Stuff You Should Know - How CPR Works

Episode Date: February 26, 2013

You have a golden opportunity to make yourself into a worthwhile human being simply by learning how to perform CPR. The chances are you'll never need to use it, but knowing how just in case never hurts. Listen to this episode to get you primed to take a course on real-life life-savin'. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and you put the two of us together. It doesn't matter what. You're still going to come up with Stuff You Should Know. That's right. It's better or for worse. That's right, man. Yep. You're stuck with me. How are you, sir? Tickled. How are you? I'm great. I'm ready to save some lives

with this podcast today. You know, it's entirely possible that we could. You never know. We could tell somebody how to do the basics of CPR, and we should see a way. I see you even have it written down. If you are interested in being an above average human being by taking the time to be taught how to save someone's life using cardio pulmonary resuscitation, you should do that. Totally should. If genuinely you are a better person for that. You can go to heart.org, the American Heart Association's website. Type in your zip code, and it will bring up tons of free classes that you can go to at your convenience and become certified in CPR. Yeah, you should do that because not only could you maybe be a hero and save some stranger's life, but if you care about

the people around you, wouldn't you love to be able to save their life? Exactly. At a moment's notice. To me, it's like giving blood. It's almost a human requirement in this day and age. You give blood? Of course I do. I keep my blood. Yumi gives blood. She's always like, don't you want to too? You should give blood. I know I should. I don't even know what my blood type is. There's a pretty good reason to give blood. Just to find out. Can you test that too? Yeah, how am I doing? How am I doing? Where's the nutter butters? Yeah, that's a bonus too. I always feel guilty when Yumi shares her nutter butters with me. Like, I didn't earn these. These are yours. Does she bring them home or do you let go and drop her off and then sit with your arms

crossed while she gives blood? B. All right. You ready? Yeah, man. Let's CPR it. Oh, so we're still in the middle of the COA. This is in no way intended to replace one of those classes. No, no, no. You listen to this podcast. You're not certified, pal. No. You're possibly a bigger danger than before. You're certifiable but you're not certified. Right. So this is intended to, I guess, maybe just kind of go over the absolute basics of CPR and hopefully peak your interest enough to get you to go out and take a real class. That's what we're doing here today. Yeah, I took, when I lifeguarded, I obviously took CPR then. But that's been a while. Yeah. I was like 20 years old, you know. So why are you always walking around in nothing but a bathing

suit? I don't know, man. What's a lanyard in the whistle? Yeah, I thought you still were. What are you doing then? I don't know. I just like to keep it skin. Malibu style? Malibu style. Skin to win is my princess. All right. You ready? Yeah. Okay. So are you familiar with the heart? I am. Okay. Well, then this won't come as any surprise. The heart has a little part of it that's called the pacemaking area, the sinoatrial node, the SA node. Yes. And the SA node produces a burst of electricity that stimulates the muscles in the heart that cause it to pump. Usually about on the low side, once a second. Okay. That would mean that you have a heartbeat of about

60 beats per minute, which is low. That's good for resting. If you're active, it's a little low. Yeah. But you have this thing, this SA node that produces electricity and it produces it in a reliable rhythm. But certain conditions, say like dehydration, stress, all sorts of things, can cause your SA node to go a little haywire. And all of a sudden, it's shooting out bursts of electricity in a really weird pattern, no pattern at all. Yeah. And when that happens, usually your heart, the pump weakens, the pump mechanism weakens. Right. So it's going, and it's not really beating at all. I mean, it's beating, but it's not really pumping any blood. Yeah. What you're in the middle of is called sudden cardiac arrest.

Yes. And that is different. This article points out than a heart attack. Right. If you have a heart attack, that is something that happens very slowly over time. And then you will eventually have the heart attack. That's sort of the end result of that slow build. And usually your heart's not pumping blood because it's backed up. Yeah. With the sudden cardiac arrest, your heart is going haywire. It's trying to pump blood, but it doesn't have the strength to anymore because the electrical current is being distributed incorrectly. That's right. Are you familiar with defibrillators? I am. You know, they have one here in the office. In AED, well, they save lives. Sure. If you hit somebody with an AED with a defibrillator, which is another thing you need

to be trained on before you really try using it. Clear. That's all I can do. Right. And you want to be clear too. You don't want to be touching the body when that goes off, but you put one paddle over the heart and one paddle over the other side. So the middle of the chest and then on the left side of the person. Yeah. And you shoot the charge through. And what you're doing is not starting the heart. You're actually turning the heart off. Yeah. I think everybody that doesn't know about the defibrillators. Boy, I know it's going to have trouble with that. It's a tough word. I think most people think that, yeah, your heart stopped and it kicks it back, kick starts it back up. Right. Not true. No, it turns it off in the hopes that it'll start back up at a normal rhythm.

