx. I'm sorry, but it's it's
it's like an injury that can happen to you that
you can die from, but you can actually have drowned
and survived. Yeah, that's you know, that's very misleading because
that's the the actual definition. But in in everyday parlance,
(04:50):
if you say, you know, I went to the pool
last weekend and my child drowned, and someone said oh
my god, you know another fine, right, Like, it's not
it's not a very fair thing to say to to
a friend. No it's not. But if you're following the
definition of the two thousand two World Congress of Drowning,
(05:11):
that would be the right thing for you to say. Yeah,
but that that kind of pedantry and just everyday conversation.
You should lead by saying I had a close call.
My child technically drowned according to the World Congress of Drowning, right,
and then pushing, fine, push the glasses up your nose.
It's just exactly so, Um, I gave away a little
(05:34):
bit here. With drowning. The whole process starts when water
or liquid comes in contact with your larynx, your voice box.
That something as far as human evolution goes something about that, Philips,
Your reptilian brain out and you're your motor takes over, like,
(05:59):
your motor instincts take over, and there's very little you
can do from that point on as far as conscious
thought and movement. Yeah, I mean, we'll we'll get to
that last part later. But um, you're totally right, man,
Like your body is trying to do one thing and
that is survived this experience. Um, And, like I said,
we'll get in a little more of what drowning looks like.
(06:22):
But during drowning, you're right that that first contact with
water and the larynx, you have that gasp initially, and
then you you are in charge for a short time
because you try and hold your breath voluntarily, But then
your larynx just starts spasming. And Hi, Hi hypoxemia, hypoxemia,
(06:45):
hypo xmia, hypoxemia, hypoxemia, Bet hypoxemia, No, hypoxemia, hypoxemia, that's
what I said, right, Oh my god, hypoxemia. It's funny.
I looked up a bunch of word pronunciations today, but
that one that just flew right by it. I'll tell
(07:06):
you when I've got down is kinsieta. Yeah, that's that's next. Right.
How about hypo e simia. Sure, Basically what that is
is decreased levels of oxygen in your bloodstream. Your body
is trying to fight that. Right, So your larynx, whether
you like it or not, your larynx has closed. You're
(07:28):
not breathing, You're holding your breath because your larynx is
trying to prevent liquid from going into your lungs. Right,
And So as this is going on, you're losing oxygen concentration,
and your lungs you're having a build up of c
O two. And then and I got this from a
reference to a passage from the book The Perfect Storm.
(07:51):
But supposedly studies have shown that after about eighty seven seconds,
your your body says is okay, to hell with this. Um,
I'm I can't spasm any longer. I'm gonna try to
take a breath. If you happen to be underwater, then
you've just taken in water. And now a whole different
(08:13):
set of events is happening. Right, So you're already starting
to um, to to become sluggish, to lose consciousness a
little bit from that lack of oxygen because you haven't
been breathing for say, the last almost minute and a half.
But now you've taken in water onto your lungs, and
like I said, this this changes things and it makes
it way way worse. Well. Yeah, and before that even happens,
(08:35):
your body becomes something called acidotic. How would you pronounce that? Uh?
That probably that way. I would actually listen to that one.
That's okay, what is it? It's acidotic? Oh? It is, Yeah,
I actually probably would have made it a long oh yeah,
no longer apparently, Okay, well thanks for going the extra
(08:58):
mile on that one. I had to make up for
the last one. Um. But that's basically when like, if
that happens, it can disrupt the electrical you're you're you're
wiring to your heart and you can go into cardiac arrest.
And that's sort of near the beginning of this process, right,
So just just bookmark that, everybody, because all of this
(09:20):
is happening before your laying stop spasming and you open
up your airway and take a deep breath, and then
you're you If you happen to be underwater or your
mouth is just below water level, then you've just taken
in a bunch of water and your lungs not good.
So what happens when you take water into your lungs
is when you look at your um, your lungs if
(09:42):
you can, if you can just peer at your lungs
everyone for a second, you're going to find that they
are actually branching increasingly smaller tubes. Right. Yeah, this is
like elementary school science, Like everyone learned about the bronchi
the bronchioles that alveoli's. That was all kind of elementary
school stuff, right. The point is that the in the
(10:04):
alveolis or the alveola, the little tiny air sacks where
you exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide with the capillaries that
bring blood to your lungs, there's a little something called surfactant,
and it's this chemical coating around your little tiny air
sacks that allow them to open and close, which pumps
the oxygen and carbon dioxide in and out right. It
(10:27):
allows for gas exchange. It's a very key part of
the whole system of staying alive. Yeah, because if you're
surfactin isn't working, then that alveola can't or alveolas can't
open or close, and so you're not breathing because that's
really where the rubber meets the road when you breathe.
