STORY TIME. at 16 I mixed a preworkout drink and some redline and nearly died lol. felt the "sense of impending doom", totes a thing and you know it once you feel it. (It was 3 AM and I was tired and wanted to power thru it and hit the gym.) I googled the severity of my symptoms
I was experiencing periods of fibrillation but they were less than 30 seconds in length, usually 10 to 20. Paroxysmal atrial fibrillation would be the technical term. During these, the world desaturates and darkens, and then comes back when it subsides. And repeat
Since I was in perfect health and great shape I figured I could wait it out as long as it didn't get any worse, which by now it shouldn't unless I panicked or got scared, or unless much more of my cocktail was still getting absorbed
By this time about 5 min had passed and my brother wants me to stop fucking with my phone and start working out, which I told him wasn't gonna happen bc I'm halfway to a heart attack lol but really tho. He wants to take me to hospital but I said only if I pass out
Since i wasn't quite dying and as a lifeguard who reads all day on watch (rich area pool where everyone has their own pool, so i got paid to suntan and read and practice being amphibious) i was familiar with the mammalian dive response. i decide to see what holding my breath does
It helps a little. Moreover it was winter and I know this is most dramatic in actual cold water so I step outside, hold my breath, and stick my head in the pool, and hold it there. Sure enough, it works, like, really well. (Meanwhile my brother is just like, wtf.)
Now the main thing causing the problem with my cocktail is a mixture of the yohimbine in the redline and all the vasodilators and other shit in the preworkout drink, so I know I'm in for a couple hours of this, halflife wise. So, confident I can manage my situation, we drive home
I tell my little brother to just pay attention bc I'm still getting pretty decent "brownouts" or whatever so, be ready to grab the wheel. It never got that bad of course but you know, trying to plan for things. So we go home and I lay down and distract myself watching movies
Anyway all this to say re the OP, "it me"
Pleased to see the wikipedia entry is still roughly what i remember reading so many years ago en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_re…
So somewhere in the middle of having a heart attack my brain goes, hang on, I think I've read something that can fix this. Cold water, check... symptoms match the category I'd read about using the dive reflex for, check... yeah fuck a hospital, I've got this
Genuinely love being me, lol
my brother of course insists i should have gone to the hospital and that i was just watching too much House, trying to solve a borderline-fatal a-fib with pools and an evolution hack
incidentally, the thing which caused me to have that page in memory was, i'd noticed i could hold my breath the longest w/ my head underwater--like 4 minutes vs 3 minutes 15 seconds, a huge difference--and eventually ended up reading stuff on the dive reflex, among other things
anyway i guess the moral of the story is, reading saves lives, so always be reading