Yeah. Like it resets the pace. Right. And it frequently works. But that's just so surprising to me. It's such a gamble. It's like, well, the heart's not doing very well right now. So we're just going to shut it off and see what happens. Yeah. That is weird. Sadly, if you have a sudden cardiac arrest, you have about a 5% chance of surviving because it is out of the blue. It can occur to a very healthy person. It can occur with young people, old people, any kind of person. Yeah. It's not just like a heart disease. It's a part of heart disease frequently. But like I said, it can result from dehydration when your electrolytes are off. Yeah. The good news, if you have a heart attack or a myocardial infarction,

is that you have a pretty good chance of surviving that actually. Yeah. And, you know, turning your life around with diet and maybe get some stents thrown in there and teaching English to prisoners. Yeah, maybe so. But all of this is leading up to the fact that CPR is something that you can increase somebody's chances who has sudden cardiac arrest. Right. Here's the whole point of CPR. The moment somebody drops dead in front of you or you come across somebody who's dying or dead or unconscious, I guess, is a better way to put it. Yeah. Like time is of the essence. Their blood is no longer pumping through their body. Their brain is becoming starved. They're at risk of becoming brain damage. And usually you hear there's

like a five minute window where like you really have the opportunity to save someone's life. Right. Yeah. So whether it's running, somebody's running to get the defibrillator or waiting for 911 to arrive waiting for the paramedics to arrive. The whole point of CPR is to pump blood through the body to keep this person in this basic minimal artificial state of life. Yeah. So that real medical help can be administered. Yeah. You're just trying to stave off death basically for as long as you can until you can get some help. And this is nothing new, right? No, it's not. There's a little bit of history I dug up. Apparently the prophet Elisha in the Bible is described as performing mouth to mouth on a child. Nate, who knows what that meant? In 1740,

the Paris Academy of Sciences, like, you know, as a Bible, it said he placed his mouth upon the child's mouth and stuff like that. But who knows if it was, you know, describe what was wrong with the child or, you know, I don't know. I'm sure the child was not doing well. I got in the 1740, the Paris Academy of Sciences, first recommended mouth to mouth for drowning victims. Yeah, because apparently up to that point, I was like, oh, you're drowned. So that's it for you. Yeah, we're not even going to try anything. Maybe we'll hit you with some sticks. 1891, Dr. Frederick Moss performed the first documented chest compressions on a human. And sadly, it was 1923 years later. 24 years later, Dr. George Kryl first reported a successful resuscitation from chest compression.

Well, yeah, it was a work in progress. It was very much was because it wasn't until 1956, even though mouth to mouth was a thing that Peter Safar and James Elam are credited with inventing it as modern CPR. And the 50s and 60s is where they really perfected it. Like 1960s when CPR was officially like named and developed. Right. And then shortly after that came recess Annie. Yeah. And the little kid with the jumpsuit. That's right. Yeah. All right. So that's just a little background. Right. So it's been around for a little while. Yeah. But the point's always been the same. It's like somebody's in an emergency situation. And you need to basically stay off death. That's right. So, Chuck, let's say that you come into the podcast recording booth.