So if the surfactant is damaged, you can't breathe. And
(10:48):
when you take water into your lungs, it goes to
the end to those air sacks and it, depending on
the type of water, it messes with the surfactant one
way or another, and all of a sudden, now you
are not exchanging um oxygen and carbon dioxide, which you
weren't doing very well already for the last minute and
a half, but now the water is totally screwing up
(11:10):
that jam. Well. Yeah, in the case of fresh water,
and this is something I didn't know, it is different
depending on saltwater fresh water. But freshwater, if you're in
a swimming pool or a lake or something, it actually
destroys that surfactant and the alveoli collapse, right, they're just
kind of destroyed. Uh. And saltwater, Uh, it actually doesn't
destroy the surfactant, but it washes it away, which to
(11:33):
me is sort of like splitting hairs. It makes the
surfactant um it doesn't work anymore, no matter which way
slice it right exactly. And so there's um a couple
of different, two real differences between taking in freshwater and
taking in saltwater in your looks, because freshwater bears a
(11:53):
pretty strong resemblance to the water in your body and
specifically in your blood. When that water in your lungs,
it actually passes very easily from your lungs into your bloodstream.
And so what happens is the the dilution, the concentration
of water in your blood. Um, it becomes overrun with water.
(12:16):
So where you end up. I saw apparently one World
War two study found that people's blood or animals blood,
which I hate to think of how they found this out,
you know how they found that out. But animals blood
within three minutes had an equal part of water and
blood or whatever is not water in the blood within
(12:37):
three minutes, which is way more of a dilution than
we normally have. So you've gone from not breathing very
well because you're holding your breath to suddenly not only
are you not exchanging air, your blood is diluted within
like three minutes. In a fresh water drowning, yeah, you're
really disrupting the balance of of your blood and the
(12:57):
water in your body. Everything is just thrown out whack.
And then with saltwater, something else different happens to um
your that that saltiness in the water in your lungs
actually draws water out of your blood, so that your
blood becomes more concentrated rather than more dilute if you
drown in saltwater. The upshot of all of this is
(13:17):
you are in big trouble once water hits your lungs. Yeah,
in the case of saltwater, again in three minutes and
you know what's happening to the animals because they called
it experimental animals. So in other words, they drowned animals.
I was hoping to dance around that, but yeah, that's
what they did. That's the reality. Uh. In three minutes
(13:38):
with saltwater, experimental animals lost of their normal, normal water
volume in their blood. Yeah, it's just thickened, which can't
feel good. The thing is, is it took. It takes
like from when I saw eight minutes to die. This
is actually as as bad as that sounds. This is
actually a less quickly fatal process than what happens to
(13:59):
you with ushwater in your lungs. But get this, Chuck,
here's where drowning gets really odd. You can die of
drowning without a single drop of water ever touching your lungs.
That sounds like a good place to take a break.
Oh are we going to cliffhanger? This? It's just mamma, jamma.
(14:20):
I think we should hang it off the cliff. Okay,
let's do it all right, We'll be right back, man, Chuck.
(14:45):
Good call, because even I'm like a little on the
edge of my seat and I know it's coming next,
and you know how this thing ends. Yeah, well, you're
exactly right. You don't have to uh like that can happen.
But to d round and die, you don't need to
be the TV or movie drowning where you're where you're
(15:05):
floating in the water, you're fully submerged, right, you went
down with the ship or something like that. Yeah, I
mean there's They used to call it dry drowning in
in the media. They still call it dry drowning. It
was coined in the nineteen seventies. But those are drowning
deaths in which the larynx spasmed from exposure to water,
but they died from asphyxiation. No water entered the lungs,
(15:28):
and it's very it makes sense to call it dry drowning.
But the CDC and everyone else basically said this, this
is just drowning. It's drowning. Just because there's not water
in your lungs doesn't mean you didn't drown, right, because
whether it's the water in your lungs or the um,
the fact that you haven't been breathing, you're dying from asphyxiation,
(15:49):
and it's a water related asphyxiation, right, correct, But it
doesn't have to be water in your lungs. But that
happens to something like ten to people who um, who
die of drown Yeah, they don't have any any water
in their lungs whatsoever. They just they died before their
layering stopped spasm ing. Yeah, and there's there have been
some really sad cases. This one this referenced in the
(16:10):
article you sent just last year. In two thousand seventeen,
a four year old boy in Texas was knocked over
by wave just playing out in the ocean, like knee
deep in water. His head did go under for a
few seconds, but dad brings him out of the water.
