Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Fainting At The Sight Of Blood

Episode Date: May 11, 2022

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and here's Jerry.

And if you faint at the sight of blood or even discussions about it, you should probably stop listening now. That's right, because it is a thing. It doesn't bother me. I don't love the sight of blood, but I'm not too easily grossed out. I can watch a surgery on TV and I'm fine. I like writhing naked in blood. That's how much I love blood. Oh, good Lord. Covering my entire gigantic body. So anyway, because I can do that, I clearly don't have Chuck, a particular phobia about feigning at the sight of blood. And that's really what the whole thing is coming down to as we'll see. But feigning itself in this particular kind of fainting,

and this is the thing, like people actually do this. It's not like some movie or TV trope. Right. How about it is that as well? Yes. But when you faint at the sight of blood, there's a specific physiological faint that's going on. There's different kinds of feigning. And this one in particular is what's called the vasovagal syncope. And vaso refers to your blood vessels. Vagal refers to the vagus nerve, which played a huge starring role in our episode on what happens in the brain during an orgasm. That's right. The reason the vagus nerve gets a shout out in this name for this type of feigning is because 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. We know some things and don't know other things. We know that it is a legit phobia. It's about three to 15% of people have this, where they faint at the sight of blood. And we also know that it's not just the sight of blood. It can be an injury that you witness, even like I think you pointed out here, like someone's slamming 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 name for the phobia is BII, blood injury injection phobia. Right. And it is a phobia because there's no real danger or anything to truly be feared from a hypodermic needle or something like that.

Even though there is plenty of danger from it, it's still considered an irrational fear. You know what I'm saying? Sure. You're not in a horror movie and they're not going to put it in your eyeball. Right. And so with phobias, BII is actually a peculiar type because with vasovagal syncope, you're fainting because your heart has slowed down enough that your blood pressure drops, which robs your brain of the very important blood it needs to function correctly and you lose consciousness until your heart regains a normal rhythm again, which it does on its own. And that means that BII is its own kind of phobia because with most phobias, that's not how this goes down at all. No. With most phobias, you're going to like have a spike in your heart rate initially,

and then that'll probably lead to like a fight or flight type of thing. It'll really ramp everything up. And with BII, you do have that initial very brief spike in your heart rate, but then it just goes, 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 except for the blood injury injection phobia. But after digging a little deeper into this kind of odd malady, frankly, they found that not only 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 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's not funny, but it does make for funny moments in movies and TV shows when someone comes running into a room and sees something awful, and they go, oh my god, and that's the initial spike. And then, because it does kind of follow it scientifically, and then they just go, oh, and hit the deck. And it is a trope for a reason, but it is interesting in 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 BII phobias? Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions

arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody,

yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages,

K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change, too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so one explanation for blood injury injection phobias is that it's a gene. It comes from some gene or mutation that's passed down. We don't know very much about it. But if you consider that it is conferred genetically, that suggests that there's like an evolutionary aspect to this,

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 approached with danger or injury or something like that, or you see someone else being injured, you would think you'd probably be in danger, too. And so running away really fast, fighting back, 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 Tuk-Tuk in the gang, and Tuk-Tuk gets clubbed on the head and blood squirts out everywhere.

And you go, oh, and you pass out and hit the rocks. Then the other invading, I don't even know what era we are with Tuk-Tuk anymore. What would they be? Tuk-Tuk existed about 10,000 years before Utsi. So I'm gonna say he existed about 18,000 years ago prior to the advent of agriculture. All right. But 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 run up at Tuk-Tuk and Tuk-Tuk, or I'm sorry, Tuk-Tuk's friend who is now passed out on the ground, and they just think he's dead and they walk right by him. Like it's the old play dead

during battle thing. Right. Which is, okay, that makes kind of sense if you stop and think of it. Yeah. The other thing is if it was Tuk-Tuk himself who'd been injured and fainted at the site 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. Not a bad theory. No, it also kind of is depending, you know, but it's one of the few we've got because we just don't understand it. Like we understand the physiological component about what happens with vasovagal syncope. It's how the site of blood or somebody shutting their hand in a car door or a hypodermic needle triggers that. It just, that's where we kind of lose our grasp

on that. And one of the reasons why, what would you say, like 3 to 15% of the population is it? That's a really wide estimate too. Yeah. 15% is definitely significant, but 3 to 15%, that's a big gap between 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 by its very nature, that condition prevents 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 doctor's 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 a huge gash in their forehead. Like

they don't want to go anywhere near those places. Yeah, 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, it can be tied to something called medical procedure anxiety, which sort of speaks for itself. Yeah. So you're not going into any hospital. So it's really hard to get great information about this. But our old friend, cognitive behavioral therapy can help you out, according to WebMD. And there's a Swedish psychologist named Lars Gurren-Ust, who apparently is the best in the business. And it is 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 to, whenever you think of anything like this, and 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 at once, everything in your body, because that'll just get your heart rate going higher than it normally would be to get it 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 they teach you how to stave off fainting at step one, right? And then after that, when they're exposing you, it goes from making you imagine you're going 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 phlebotomist with a syringe and a tourniquet and actually putting the tourniquet on your arm. And the whole time you're just tensing your core so hard, trying to 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 they say is that possibly in as few as like three to five sessions of learning applied tension and then using and then doing exposure therapy, you might actually be able 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, why are you wearing that wig? Why are you dressed like that? Yeah. And say, I don't know. I think it just increases the anxiety is what I've found. I would dress up like the main character at the end of promising young woman. Oh, that's what I come at you like. Wowie. Wow. Yeah. Scary pink wig, rubber nurse. Yeah. Yeah. That's trying to picture you like that. That's pretty frightening. Stop that. I don't give you permission to picture me like that. Well, there's a million people picturing 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 like you said, there's that medical procedure anxiety that keeps you from going into the doctor's office. And that means that you're not going in for like vaccines or cancer screenings or, you know, wellness checkups 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 of blood or a needle anymore. That's right. You got anything else? I have nothing else, sir. Well, then that's it for short stuff and short stuff is out.

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