And you see me just laying on the floor. What are you going to do? Well, I would scream and cry out in agony and shock. Firstly, I'll be very upset. And then the first thing I would do would say would be to say, Jerry, for God's sakes, put down the beer and call 911 immediately. See, I would suspect that Jerry would have known I was in here unconscious the whole time. Well, that's why she's drinking the beer. Right. She's just celebrating. She got it from my desk. Yeah. So yeah, first thing you want to do is call 911 and get some experience, some experience help there from a... Well, that's after you've poked me in the face and said, Josh, Josh, and looked at my chest, seen that it's not rising or falling,

and noted that I'm a little more blue than usual. Yeah, I would yell the call 911 first, personally. Okay. Okay. But yeah, you're supposed to check the person. If it's a child or a baby, they say never, ever shake them. Right. No. Just stroke them and see if they respond. Yeah. And go, baby. Yeah. Do something like that. See if you get a response. And if it is clear that this person is not breathing and they don't look like their heart is beating. Another big one is that chest rising and falling because if you come across somebody and they're just dead drunk, that's different from dead. Yeah. That's true. And I've seen that too. Okay. Not from you. No, no. Not in the podcast. And there's a couple of different types of... Or there's different types

of CPR. And depending on how trained you are is one you would... Which one you would undertake. Right. So you've determined I'm unconscious. Yeah. You don't know what's wrong with me, but I'm blue. Jerry is off dialing 911, finishing her beer. And you are... Let's say that you have never done anything but heard of CPR. Right. What kind of CPR should you employ? That means, and this is from the Mayo Clinic. They know a thing or two about this. Sure. That would be what's known as an untrained person. And I would only perform the hands-only resuscitation. Which we'll describe in detail. That's right. And then let's say that you've had some training before, but it's been a while. Well, that's me. Okay. I am trained but rusty. Right. And they say,

still just use the hands only. Don't kick cocky. Yeah. Don't think you remember all that life-guarding stuff. Let's say you had just gotten out of a CPR class and this happened. You would be trained but confident. That is right. And that means that you can perform full CPR with rescue breathing. And you know, that's great. That means you're 100% confident and you're delivering 100% of your knowledge. Right. And then if you have access to an AED, where is the one in this office? Oh, well, I know where it used to be until we redid the kitchen. Oh, it was it in there? It used to be in the break room. Oh, yeah, it was. That's right. Right by the don't massage your coworker poster. What's that called? The warning basically. Oh, yeah.

It's like the drawings and all that inappropriate touching. I always was caught. My attention was always gotten by the labor laws poster for some reason. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don't know why. Maybe. Yeah. That's where it was. I don't know where it is now. It's probably in our new smaller break room. Yeah, you're right. So if you have access to an AED, you want to actually deliver one shock and then start CPR. And that's if you know absolutely your training, you know what you're doing. Right. Yeah. But you don't want to waste time looking for a pulse. They used to always say check for a pulse. Don't bother. No, because they found out that people were spending a lot more time than they should trying to find a pulse. Yeah. And just basically

wasting time. I think basically if you can look at somebody, see their chest isn't moving, you don't need to look for a pulse. Yeah. I mean, if I was on the ground, the last thing I would want to hear as I'm fading out is, I can't quite tell is that a pulse? Right. Come here. What does that feel like a pulse? What do you call this pulse? Thready? Yeah. And then you're down there just going, just please start compressions. Right. So the American Heart Association said, you know what, let's just go around this and really focus on the chest compressions. Over time, in 2010, they really changed everything. They did. And said, just do chest compressions. Anything else is like additional, but just do chest compressions. Yeah. And so let's talk

about chest compression. Well, before we do the chest compressions, if I came in here, luckily we have a nice flat, first grade carpet type of scene in here. So I would not have to move you. But I do want to get you on your back on a flat hard surface. If you're face down, yeah, then that's sad for you. And I would gently roll you. Actually, I'd probably do it like quicker. Well, you want to really be careful to support the neck. Yeah. Because if somebody already has a neck injury, you can make it way worse if you just flop them around. Yeah. Or if they have a, you know, a piece of steak stuck in their throat, you know, you don't want to get it lodged further. So you want to support the head and neck as you pull the person toward you.

Yeah. So that they're on their back now. That's right. All right. And since 2010, it used to be the ABC method, airway breathing circulation. They've now revised that to the cab method. Yeah. And airway meant that you would stick your finger down the person's throat to see if there was anything you could dislodge. They'd passed out from choking. Now it's just basically chest compressions in the AB. Come second. Yeah. It's like scraping out the airway and then breathing rescue breathing. You don't even do those if you don't know what you're doing. It's all chest compression. That's right. But the new order once again, just remember, think cab. I got to call a cab. ABC was still don't call a cab that will just waste time.