The kid recovers, He gets smacked on the butt and
goes off in plays and everything seems fine. Over the
(16:33):
next few days, he um. They think he has the
stomach flu. He complains of a pain in his shoulder,
and the parents did not get him to the doctor
fast enough and he died in his sleep. And then
doctors found a very small amount of water in his lungs. Yeah,
apparently it doesn't take much something like um that most
drowning victims have something like four ccs per kilogram of
(16:55):
water in their lungs. So if you're a kid who
weighs fifty pounds, that's three ounces of water. Her right
to die from that, right. But the thing that scared everybody,
scared the but Jesus out of parents everywhere about this
poor kid named Frankie Delgado. Um, he died like days
after he had his drowning incident. Right, No one knew
(17:16):
that could happen. And this is one of the ways
the media is not helping things. They call this dry
drowning too. That was never even called dry drowning. This
one is called secondary drowning. But again, if you go
to like the c d C or the World Health Organization,
they're like those those don't exist. Stop calling him that
it's it's drowning and you can actually die of drowning
(17:36):
days afterward. But the thing that was really misreported about
Frankie Delgado and then other kids like him, is that
it gives the impression that, you know, Dad picked him up,
spanked him on the bottom, and he went along his
way and he was totally fine. Then all of a
sudden drops dead three days later. That's not how it works. You.
The kids starts, their health starts to decline, and usually
(18:00):
in cases where this is happening, where it's like a
delayed drowning death. Um. They their health declines very obviously
within two or three hours of the incident, and it's
really bad. It's like they become sluggish because they're becoming hypoxic. Um,
they throw up a lot, they vomit a lot, they
(18:20):
might defecate themselves. Um, they just their behavior changes. It's
very obvious that something's very wrong with them. But the
problem is his Most parents don't say, oh, yeah, my
kid took in some water in the pool. It's a
day before, and they don't think to to They just think,
like Frankie Delgado's parents did that, it's a stomach bug
or something like that, when in fact they're actually dying
(18:42):
from drowning right in front of their very eyes. Yeah.
It's like the the head injury that you die of
a week later, um, because of whatever, some kind of
internal hemorrhaging that you don't even know what's going on. Right, Yeah,
it is very much like that, right, yes, right, she
died like a ski accident, right, yeah. Natasha Richardson and
(19:02):
I I didn't look it up, but I know it
was it was not that day. Oh, I didn't know that.
I don't know how many days later it was. But
the same kind of thing where UM, there's a there's
something going on in the body because of an incident
that you don't realize that's going on. And in UH,
in this kid's case, I think his uh, he had
(19:23):
a DIMA. Right, his lung tissues started um swelling right swell,
and they could no longer like a collapse, a little
a v O like collapse that the gas exchange wasn't
going on, and so he had a decrease in oxygen
and an increase in CEO two. And that's what you
ultimately die from from drowning right, Right, But you can
also get injured UM. Brain damage is usually the major complication.
(19:46):
If you don't die from drowning UM, you can have
that tissue damage in your lungs. You can get pneumonia
or something called a r d S acute respiratory distress syndrome. Right.
And there's also usually a code well not usually, but
it's frequently there's a code morbidity with a drowning UM,
which is like a head or neck injury, a spinal
(20:09):
injury that if you dive into the shallow into the
pool and you break your neck you're gonna start drowning
like immediately because you just lost consciousness and you're underwater.
Um So there's, as we'll see in talking about treating drowning,
you wanna you want to be aware that there's a
good possibility that the person's neck is not quite right.
(20:30):
Um So, here's one other thing that I knew before,
but I had learned at one point and it really
opened my eyes. Every every representation of drowning I've ever
seen in any movie, on every TV show, in every book,
in every song about drowning, there they they got it wrong.
It's just wrong. It doesn't look anything like what we've
(20:54):
all been led to believe. It looks like or sounds like, well, yeah,
I mean that is true if you are actually drowning.
But what you're talking about that you usually see in
the movies if they end up getting pulled out of
water and they're fine. It's just called aquatic distress. So
when you're splashing around and yelling, you aren't drowning at
(21:15):
that point. No, you're you could call it pre drowning. Yeah,
it's aquatic distress. That means you're you can't swim, you're panicking,
and you feel like I'm in big trouble, So you're
waving your arms and screaming when you actually start drowning.
This guy named Francesco A Pia, he's a PhD. He
defined what's called the instinctive drowning response, which is nothing
(21:38):
like you see in the movies. It's very quiet, and
your body, like we mentioned earlier, your body's instinct kicks
into gear and it's not trying to wait for help
or yell. It's just trying to survive and get another
breath and keep that face above water. Right. It's it's
like all hands are on deck to keep your you
(21:58):
upright in the water. That's the literally, all hands are
on deck if the deck is the water, right you know. Yeah, no,
that's true. That's why I said it. So the thing is, though, Chuck,
with that aquatic distress thing, it doesn't always precede drowning
so much so that drowning can come on without aquatic distress.
