Correct, nothing can move, not your lungs, not your eye lids, nothing. So he went very blind from staring at the sun for 30mins straight while people did cpr until ambulance arrived
Hindsight is 20:20. It may seem obvious when you’re sitting here reading about it, but if my buddy was suddenly paralyzed I’d probably be too preoccupied with keeping his blood moving and oxygenated to have the extra processing power to think about whether his eyes needed to be closed.
It would take a very large dose to affect the heart and even then it would just lead to a slower heart rate instead of stopping it. The heart does not need nerves to tell it to beat and it’s action potential triggering is different than muscles and nerves. They’ll be brain dead from being without oxygen before they’re heart dead, similar to opioid overdoses.
I would personally imagine that you may need to be defibrillated at some point but otherwise probably yes? The toxins are causing the paralysis and people do survive it so I can only imagine that the heart takes back over after a certain amount of effort. Otherwise, I don’t actually know.
Gotcha. My CPR training was so long ago, and the only relevant information that really stuck with me was “the AED will directly instruct you if it thinks a shock is helpful based on what it detects”, after that the specifics just kinda fell through my brain.
Correct, nothing can move, not your lungs, not your eye lids, nothing. So he went very blind from staring at the sun for 30mins straight while people did cpr until ambulance arrived
Yep.
They couldn’t close their eyelids.
Better blind than dead.
Is it though?
Too bad no one had a shirt or something they could’ve covered their eyes with…
Hindsight is 20:20. It may seem obvious when you’re sitting here reading about it, but if my buddy was suddenly paralyzed I’d probably be too preoccupied with keeping his blood moving and oxygenated to have the extra processing power to think about whether his eyes needed to be closed.
What about the heart?
It would take a very large dose to affect the heart and even then it would just lead to a slower heart rate instead of stopping it. The heart does not need nerves to tell it to beat and it’s action potential triggering is different than muscles and nerves. They’ll be brain dead from being without oxygen before they’re heart dead, similar to opioid overdoses.
Thus the CPR, I would imagine.
Does it just automatically restart beating after effects wear off?
I would personally imagine that you may need to be defibrillated at some point but otherwise probably yes? The toxins are causing the paralysis and people do survive it so I can only imagine that the heart takes back over after a certain amount of effort. Otherwise, I don’t actually know.
Defibrillation is only useful if the problem is your heart is doing some kind of fibrillation.
If it’s not beating at all, other methods like manual massage or chemical restarts (epinephrine) are the right move.
Gotcha. My CPR training was so long ago, and the only relevant information that really stuck with me was “the AED will directly instruct you if it thinks a shock is helpful based on what it detects”, after that the specifics just kinda fell through my brain.
You might need external/transesophageal pacing with a severe exposure to TTX, but that would only be temporary. It shouldn’t cause v fib.
Gotcha! My brain did the “heart stop = defibrillator” thing. Thanks!