Drowning: What Happens Moment by Moment

this video is sponsored by brilliant find the link in the description below when i was in the marine corps i participated in a specialized form of swim qualification called the helo dunker this is a simulated helicopter crash inside of a swimming pool so picture like this big metal tube there are seats there are windows and you are strapped to this seat not in full gear but you are in boots camis you have a kevlar helmet a rubber rifle and most importantly blackout goggles because they want to make your life as difficult as possible because they will then submerge you and then they will rotate the entire structure around in the pool to disorient you and your job is to detach yourself from the harness and the seat pop out a window and then swim out to safety hopefully not drowning in the process it's pretty intense and while that may sound enjoyable to many of you out there and i knew plenty of guys that was enjoyable i hated it i did not like that at all and that's because on one particular submersion things did not go my way and water just i will inhaled vast quantities of water and when you have blackout goggles you're strapped to a seat you've been spun around that whole situation just induced a panic response in me i was literally drowning in that moment and now obviously i made it that's because there are qualified swim instructors who are observing everything and one of them recognized me in this situation and took me out of there and i'm obviously here to tell the tale but i will never forget that panic that sensation is so unique it's so scary and that's what i want to talk about today because as horrifying as it actually is it's also very fascinating to understand so we're going to use the cadavers to look at the lungs breathing see exactly what's going on during the drowning process it's going to be a fun one let's do this [Music] according to the world health organization drowning is the process of experiencing a respiratory impairment from a submersion or immersion in a liquid and that's probably the most obvious thing in the world to you i mean we are talking about drowning after all but the thing to understand is you can survive a drowning and still say that you drowned if you're rescued at any time they term that a non-fatal drowning then if you die as a result of the drowning process then we call that a fatal drowning so for me i can actually say that i drown when i was in the helo dunker but i would say that i suffered a non-fatal drowning let's quickly discuss some risk factors associated with drowning because some of them might actually surprise you so the first one i want to talk about is age and the younger you are the more likely you are to drown we find worldwide under the age of 15 a high risk of drowning now if you're a one-year-old you're obviously going to have a higher risk than say a 12 year old but still simply being under the age of 15 higher risk overall males are going to be more likely to drown and we find this is likely because males tend to take bigger risks than females do on average maybe uh he jumps off a cliff or something maybe they're he's drinking around like say in a boat or something along those lines it's again it's not that females don't drown it's just that males are more likely to drown than females uh not being able to swim this one's probably super obvious to you is a pretty big risk factor but what's interesting to me is that most drownings tend to occur in fresh bodies of water so that's lakes and rivers we do find drownings occur in swimming pools and in oceans but by far they actually happen in fresh bodies of water epilepsy picture this you're in a bathtub and you have a seizure that's obviously a very very dangerous situation intoxication like i just already mentioned is a big factor but that can happen for males and females but being intoxicated around water is never a good thing i mean people have drowned in bathtubs they've drowned in puddles they've drowned in toilet bowls believe it or not so i hope i'm not surprised anybody by by saying that drinking and being around bodies of water not the best combination and then the last one is actually exhaustion this i mean you could be a very good swimmer but in a very bad scenario and if you're too tired you are going to go through this drowning process you are now looking at a right human lung and i want to quickly mention that this is a healthy lung i know a lot of people are going to see this dark in color here and assume that maybe this was a smoker's lungs or unhealthy lungs in general but these are healthy looking lungs this darkened color here these are blood vessels and this is exactly what you would expect to see these lungs are pink there's also some dark purple on the back side again this is exactly what you'd want to see so these are very healthy looking lungs but the lungs are going to be squishy so that's because it's made of elastic tissue so it can expand so it feels very similar to a sponge but then attached to it is going to be this long tube here that we call the trachea or the windpipe now this is just a transport tube if i can get this into focus this is just a transport tube and it's just transporting air to and from the lungs and then up top we have the larynx or the voice box now i can turn this around this is pretty cool you can see this awesome cross section of the larynx now i did an entire video all about laryngeal anatomy so you should go check that out after this video but what i want to do right now is just briefly discuss breathing and how it works now actually jonathan made an entire video on breathing itself that you should also go check out after this video so this will be a real quick and easy version of it but when you breathe in i mean obviously it's going to go through the mouth