And people are so conditioned to think of drowning as
(22:21):
aquatic distress or vice versa, that there's this is about
the most heartbreaking thing I've ever heard. There are kids
who will drown a substantial amount of kids who drowned,
drown within twenty five yards of a parent or whoever
is supposed to be watching them, and a significant portion
of those kids drown with the parent or or supervising
(22:43):
adult actually watching them drown and not realizing what they're
seeing because it doesn't look like what they think drowning
looks like. I wouldn't overstated, but yeah, ten percent of
the parents actually watched this happening, right, So this is
this is what drowning looks like. Right. If you you're
not going to once the once drowning starts, if they've
(23:04):
gone through aquatic distress, once the drowning starts, you are um.
You have your head, your mouth is about at water level,
and you can't call out for help because there's one
of two things going on. Either you are trying to
catch your breath every time your mouth comes above water,
(23:25):
and it's happening so infrequently that all you can do
is work on inhaling and exhaling, or your larynx is
spasm ng and you're not breathing at all. And if
you're not breathing at all, you you obviously physiologically can't
shout or speak or do anything. But either way you're
not um. You're not able to shout or yell or
(23:48):
call for help or say anything. Yeah. I mean the
way I read it though, is it's not like you're
working on breathing. You have no choice in the matter. Yeah,
Like your body has taken over, and it's not like
you're like, oh, I need to get my breath. You're you.
You may want to yell, right, but your body is
saying no. Breathing is speeches secondary in this whole situation.
(24:08):
We need, we need to get you to breathe ye
and then um. Very similarly, your body you're not on.
You can't control your arms any longer. Whatever you want
to do with your arms, you can't. All you can
do is kind of flap at the water, and the
whole point of that is to keep your head above
(24:28):
water as much as possible. One thing that I saw
it chuck that I don't know if you've figured out.
I can't figure it out. But one of the things
about the instinctive drowning responses, you're not kicking, You're just
using your arms. I don't get that at all. Yeah,
I mean, it says no evidence of a supporting kick.
I'm I don't know about that. It just seems weird
(24:51):
that your body would be like, oh, yeah, let's get
the legs in on this too, and maybe that'll actually
help keep us above water, and that's kind of the
most important part of treading water. I wonder also if
it be if it's because as you're you're getting a
lower concentration of oxygen and you're becoming a little more sluggish.
Kicking your legs is actually harder than flapping your arms,
(25:14):
so you just can't, like your muscles won't do it.
I don't know, it's weird. It seems like that would
be part of that natural instinct. Um. I would think
so too. But another part of the fact that you
can't control your arms is that if somebody holds a
pole out right in front of your hand, you can't
say hand grab pole. Um, you can't grab like a
(25:37):
lifesaver ring like there's you you can't do anything but
flap your arms up and down. And you're not doing that.
Your your body has taken over. And this is this
instinctive response that dr P is talking about. Yeah, and
when they say you're not using your legs, that you're
completely vertical in water. Um, I don't know. That's the
part that doesn't make sense to me. You can still
(25:58):
be vertical in water and like you know, dreading water
and kicking. Yeah, I don't understand it either. Yeah, maybe
someone can fill us in on that one. So, um,
this this whole instinctive drowning response. Supposedly the most people
can last between twenty and sixty seconds of doing this
basically bobbing and using every bit of your strength to
(26:22):
to get your mouth above water. But eventually you start
to lose that battle and your mouth comes above water
less and less frequently, and then eventually you you were submerged.
And if you are if you see somebody whose head
is low in the water and they um, their mouth
is is at water level and their eyes are closed,
(26:44):
or they're just kind of blank and glassy, or their
hair is over their eyes, you're looking at drowning person
and you want to help them. Yeah. I thought that
hair over the eyes was interesting because there must be
just an immediate response when you get out of water
to wipe the hair from your eyes. Think about how
annoying it is. What's gotta be it. So if you
(27:07):
see someone come out like the creature of the Black Lagoon,
that's not a good sign. Yep. If they're gasping and
they're doing this, that's another one too. If they're trying
to swim but they're not actually moving anywhere really, or
if they're trying to roll over on their back and
they're unsuccessful, these are all signs of drowning. Yeah, I
mean that was a lifeguard for a few years, and it's, um,
(27:30):
I think you're and they tell you in class. You
know that you're used to the movies, and um, you
gotta really keep your eyes out. You can't just be
flirting with the girls. Oh yeah, uh, waiting for someone
to yell and scream because they're kicking in in aquatic distress.
You have to keep your eyes peel. A good lifeguard
is very vigilant. Well, I remember hearing that that. Like,
(27:51):
you know, when they interview most lifeguards about, you know,
somebody who drowned in their pool, they're like, they had
no idea, they were there second and then they were
gone and I didn't even notice. It didn't make a sound,
you know. So yeah, you just hit the nail and head.