They won't know what you're talking about. That's right. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that will piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names

for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil asset for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, y'all. This is Dr. Joy Horton Bradford, host of the award-winning weekly podcast therapy for black girls. Our incredible community of sisters has been building the therapy for black girls podcast for five years running. And over that time, we've published over 250 episodes and gained over 18 million podcast downloads. During this time, we've tackled the stigma surrounding mental health and shared conversations to help us all understand ourselves and others a little better. Hundreds of incredible licensed mental health care professionals and other experts have joined us

to share tips on taking better care of ourselves. We flipped through the pages of your favorite romance novels with author Tia Williams, checked in with Grammy award-winning artist Michelle Williams and discussed the hurdles of balancing competitive sports, motherhood and mental health with Olympic athlete Natasha Hastings. Five years down and many more years of work to be done. Join us now by checking out the therapy for black girls podcast on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. So with chest compressions, we talked a lot about it. What you want to do is you want to kneel near the neck and shoulders. You've probably seen this on TV. It's pretty accurate usually. Put the heel of your hands on top of one another in the center of the chest,

midway between the nipples. So one palm down, the heel of your hand in the middle of the chest, your other hand over it. So you're just really forming this really solid piece of hand. That's right. You want to keep your elbows straight like they do on TV. So you're not using all of your arms. You're actually using your body weight to compress the chest. I think how many inches? One to two inches for an adult. You want to compress it down one to two inches. That's right. Which that's got to seem like a lot. What if you're the person on the ground? No. If you're making a compression like pushing somebody's chest in two inches, that's significant. Yeah. And that's why you got to put all your body into it. Keep those

arms elbows locked and nice and rigid. Oh, and if you're in Canada or the UK, you want to compress someone's chest 2.54 centimeters to 5.08 centimeters. That's what we're saying when we're saying one to two inches. Yeah. In this case, it's much easier to learn inches, I think. So you want to make these chest compressions about 100 times a minute, which is not, we have a, what, a base 60 minute, 60 second minute. So 100 seems weird to us, right? Yeah. How do you keep that rhythm in your head? It sounds unbelievable, but you want to hum the song in your head, staying alive by the Bee Gees. Right. It actually is 103 beats per minute. So if you can hit that song,

uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, staying alive, staying alive, you will, uh, staying alive, pump, pump, pump, pump, pump. About that fast. Don't hold that pump on the alive. You want to keep it going. Keep it going. You're going to hit 100 and 103 chest compressions a minute. Yeah. It's so awesome that it's staying alive. I know. And they, they chose a great song because most people know that song and they say most people can remember the pace of that song and it's right, you know, kind of right at the 100 to 103 beats per minute. So you're doing pretty well there. Right. And if you have a baby on your hands, um, you want to do chest compressions using the same techniques. Yeah. But you only want to compress the chest about, um, one inch, I believe, one and

a half inches, and you're using your two, your middle finger and your index finger rather than your, the heels of your hands. Yeah. But you're still doing it in the middle of the chest in between the nipples, one and a half inch compressions, a hundred a minute. Yeah. And just less aggressive, you know, and you want to support the baby's head while you're doing it too. Basically, you want to lay them across like the length of your forearm with their head in your hand. I cannot imagine anything more horrifying than performing CPR on a baby. No, but it's good to know for sure. Um, what you're doing here is you are basically squeezing the heart between the breastbone and the backbone to artificially get blood out of it, moving through the body, the

oxygenated blood. And, uh, like, are you literally trying to reach, get the heart going again or just deliver oxygen until someone gets there? The fibrillation is what gets the heart going. All you're doing is distributing oxygenated blood through the body. Okay. Like when the heart pumps, it doesn't make a whole circuit through your body. It just pumps the blood a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, and then eventually this little segment of blood, which each with each pump will follow the course through the body. So you are, um, oxygenating or you're pumping oxygenated blood through the body. Yeah. And you can go to hands only CPR.org is a good website to reinforce this. But again, American Red Cross is where you want to go to get a regular class.

