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MrsReber
01-11-2001, 10:34 AM
My sister sent me the following. I thought it was interesting and perhaps worth sharing. I have to agree with the coughing, though. I have mitral valve prolapse and when my heart beats get out of control, a good cough usually fixes things and gets it beating right!


Let's say it's 6:15 p.m. and you're driving home alone of course),
after an unusually hard day on the job. You're really tired, upset and
frustrated. Suddenly you start experiencing severe pain in your chest
that starts to radiate out into your arm and up into your jaw. You are
only about five miles from the hospital nearest your home,
unfortunately you don't know if you'll be able to make it that far.
What can you do? You've been trained in CPR but the guy that taught
the course neglected to tell you how to perform it on yourself.

HOW TO SURVIVE A HEART ATTACK WHEN ALONE.

Since many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack, this
article seemed in order. Without help, the person whose heart stops
beating properly and who begins to feel faint, has only about 10
seconds left before losing consciousness. However, these victims can
help themselves by coughing repeatedly and very vigorously.

A deep breath should be taken before each cough, and the cough must be
deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside the
chest. A breath and a cough must be repeated about every two seconds
without let up until help arrives, or until the heart is to be beating
normally again.

Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and coughing movements squeeze
the heart and keep the blood circulating. The squeezing pressure on
the heart also helps it regain normal rhythm. In this way, heart
attack victims can get to a hospital. Tell as many other people as
possible about this, it could save their lives!

From Health Cares, Rochester General Hospital via Chapter 240's
newsletter AND THE BEAT GOES ON ... (reprint from The Mended Hearts
Inc. publication, Heart Response)

BE A FRIEND AND PLEASE SEND THIS ARTICLE TO AS MANY FRIENDS AND FAMILY
AS POSSIBLE.

"Friends are angels who lift us to our feet when our wings have
trouble."

lindrusso
01-11-2001, 10:43 AM
Mrs. Reber,

Not to be a party pooper here, but this one has been circulating the internet for a while and may not be entirely accurate. I'll paste a link here so that you can read more about it and decide for yourself.

Whenever I get any information forwarded to me from the internet, I always check with this site first - many of them turn out to be hoaxes. This coughing doesn't look to be hoax so much as maybe not the best medical advice.

In any case, www.snopes.com (http://www.snopes.com) is very interesting - I've eased my mind about many things like toxic bananas, infected needles in McDonald's Playlands and many other internet hoaxes.

Here's the link to the heart attack letter:
http://www.snopes2.com/toxins/coughcpr.htm

MrsReber
01-11-2001, 10:50 AM
Very interesting, Lindrusso. Thanks for the link. I had never seen that letter before. That is a pretty neat site, too. Don't worry, I don't think you're a party pooper! I guess I figured it might actually work since I know coughing makes my heart go back to it's normal rhythm- not that I ever had a heart attack, but my heart gets pretty wacky sometimes and if it doesn't correct itself, I could get very lightheaded and pass out (not fun- it's happened before).

LGBurns
01-11-2001, 08:09 PM
Lindrusso, what a great page! I wish I had known about it when I worked at my previous job. Several of the women I worked with would send every alarming e-mail message they received to everyone at the firm. We were warned of LSD on public phones, antiperspirant causing breast cancer, and countless other hoaxes. I would have liked to have been able to refer these ladies to this page, since I got pretty sick of the almost weekly e-mail warnings (I swear they were on a listserv or something). Anway, enough venting. Thanks for the info -- I'll write this one down.

Just wanted to add that, according to the site, the deep fried chicken head story is possibly true, although may be an attempt to get money out of McDonald's. I mention this since there was an earlier Great Food thread about this story.

[This message has been edited by LGBurns (edited 01-11-2001).]

[This message has been edited by LGBurns (edited 01-11-2001).]