Whether you're a lifeguard or whether you're a mom or
dad or oh pair or whoever, Um, your focus has
(28:12):
to be on the person in the pool that you're
you're in charge of. Should we take a break, Yeah,
all right, we'll come back. We'll talk about what to
do and how to treat a drowning victim if you
are so unlucky. All right, So let's say someone has drowned. Um,
(28:50):
let's just say you're at a pool, just to make
this easy, because that's kind of best case scenario. Because
it's contained, there is usually some sort of rescue equipment
on hand. Um, it's not like you're on the beach
and you're like, I need a defribulator. Yeah, most pools
have this kind of stuff. Now, Plus you can also
see the bottom. There's not usually like an underwater hazard
(29:11):
or anything like that. It is about a best case scenario. Yeah.
So the a h A, the American Heart Association said that, um,
if possible, like if you're not by yourself, do the
do the common sense thing, which is to send one
person for help or to call mine one one. Uh.
These days with phones everywhere, it's it's I'm sure increased
response times. But uh, and if you have a defribulator,
(29:35):
go get that thing or have you know, have your
have your buddy, do it bring it to the victim's side,
um assess the situation, like are they breathing? Do they
have a pulse? Uh? And this is one of the
few situations they point out where because I know we
covered CPR and the hands only CPR is kind of
what's recommended now, but that is not the case with drowning. No,
(29:56):
apparently you still want to do mouth to mouth, is
how I took that right? Yeah, think so, which has
never made sense to me, because if you're blowing into
somebody's mouth, aren't you blowing carbon dioxide into their body?
What's the point of that? Is it just to get
the lungs opening and closing. I don't know, maybe I've
never understood that, Yeah, because I don't think it's I
(30:17):
think that's the case, Like it's not saying your body
needs CEO two. I think your lungs need to be
expanding and contracting. It's been a while though, since I lifeguarded. Yeah,
but I mean, and it used to be like, yeah,
you do chest compressions in the mouth to mouth, and
then they said, no, just do chest compressions. So I
was surprised to see that with drowning, there like do
(30:38):
both they're back with that, and then also don't forget
while you're doing all this, keep in mind that the
person's neck might need to be supported or kept at
a certain straight angle. Um, because they may have injured
themselves that may have caused the drowning to begin with. Yeah,
like if they dove in or whatever. Right, So, if
(30:59):
they're breathing but they're not awake, then roll them over
on their side, because you know they might vomit and
and affixiate that way, which, um, you know the way
Bond Scott went out, and I believe some other rock
stars have gone out that way. John Bonham, Janice Joplin.
Oh did they all affixiate from vomit? Yeah? Really, I
(31:25):
don't know. I was just trying to think of musician
least likely to asphyxiate on his own vomit. Well, I
think that's uh Benny Goodman, Yeah, yeah, yeah, although he parted,
did he? I'm just speaking countrary? Okay, we have to
lightnessing up a little bit, right. I know, it's it's
(31:46):
hard looking for jokes in here. It's tough. So let's see,
you've got somebody who's breathing but but unconscious. Roll them
on their side. Uh, somebody who's not breathing and doesn't
have a pulse, you do EPR. You want them the
e m s to get there as fast as possible.
But CPR for you know, whether it's a heart attack
(32:08):
or whether it's a drowning. If you can do CPR,
you can prolong the amount of time it takes for
the e m s to get there. You're just staving
off like irreversible damage by by doing it at the
very least Chess compressions. Absolutely. So. One thing that um
I did not know that I ran across Chuck is
(32:31):
there's actually a tremendous amount of racial disparities when it
comes to drowning. UM there are far greater numbers of
UM African Americans and this is the US strictly African Americans,
and then Native Americans and Alaskan Natives who drown compared
(32:52):
to white kids. And depending on the venue in the
age group, it can actually get shocking how how great
the differences. Yeah, between the age range of eleven to
twelve years old, UM African Americans drowned in swimming pools
ten times the rate of white kids ten times. And
(33:13):
this is something I did know because the pool I lifeguarded,
where a lifeguarded for three years was uh majority African
American kids, and they you know, we got not special training,
but we got um we were told that by the
lifeguard company. Like it was a huge lifeguard company that
supplied lifeguards all over the city exactly, so at my
(33:37):
pool and pools like that, they you know, we had
a little breakout sessions for us. We were like, hey, listen,
it is a systemic thing in this country where little
black kids don't learn how to swim as often. And
you know, the CDC has done studies and there's a
professor in Montana named Jeff Whilst who wrote Contested Waters
Colon a Social History of Swimming Pools in America, And
(34:01):
it all makes perfect sense. Because of discrimination and segregation.