Right. Get certified. And they will teach you also rescue breathing too. Yeah. Because you're, you're, I guess then oxygenating the blood, you're allowing the blood to be oxygenated by introducing air into the lungs. That is very true. So yeah, all you're doing is just keeping like the body, like probably specifically the brain fed with blood through CPR. Yeah. That's what you're doing. So, um, why wouldn't somebody want to do this? Uh, well, one of the first things I looked up was lawsuits because I don't, I never knew if it was true or not, but you always hear about people like, I'm not, you know, I don't want to get sued. I don't want to perform CPR on that person. There's something called a good Samaritan laws. Yeah. Have you heard of these? Remember

the last episode of Seinfeld, they all got convicted on a good Samaritan law. Yeah. There's various, uh, incarnations of good Samaritan laws, but in the case of CPR, it protects people that perform CPR if they are generally, if they are, um, medically trained. Oh, so like if you have a CPR certification, you'd be protected, you would be protected. And, um, and it has to be, uh, it must be the person's just, it must be like, if you try to save me, it's got to be your idea, like, Hey, I'm just going to go save this guy. And someone didn't drag you over there and say, he's a doctor and you can't actually be a doctor and be still be protected like in the hospital. Like it doesn't cover, you know, hospitals and stuff. Right. Cause that's their job. They're

not just being a good Samaritan. Yeah. It's got to be entirely voluntary and, um, certain states, this is a state thing, obviously, certain states are now enacting laws that protect anyone. I know Pennsylvania passed one last year that even if you're not certified, if you give it the old college try, then you can't be sued. That's good. Which is, which is great. You know, you want people diving in there and can you imagine like you saved my life, but I didn't ask you to. So I'm suing you. Yeah. Um, I also went to the freakonomic site because you know how they always break things down in interesting ways, like racially in G and as far as like, uh, income goes and out of 14,225 cardiac arrest patients, a bystander initiated CPR was provided

28.6% of the time. Wow. And, uh, that's it. Yeah. And in low income black neighborhoods, low income white neighborhoods and low income integrated neighborhoods and high income black neighborhoods, uh, your odds of getting a CPR perform were way less, um, than, uh, high income white neighborhoods and high income integrated neighborhoods. I wonder why. I don't know, but three economics is always studying all that stuff and how it affects, you know, the United States, like economically and racially. So I thought that's kind of interesting. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take America's public enemy. Number one, this drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me

that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute a 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs. Of course. Yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example. Okay. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, y'all. This is Dr. Joy Horton, Bradford, host of the award-winning weekly podcast therapy for black girls. Our incredible community of sisters has been building the therapy for black girls podcast for five years running. And over that time, we've published over 250 episodes and gained over 18 million podcast downloads. During this time, we've tackled the stigma surrounding mental health and shared conversations to help us all understand ourselves and others a little better. Hundreds of incredible licensed mental health care professionals and other experts have joined us to share tips on taking better care of ourselves. We flipped through the pages of your favorite romance novels with author Tia Williams, checked in with Grammy

award-winning artist Michelle Williams and discussed the hurdles of balancing competitive sports, motherhood and mental health with Olympic athlete Natasha Hastings. Five years down and many more years of work to be done. Join us now by checking out the therapy for black girls podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. Um, you know, there's a lot of people who also for a long time worried about catching a disease. Yeah, from like mouth to mouth. Yeah, which is another reason, apparently, the Heart Association said, let's just do chest compressions only, like you're not gonna catch anything. But supposedly, there's no documented case of anyone catching anything serious from

giving mouth to mouth or rescue breathing. So nothing to worry about there either. That's good. Although I think if you do that to a drowning victim and near drowning victim, like they often spit up stuff. So you might get a face full of seawater, but frankly, it's a small price to pay for being a hero. Exactly. Have you ever seen this go down? Highlight or CPR or anything? Yeah, no, not in person. I haven't either. I can't imagine that would be and I have friends who have like seen stuff like this and like in restaurants or I think I had one friend that saw some guy like drop dead on the beach and some guy brought him back to life. Yeah, I would love to be there. I'd love to do it. But yeah. Well,

we can start looking for situations. Would you jump in there? Oh yeah. I like to think I would, sure. I would. I think if someone else was really confident ahead of me, I wouldn't like shove them aside. Step aside. I'm going to try my hand at this. But I would, sure, I would definitely get in there. Right on. And that, well, that's, we should also say that's probably accounts for a lot of the reasons why people don't do it. Yeah. It's because they think they wouldn't, then it happens and they are frozen in panic or terror or whatever. Yeah. So that's apparently one of the things this article says is that's another reason why people aren't thinking like you said to yourself when you came into the podcast, but you screamed. Luckily, and I

