Although i’m not at all the sqeemish sort I seem to get unexpectedly light headed when i see images of major bodily injuries … not that i have to deal with that sort of stuff alot, but the times i have seen stuff like that: surgical procedures on tv, unwanted emails of fireworks injuries … I come darn close to passing-out.
My question is this:
How can just a picture have such a major physiologial effect!
How can you get over this sort of thing, how do med students deal with it? repetition?
I’m a wannabe Med student, and gory stuff doesn’t really bother me. Surgical procedures and documentaries fascinate me.
Even though gory stuff doesn’t squick me, reading about different diseases, viruses, and pathogens sometimes does. I actually remember reading once that this was common among medical students. As we learn more and more about different ailments, we tend to get paranoid and start diagnosing symptoms in ourselves.
Could that be why some people feel faint at the sight of gore and bodily harm? Could they be reflectively imagining this trauma on themselves?
It’s a guess. I’m no psychologist.
-Ashley
Fainting at the sight of blood, or gore, is generally considered to be the result of the vaso-vagal reflex, a nerve response which dilates the arteries and reduces the heart rate. Net result, DFO, or Done Fell Out, as in “Doc, I done fell out!” Why this should be so, I am not sure.
I don’t know but I always found this a bit fascinating. Seeing other’s gore on tv or rl doesn’t bother me but the sight of my own blood can make me pass out. I once pricked my finger just hard enough to make a single drop of blood ooze out. I watched it in a mesmerized sort of way and then passed out. I also once saw some of my blood on a Dr’s hand when he was removing a cyst from my lip and I passed out. Nosebleeds and gum bleeds don’t bother me though and most other cuts and stuff haven’t caused me any squeamishness so I don’t know what to make of it all.
I heard a theory somewhere (I’m looking for a citation, but haven’t found it yet) the fainting at the sight of blood might have had some evolutionary advantage. If you are bleeding, shutting down for a moment might be healthier or something like that. For some reason it is more common in men than women.
My husband can watch gory movies with certain curious exceptions. He had to lie down on the floor during the infamous finger scene in “The Piano.” He says it’s something about seeing women bleeding that does it.
He also gets faint when having blood drawn and had to sit down for a moment when our first baby was born.
Could this possibly be some sort of self-defense mechanism? It’s useless when it comes to fainting at the sight of someone else’s blood, but if you yourself are bleeding then it might be a good thing for your heart rate to reduce so your heart pump a whole lot of blood right out of your body.
Just a WAG.
I agree, Ashtar, when I see something icky, it doesn’t make me faint, but I think, ‘OOOh, what if that happened to me?’ and I have sympathy pains in the part of my own body corresponding to the injured/diseased part in the body I’m examining. But it only lasts a few seconds and I’m fine again.
So to answer the OP, 1, probably projection of trauma onto one’s own self (realization of mortality and all that goes along with it), and 2, medical professionals either never experienced this response, decreased sensitivity by repeated exposure to the stimulus (retraining), or look only at ‘problem to be solved’ and worry with mortality issues when they get home.
Not discounting the theory, but it seems to me that fainting at the sight of your own blood would be an evolutionary disadvantage. First, if you faint while standing up, you could do serious harm to yourself, or even die, particularly if you hit your head on something hard.
Second, I would think that you’d want to stay alert while you were bleeding, so as to better treat your wound. If you faint while bleeding, it’s possible to remain unconscious while you bleed out and die. That wouldn’t seem to be much help, evolution-wise.
I think the idea was something along the lines of what Lamia proposed. Usually you get some warning–you don’t just keel over. And “fainting” refers to a very brief unconsciousness. I don’t think it’s categorized as a faint unless you pretty much start to recover as soon as your head is down. As for attending the wound, that probably wouldn’t have figured into the early evolution of the mechanism.
I’m not sure it makes any sense. After all you hear lots of stories of people getting terrible wounds in crisis situations and not really feeling the pain or reacting to the loss of blood until long afterwards. That seems like a more reasonable response–get the heck out and then find out how hurt you really are.
I always claim I am impossible to upset: I taught preschool for seven years and NOTHING can scare me. Always cool in an emergency. Then I changed careers…
Nursing program, 9 months in. Bedside assist to an RN and MD putting a central line into a heroin addict’s inner thigh. He got the artery and the blood, so much and so red and …he got it where he wanted and I helped clean up and excused myself to the Ladies room and just leaned against the wall for a few minutes. Later that semester, I was observing a vaginal hysterectomy with a bladder repair and the woman was just about filleted. Remembered to sit down before I fell down. But now, a year later, I was in Open Heart OR for 6 hours, assisting with harvesting radial and mammary vessels to use in bypass grafts and holding the heart for the surgeons. I try to think of it as helping the patient, not that it’s painful or messy.
I use to faint constently at the sight of blood when I was a kid. My mother would tell me I was suffering from “empathy”. I never really understood what she meant, but I got tired of feeling faint and sick so I would avoid those siuations that might induce the effect (leave half way through the movie) or lie down on the floor or put my head between my legs.
My grandfather and mother have the same problem… but to a lesser degree. My daughter fortunately doesn’t have the problem which is good since she works in law enforcement and seeing blood comes with the job. She does, though, faint when they take blood from her, but she’s learned to look away and focus on the pain…
I don’t believe there is a cure although you sort of grow out of it after a while. I can watch something really gory if it’s obvisouly fake… but if someone cut their finger off in front of me I would be out like a light. I can tell right before it happens so I can take preventative measures. Fortunately it has never happened while I was driving!
I wish there was a fancy name for this condition so we could form a support group and share our experiences… not that it would help mind you.
I’ve seen a decent bit of gore so far, doing EMS work. I haven’t gotten sick yet. I just haven’t hit my threshold, and I think that when I do, it will probably surprise me. For example, I’ve never seen a baby be born. Ever. For all I know ( despite the fact that I can’t wait to help deliver one ), that may be my threshold…
It’s not the blood that gets me, it’s the suffering. It’s the emotional trauma more than the physical. To me, it’s the mechanics. Tissue, arteries, bones. They can be fixed, almost ALL the time. Amazing to me. But, the internal scars last out, like evil salt water taffy that pulls out thinner and thinner but never goes away.
Nobody taught me how to stay really cool and focused on the side of the road, with just one other partner there, working away-when I hit my limit.
very interesting …
I guess restricted blood flow at the sight of blood does make good evolutionary sense … even if only caused by the realization that “hey! that could happen to me” faints — thud!
It also makes sense that the cause of fainting -restriced blood flow - wouldn’t be a hinderance evolutionarily in a survival situation. The passing-out effect would probably be negated by the adrenalin rush that would occur after being slashed by a tiger, stone ax … it would even help to control blood loss durring such a situation,
but thats just the guess of a lay-person…