When swimming pools and recreational swimming and sports swimming started
to come around, these black families couldn't go to the pools,
so they didn't take swim lessons, they didn't learn how
to swim. If your grandparents didn't learn how to swim,
then there what is it like? I think they even
have a stat you have a thirteen percent chance to
(34:23):
take swimming lessons and learn how to swim if your
parents did not, only a thirteen percent chance, right, So
let's just passed down. Yeah, And it's just odd that
it coincided where a surge and popularity of pools and
swimming in America coincided with two of the um times
when segregation was most strictly enforced in America, to the
(34:46):
twenties and thirties and the fifties and sixties, and so yeah,
as a result, African Americans missed out on swimming, and
and it's intergenerational and passed down still to this day, um,
among African American families. Not all of them obviously, but um,
there are plenty out there who are like, I don't
know how to swim, and I'm very much afraid that
(35:06):
if I get you near a pool, you're going to drown.
So I don't even want you taking swimming lessons because
I don't want to mess with that kind of thing.
And so, like you said, it becomes intergenerational. Yeah, And
there are plenty of programs now, thankfully. Uh. And even
when I was lifeguarding, you know, a thousand years ago, um,
plenty of programs to try and give reduced rate or
(35:28):
free swimming lessons in communities like that and basically get
every get everyone trained up swimming lessons help. It is
one of the ways to prevent drownings is knowing how
to swim. Yeah, it sounds like a no brainer. It does.
But you can drown even when you can swim. So
that's the reason they point out that one of the
best ways to prevent drowning is learning how to swim. Right,
(35:49):
it is. But they also make a very big point
if once your kid knows how to swim, you can't
just be like, oh, you're fine, you go to the
pool by yourself, like the this this one article put
it like, learning to swim doesn't drown proof your kid.
Something like a quarter of deaths by drowning are from
(36:09):
kids who knew how to swim or people who knew
how to swim. So, um, it's good to know how
to swim, and it probably will help at some point,
like anytime you get into a pool, but it doesn't
drown proof for you, and you need to also be
smart in other ways to Yeah, I mean, we're literally
right in the middle of swim lessons for our daughter
and um, at you know, approaching three years old and
(36:34):
it's tough man. She's she doesn't like getting her face
in the water. So there's a that's just smart. Well, yeah,
that's a good instinct probably, but not when you're trying
to teach your kid how to swim. That's problematic. So
it's a slow process in our case. Other kids, um
take to it like a duck in the water as
(36:54):
they say, yeah, I I did. I still remember taking
swim lessons, and I was a pretty little kid myself,
but I remember. I remember. The one thing I hated
about swim lessons is that that came I had to
leave in the middle of Thunder the Barbarian on Saturday
Morning Cartoons, so I never really got to watch a
(37:15):
single full episode of Thunder. Then the other thing I
remember is realizing that as I was swimming towards the
swim instructor, I wasn't getting any closer. And it finally
dawned on me. I was like, you're moving further away
that old trick, and she was like, no, I'm not.
And suddenly I was like there, you know. Um, But
(37:36):
I remember being like, oh, there's such a thing as
guile in deception. I had no idea. Now I learned
it thanks to my swim instructor. Yeah. My deal was,
I was terrified of swimming and swim class. What were
you terrified about drowning? Oh? Were you okay? Um? Yeah,
(37:56):
I just my brother and sister went to swim class.
They learned how to swim. I refused. I was really scared.
I would not go out of the shallow in for
many years. I know I was a little scaredy cat.
But I my mom, I remember very distinctly when I
was I guess I was like, I was kind of
old man, I was like six years old. And she
(38:19):
she didn't threaten me, but she said, hey, listen, you're
gonna take swim lessons. Uh, in like July. It's you've
got to learn how to swim. And this was uh
and I'm making updates, but let's say it was July.
And then in June we went to visit my grandparents,
whose neighborhood of pool, and we were doing that thing
where you hold on to the edge of the pool
(38:41):
to get a bunch of kids and go around and
around and create like a little whirlpool. And I remember
very distinctly taking my hands off earlier and earlier and
taught myself to swim that day cool and it was
because it was kind of a current and people in
front of me and behind me, and I just started
didn't go a little sooner and a little sooner in
(39:01):
the deep end, and before you know what, I was
doing a very rudimentary dog paddle and that led to
very poor swimming, which I still still have today. Were
you swimming around and you're like self taught, Yeah at
his at his t shirt that had self taught back
off swimmer. I'm still not a good swimmer. I mean,
I can swim fine, but I'm not as far as
(39:24):
swimming strokes and proper swimming, I'm terrible. I I can
do a swimming stroke, it's not any good, but I
can do the technique of it. But I was on
a swim team and see I never was. It was
the worst swim team in the league and I was
the worst member of the team. Yes, so, um swimmer
(39:45):
in the county, that was your nickname. My worst was
pretty much. My worst was the backstroke, and um, the
coaches would always put me in a back stret could
be like, please don't like, why are you doing this?
