Short Stuff: Fainting At The Sight Of Blood

As many as 15% of people faint when they see blood! And it’s not just blood that gets them. It can be an injury or even a needle. Learn about this fascinating phobia in this episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck and here's Jerry. And if you feigned the
side of blood, or even discussions about it, you should
probably stop listening. Now, That's right. Beca it is. It
is a thing. It doesn't bother me. I don't. I
don't love the side of blood, but I'm not too
easily grossed out. I can watch a surgery on TV

(00:25):
and I'm fine. I like writhing, naked and blood. That's
how much I love blood. Oh good Lord, covering my
entire gigantic body. Wo So anyway, um, if because I
can do that, I clearly don't have chuck particular phobia
about feigning at the side of blood. And that's really
what the whole thing is coming down to is we'll

(00:46):
see but feigning itself in this particular kind of fainting.
And this is a thing like people actually do this.
It's not like some movie or TV trope. Yes, but
when you feign to the side of blood, there's a
specific physiological faint that's going on. There's different kinds of fainting,

(01:07):
and this one in particular is what's called the vaso
vegel syncope and vasile refers to your like your blood vessels.
Vegel refers to the vegas nerve, which was played a
huge starring role in our episode on what happens in
the brain during an orgasm. The reason the vegas nerve
gets a shout out in this this name for this um,

(01:29):
this type of fainting is because it has it plays
a role in controlling the speed and rhythm of your heart.
And then syncope is just another word for fainting, for
loss of consciousness. That's right. Uh, we know some things
and don't know other things. We know that it is
a legit phobia. It's about three to fifteen percent of

(01:50):
people have this where they faint at the side of blood.
And we also know that it's not just the side
of blood. It can be an injury that you witness
even like I think you pointed out here, like someone
slaying their hand in a car. Or it can be
needle centric, like if someone's coming at you to give
you a shot, you can pass out. So the technical

(02:11):
name for the phobia is b I I blood injury
injection phobia, right, um. And it is a phobia because
there's there's no real danger or anything to truly be
feared from a you know, hypodermic needle or something like that,
even though there is plenty of danger from it, that's
still considered interrational fear, you know what I'm saying. Sure

(02:33):
you're not in a horror movie and they're not gonna
put it in your eyeball, so right, And so with phobias,
um B I I is actually a peculiar type because
with um vaso vagel syncope, you're fainting because your your
heart has slowed down enough that your blood pressure drops,
which robs your brain of the very important blood it

(02:55):
needs to function correctly, and you lose consciousness until your heart,
you know, reins in northern normal rhythm again, which it
does on its own. And that means that B I
I is its own kind of phobia, because with most phobias,
that's not how this goes down at all. No, Uh,
with most phobias, you're gonna like have a spike in
your heart rate initially, and then that'll probably lead to

(03:18):
like a fight or flight type of thing. It will
really ramp everything up. And we be I I. You
do have that initial, very brief spike in your heart rate,
but then it just goes boo, and everything slows down
and you hit the bricks. Basically, Yeah, so that makes
it very strange. As far as they know, there's no
other phobia that produces this effect, um, except for the

(03:43):
blood injury injection phobia. But they after digging a little
deeper into this this um kind of odd malady frankly um,
they found that not only is it like is there
a fear component like in other phobias, there's also a
disgust component, and that people who have blood injury injection
phobia are experiencing levels of disgust that are even higher

(04:07):
than their levels of fear. So it's just a really
strange phobia all around. And it does seem to be
its own type. Yeah, and it does. It does. It's
not funny, but it does make for funny moments in
movies and TV shows when someone comes running into a
room and see something awful and they go, oh my god,
and that's the initial spike. And then because it does

(04:28):
kind of follow it scientifically and then they just go
oh and and hit the deck And it is a
trope for a reason. But it is interesting and that like,
scientifically that's kind of exactly what happens right, So you
want to take a break and then come back and
talk more about b I I phobias. La la do I. Okay,

(05:10):
So one one explanation for blood injury injection phobias is
that there's it's a gene. It's it comes from some
gene or mutation that's passed down. We don't know very
much about it. But if you consider that, um, that
it is conferred genetically, that suggests that there's like an

(05:30):
evolutionary aspect to this, that that somehow it made sense
through natural selection. But it seems like the opposite of
what would make sense through natural selection. Like if you're
if you're approached with danger or injury or something like that,
you see someone else being injured, you would think you'd
probably be in danger too, and so um, running away

(05:53):
really fast, fighting back like you would think those would
increase your odds of spreading your genes rather than fainting
dead away. But there's actually a theory that says, like, no,
it kind of makes sense if you look at it
this way. Yeah, and it's a theory, but the theory
goes that, like let's say you're in a battle with Took,
Took in the gang and Took Took gets clubbed on

(06:16):
the head and blood squirts out everywhere and you go
uh and you pass out and hit the rocks. Then
the other invading I don't even know what error we
are with Took Took anymore, what would they be? Took
Took existed about ten thousand years before UTSI, So I'm