shook it off screen for Jerry. Right. But yeah, you shook it off and like started to think, but you screamed. Yeah. If you want to learn more about CPR, yeah, you can go to howstuffworks.com and type that word in the search bar. We strongly urge you instead or in addition to go to www.heart.org and look for a CPR course near you and take it. And I said org. So that means it's time for listener mail. Yeah, Josh, this is perfect timing for this email and it just came in actually a couple of days ago and it is sad, but this guy wanted to get the message out. And this is from Dan in Austin. Guys have been meaning to write for ages with little bits and pieces that I picked up from working as a travel photographer in Indonesia for almost 20 years. However, events this past

summer made these semi trivialities has taken this long to complete the email in July of last year while playing with friends in the backyard. My 16 year old daughter suffered a sudden cardiac arrest and collapse. Oh my God. Despite the best efforts of those around her, they will not able, they were not able to recover her pulse and she passed on. We would never know the exact nature of the attack, but I've since discovered such attacks, which can be to a number of causes are alarmingly and tragically frequent and healthy young adults. Although broadly defined by either structural defects or faults within the electrical circuits that coordinate the heart's muscles, essential beats, sudden cardiac arrest, which we've been talking about here strikes down between

4,000 and 7,000 children every year in the US alone. You like we said, you know, like this guy's daughter was totally healthy 16 year old. Unlike many of the diseases and conditions that you have covered on the show with SCA, the first symptoms of a life threatening condition may be at the time of death. Even equipped with resuscitation equipment, survival rates are terrifyingly small and without any equipment, they're almost non existent. There are tests, however, that can be done once kids reach a certain age about 14 when the heart has reached its adult size. But as individuals walking off the street, the cost of these tests may seem prohibitively expensive to parents who are not adequately informed of the hidden dangers that their children face. There are, however,

incredible organizations out there that are working to change both the public awareness and the risks of SCA and are also conducting screening programs to get as many children as possible checked for no cost. All right. So one of these coincidentally is in Austin where he lives and he came out to our Friday show, by the way. Oh, yeah. It's called the Championship Hearts Foundation and that is ChampionshipsHeartsFoundation.org. That's Hearts Plural. And they have the express purpose of making cardiac screening affordable and accessible to as many families as possible and frequently conducts community screenings around Central Texas where they see like 500 kids a day. When I can tell you that they can find the presence of some form of potentially fatal

cardiac condition in one out of every 200 kids or less, you can appreciate the value of their mission. For all these kids, their families, this means the saving of a life. With proper diagnosis and treatment, many children identify going to live healthy lives and active lives. So had I been better informed guys of this potentially fatal, yet silent dangers that Lord can see, I would have made sure to have my daughter scanned just as I will have my son scanned when they're old enough. I hope that every parent listening does the same. So that is Dan. Thanks, Dan. And that is championshipheartsfoundation.org. And he said there's lots of good organizations. And I didn't know about that. And if I ever have kids, that's something that I am going to have done

when they reach the right age. Yeah, maybe we should just start grabbing random kids off the street having them screened. Have you been checked? No. I bet a lot of parents have no idea about this. It's very sad. Yeah. Well, thank you very much, Dan, for letting everybody know. That was a great, great letter. Yeah, we corresponded a couple of times over the past few days and just unbelievable. We went through a very good guy. Yeah. Well, cool. Thank you for writing in. If you have a story that you think everybody needs to know about that no one does, we want to help you get the word out. Heck yeah. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. Send us an email to stuffpodcastatdiscovery.com

and you can always find us on the web at stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off the cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Where were you in 92? Bouncing your butt to Sir Mixolot? Wondering if you,

like Billy Ray Cyrus, could pull off a moment? Now iHeart has a podcast all about it. I'm Jason Lanfied and on my new show, Where Were You in 92, we take a ride through the major hits, one hit wonders and shocking scandals that shaped the wildest 12 months in music history. You know, the president came after me, everybody, I'm Warner was madness. Music was magic and I had completely burned that to the ground. I realized I'm the forbidden fruit. So listen and follow Where Were You in 92 on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.