And now, as a grown up by note, because they
were just like, we're losing anyway, We're go to watch
Josh do the backstroke. Every time I did the backstroke,
I would end up like two lanes over. Yeah, and
(40:10):
when I bumped to the other kid, they would inevitably
stand up, and so we'd both be disqualified because I
couldn't stay in my own lane. And then the coaches
just thought that was hilarious. Yeah, I was never on
a swim team, and that's where you learned how to
do it properly, you know. I mean I can I
can ape those strokes from watching the Olympics, but um,
(40:31):
it's it's nothing close to I mean, I can't do
butterfly obviously, because I'll teach you this summer. Okay, butterfly
is definitely the hardest man. But the breaststroke, it's nice.
It's a good it's a good stroke. I'm gonna I'm
I'm teaching you to swim this summer some some strokes. Okay, Yeah,
I mean I can do a rudimentary breaststroke, but it
looks more like I'm just kind of bobbing up and down.
(40:51):
I'm really not going very far. Yeah, but once you,
once you, if you do it you're like, oh, this
is what it's supposed to feel like. I know what
you're talking about it. I've had that sensation before too.
But you're just like a like a frog that ain't
quite right, you know. All right, So here's some other
handy rules. Um, if you have a newborn or a
(41:13):
toddler or anybody anyone basically up to about four um,
they say to uh, they call it touch supervision. So like,
never be more than an arm link away because it
can happen very fast in a swimming pool and a bathtub.
Get off your cell phone, put down your Marie Claire
(41:34):
and your Red Book, and your Reader's Digest or your
Men's Health Sure or your Bodybuilders Weekly or your Mad magazine.
Pay attention to your kid. Uh. If you have a pool,
you need to have that thing fenced in or even
better these days they have those excellent. Um. It's not
(41:56):
a hard top, but it's between hard and the little
soft up that that are retractable. So you get out
and you go inside and you can you can cover
that pool right up. Yeah, although I think by law
you have to have a fence around, like four sided fence, um,
with like a self closing gate that also self latches too. Yeah,
(42:17):
and you have to grease it with crisco so little
kids can't climb it. Well, you do that anyway, right,
but it is it's fun to watch him try. You
should learn CPR. You should have all the little life
saving implements at your pool. Oh another one I had
not thought about this, but if you have a pool,
you want to have a landline too, because you need
(42:38):
to keep a phone that works right by your pool
at all times. Yes, you need to be like Thurston
Howell and have a pool that made out of a
clamshell that a guy in a in a white tuxedo
can bring over and sit down on a side table,
or like Hunter Thompson at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I
(42:59):
need bring up or Thompson at some point in this.
One other thing I want to say to also, if
your kid has like an episode that looks like a
close call to you, but they seem fine, then yes,
keep an eye on them for that the idea that
they could conceivably have drowned and they could be developing symptoms.
(43:19):
And if they start to develop any symptoms and take
them to the e R and the e R doctors
will very kindly listen to their lungs to see if
they hear any water. Easy peasy, right. At the same time,
don't freak out, Like if your kid just coughs and
sputters a little bit and they're fine and they don't
develop any symptoms at all, they're fine most likely, right,
(43:42):
But it does pay to be vigilant, and it's it's
it is better safe than sorry. Just don't be terrified
if you're your kid. You know, as long as they
didn't have anything that you could be like that was
kind of a drowning episode that just happened. Um, you're
probably in the clear. Yeah, it's it's a rare case
that kid in Texas, but because it does happen, keep
(44:04):
an eye out for sure. On the other hand, though
the media like talking about this stuff, supposedly is saved
at least one other kid's life. Um from the publicity
that went on that case, that that it happened to
another kid later on and the parents had heard about
this and took their kid into the e R and
saved saved her life. I believe. There you have it. Um,
(44:25):
you also don't necessarily just drown in a pool either. No,
I mean this stuff is horrifying. The thought of an
infant drowning and a dog water bowl is a nightmare scenario. Yeah,
dropped um, dog water bowl, open cooler that has melted ice, um, toilets,
(44:46):
cleaning bucket, anything that can hold something like one inch
of water is um is is enough to drown and
an infant and possibly a toddler, I think too. Um
cars people drowning cars as well. Bathtubs are actually another one.
So get this man. So usually, uh, people who drown
(45:08):
in bathtubs are infants, are the elderly. Um. But there's
a lot of adults who drown in bathtubs and specifically
hot tubs. Did you know about this well, I mean, yeah,
you get a little drunk, you're stand up too fast,
and you're dizzy from the temperature. It's not good and
it's not a good combo. No, And that's supposedly what
(45:30):
happened to Orville Reddenbocker. He was in a hot bath
and suffered a heart attack and ended up drowning. Whinney
Houston died in a bathtub. And I think every year
in the US about three hundred and thirty people drowning
their bathtub in a year. It seems like a normal amount, right, Yeah.