(06:36):
gonna say he existed about eighteen thousand years ago, prior
to the advent of agriculture. All right, but what like,
what were they called? Those weren't Neanderthals, were they? No,
they were modern humans. They just hadn't given themselves a
name as far as we know yet. All right, So
the other modern humans, the invading modern humans, they they

(06:57):
run up at Took Took and Took Took or I'm sorry,
Took Took's friend who is now passed out on the ground,
and they just think he's dead, and they'd walk right
by him like it's the old play dead during battle thing, right,
Which is okay, that makes sense if you stuff and
think of it. Yeah. Um. The other thing is if
if it was Tuk Took himself who had been injured,

(07:17):
um and fainted at the sight of his own blood
because of that drop in blood pressure, he would be
less likely to bleed out from that wound, or would
bleed out more slowly, which could in fact also save
his life too. So no, it also kinda is depending,
you know, but it's one of the one of the
few we've got because we just don't understand it, Like

(07:38):
we we understand the physiological component about what happens with
vaso vegel syncope. It's how the sight of blood or
somebody shutting their hand in the car door or hypodermic
needle triggers that. It just that's where we kind of
lose our grasp on that UM. And one of the
one of the reasons why did what would you say,

(07:59):
like three to fifteen percent of the population, is it?
That's a really wide estimate too, Yeah, is definitely significant,
But three to that's a that's a big gap between,
you know, those two numbers, and it's a big gap
in our understanding. And one of the reasons why we
understand it so little is because UM, by its very nature,

(08:20):
that condition prevent people from going to the places where
they could be treated and have their conditions documented and
have estimates be a lot more accurate, which are like
doctors offices and clinics and things like that. They avoid
those places like the plague because those are the places
where people get stuck with needles and have blood drawn
and go when they have their a huge gash in

(08:41):
their forehead. Like, they don't want to go anywhere near
those places because you go into that room and they say, well,
let's see what's going on with you. Let me draw
some blood after I slam my hand in this drawer
looking for the needle, and it's coming at you from
all directions, So you're not going to go in there.
You might even uh it can be tied to something
called medical proceduring anxiety, which sort of speaks for itself. Uh,

(09:02):
so you're not going into any hospital. So it's really
hard to get great information about this. But our old friend, uh,
Cognitive behavioral therapy can help you out, according to web md,
and there's a Swedish psychologist name Lars gerin Oost who
apparently is the best in the business. And it is

(09:24):
like with a lot of CBT, it's self exposure. But
what you do is, and this sort of makes sense,
what they do is they tell you too whenever you
think of anything like this, and they I think they
start out by even saying, like, just think of driving
to a blood donation center and put that in your brain,
and you really want to tense up your muscles all once,

(09:45):
everything in your body because that'll just get your heart
rate going higher than it normally would be uh to
get elevated, and that's a way to combat. And then
they just make it worse from there until they are
basically playing doctor dress up and coming in with the needle. Yeah,
so teach you how to stave off fainting as step one, right,
and then after that when they're exposing you, it goes

(10:07):
from making you imagine you're going to to get blood
drawn to actually showing you videos of people getting blood drawn,
to like you said, your therapist coming in like he's
a a phlebotomist with a syringe in a tourniquet and
actually putting the tourniquet on your arm, and the whole
time you're just tensing your core so hard, trying to

(10:28):
keep from passing out. And it sounds awful, and exposure
therapy is awful when you step back and look at it,
but it actually does work. And what um what they
say is that possibly in his few as like three
to five sessions of learning applied tension and then use
and then doing exposure therapy, you might actually be able

(10:48):
to look at blood and not faint, which is really
something pretty good. I think if I was the therapist,
I would dress up like nurse Ratchet. I would go
full bore and then you know, the person afterwards say
like what are you wearing that wig? Why are you
dressed like that? And say, I don't know. I think
it just increases the anxiety, is what I've found. I

(11:10):
would dress up like the main character at the end
of promising young woman. That's what I'd come at you like, wow, wow, yeah,
scary pink wig, rubber nurse. Yeah, yeah, that's trying to
picture you like, that's stop that. I don't give you
permission to picture me. Well, there's a million people picturing

(11:30):
that right now. So one other thing, chuck. The reason why,
aside from like it's dangerous to just faint dead away
like that. You can hit your head and you can
break an arm. All sorts of bad things can happen
to you. But one other reason why it's important to
get treatment if you do have a blood injury injection
phobia is because um, Like you said, there's that medical
UM procedure anxiety that keeps you from going into the

(11:52):
doctor's office, and that means that you're not going in
for like vaccines or cancer screenings or you know, wellness
checkups UM because you're avoiding the doctor's office. So there's
a lot of actual negative effects that it can have
on your life. So if you do have that, maybe
go check into getting treated because apparently they've got it
figured out and you can not faint at the sight

(12:14):
of blood or a needle anymore. That's right. Do you
got anything else? I have nothing else or well then uh,
that's it for short stuff. It's short stuff is out.
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