I guess how many die in bathtubs in Japan in
(45:52):
a year? How many? Fourteen thousand? Why? I don't know.
I think they take more hot bath They have the
soaker tubs too, Yeah, as part of it's like part
of the culture. That's the only thing I can think of.
Because they also have like one third of the population
of the US too, that's a lot of drowning deaths
(46:13):
and bathtubs man. Man. Yeah, well they did say too,
like more people die in Florida in car drownings just
because there are more waterfront roadways. And then earlier when
we talked about the racial aspect the whole deal, we
kind of just kind of flew past it. But Native
(46:34):
Alaskans and indigenous people's um died more than white people
because they are more often in bodies of water that
are probably far away and have logs and rocks and
things underneath, so they they have more exposure to natural
bodies of water than the average American. Yeah, you got
(46:56):
anything else, Nope, Well that's drowning. Hopefully we helped in
some way because summer's coming, Okay, that's right, And I'm
going to teach you the breaststroke. Sweet. If you want
to know more about drowning, you can type that sad
said word into the search bar at how stuff works
and it'll bring up something. And since I said that
it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call this first
(47:19):
thing I just pulled up on my phone right here.
Look at that nice But it's about the Steve Miller
band and peaches. Remember the emojis episode. One of us
probably you, I didn't say Steve Miller, I said, all
my brothers, Oh well, he said, someone mentioned the line
from Steve Miller band, I really like your peaches. I
(47:42):
want to shake your tree. Didn't one of us not
mentioned that. Now this person is out of their mind.
Well he has an email. Regardless, we all love the
Steve Miller ban. Uh. Now, this story is probably not true,
but I want you to believe it. Back in college,
when my youngest daughter was born, I was driving a
delivery truck for a small auto parts company. I worked
with this old guy and he was probably like forty two. Uh,
(48:07):
and his stories. Uh. I worked with this old guy.
He's probably like forty two. That's me talking. So one
time he told me that he worked in this auto
shop years ago and it was owned by this husband
and wife. Uh, and he had played bass for a
little while with Steve Miller band and her name was Peaches,
his wife. So the story was that the line from
(48:30):
Steve Miller really like your peaches want to shake your tree,
was Steve Miller taunting his own bass player. Mean, he says,
I don't know if he's true, but the story is like,
it rang true enough. So I like to think that
somewhere there's a couple that owns an auto parts parts
store in Arizona and uh to stick it to Steve Miller,
who doesn't want to stick it to Steve Miller, you know.
(48:53):
And that's from Jared Dude. I was in a the
local market near my house out a year ago and
some artisan tonic I know, uh, and my buddy Chris Cox,
you know, who plays bass in my band, we were
he happened to be in there. We were kind of
talking about music. His wife's name is Peaches too. No
(49:13):
it's not um. We're talking about music, and this guy
who looked like, uh, like an old Southern rocker came
up and he was like, you guys in a band. Yeah,
And he was like me too, It's like, oh yeah,
and I'm the flute player in the Marshall Tucker band. No,
And I was like whoa, Like, if Marshall Tucker band
(49:34):
is known for one thing, it's the flute. Like, for real,
what's the what's name off a couple of their flutey songs?
Well heard it in a love song. Can't be wrong
that one has that famous flute part. No, no, you
know that song, sure, but I can't think of the
flute part. I mean, this is the whole intro. Dude,
(49:55):
do do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do
Do do do doo doo doo doo. That's all flute.
Oh I guess I've never realized that. Anyway. A bunch
of their songs have the flute. And he is, granted
he was not the original flutist. Uh. He's one of these,
you know, Marshall Tucker bands, one of those deals where
like two original members, they've had twenty twenty flute players,
(50:17):
like the Temptations or something. Yeah, but I was still impressive, man,
that's that's amazing. It is impressive. And then like anchor man,
he whipped one out of his sleeve right there in
the store, kicked some candles off the tables and time. Yeah,
I'd say Marshall Tucker Band is second only to Jethro
Toll for flute innovation. Okay, that's who I'm thinking of.
(50:40):
They did like aqua long Hey, Hey, how about that?
We just came full circle. All right, let's just end it.
If you want to get in touch with Chuck and
me and Jerry, you can tweet to us. I'm at
josh Um Clark and s Y s K podcast, and
Chuck is at movie Crush Um Chuck Saw on Facebook,
at Facebook dot com, Slash Charles W. H. Bryant and
(51:01):
at slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us
an email to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot
com and has always joined us at at Home on
the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics. Is that how
Stuff Works dot com.
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