and the throat it's going to then go through the larynx and it's going to go past down the air the oxygen is coming in and then it's going to go down let's see if i can turn this around you can see the inside of the trachea it's not all that exciting to look at because it's just a hollow tube in there but the air is going to go down until it gets to the lungs and that's where the trachea as you can see as we look at this medial surface here the trachea begins to branch and it branches a lot and this branching is just going to fill up the entirety of the lungs so it's just going to branch and branch and branch until it becomes microscopic these little tiny air sacs at the end of all the branching are called alveoli and alveoli are going to be surrounded by blood vessels tiny little blood vessels called capillaries and this is where you're going to have oxygen go into the bloodstream it's going to diffuse into the bloodstream attached to hemoglobin and then just which are on the red blood cells and then go out through the entire body at the same time carbon dioxide will then leave the bloodstream and go into that respiratory tract and then just do the exact opposite trip that oxygen just took it's gonna then get exhaled going up and out but we this is actually pretty important we need to discuss this real quick the fact that oxygen is used by cells to make energy it's extremely important at the same time cells produce carbon dioxide that's a waste product it is very important to get carbon dioxide out of the body out of the bloodstream and if you don't there are going to be some pretty intense consequences and that's exactly what we're about to see now the whole drowning process can be said to occur in four stages now you could subdivide those stages even to even more stages but i think four is going to be just enough but it's important to understand that all four of those stages typically happen within just seconds to minutes it's a very quick process now it can be much more prolonged let's say you're swimming and drowning in very very very cold water and then you begin to suffer from hypothermia in that instance blood is going to start draining from your appendages like your arms and your legs in order to keep your core and your brain warm and give them oxygen that means you are going to consume overall less oxygen because not a lot is going to your muscles so that can actually prolong the drowning experience but i think it's probably best for us to assume that this entire process is going to be happening within just a few minutes at most in the first stage of drowning there is going to be a voluntary breath hold and you are going to hold that breath for as long as you possibly can until the urge to breathe completely overwhelms you i mean this one's probably going to make a lot of sense right it's like right you're swimming you're swimming you're drowning you're trying to figure out the situation you're doing whatever you can but eventually that breath is going to start to go away right the oxygen is going to get burned through and as that happens you're going to become more desperate now to understand why you're so desperate there's a few terms we need to talk about first the first one is called hypoxia hypoxia is when you have low levels of oxygen inside of your blood even though you have enough blood flow to an area right so it's not like there's a tourniquet or something around there now the next one is called anoxia anoxia is where there's a complete absence of oxygen to the organ or tissue that can be very very bad because if there's no oxygen cells can die very quickly and you can have an irreversible permanent injury that's going to be important coming up the next thing is called hypercapnia hypercapnia is when you have too much or elevated levels of carbon dioxide inside of your bloodstream remember carbon dioxide is that waste product that you're supposed to be breathing out but here you are holding your breath so it's just accumulating inside of your blood and that can actually have an effect on the ph level right it lowers the ph level of your bloodstream turning it acidic we call that respiratory acidosis so your blood just starts to become acidic but your body's not just gonna let you do that right say like if you were just holding your breath at home right now which hopefully don't you're not holding it too long but if you hold your breath like eventually you're gonna get to this point where your body's like look i'm not just gonna let our blood turn to acid so what it causes is an inhalation reflex right so you get to this point where you're just completely done and then it's desperately you're going to inhale but that's going to be a pretty big problem and that's going to lead to our second stage of drowning in a second but just understand that as these carbon dioxide levels are rising and rising that's going to lead to panic and seizures this is that point where it's like you're realizing what's happening the carbon dioxide's rising panic and seizures are coming in and so out of desperation the inhalation reflex kicks in and you are now in the second stage of drowning so you probably see what's going to happen here right so as you do that and you're in water that water is now going to go into your respiratory tract so let's take a look at the lung here we'll go back to this larynx get that in focus and as we turn it around so what you're going to see here is this little flap this is called the epiglottis and this is supposed to block off the airway so water does not go into or food doesn't go into your respiratory tract but as you have that inhalation reflex it's going to open and the water is going to get down into that larynx but that's a problem because it doesn't want to do that i mean i i did an entire video actually of substances going down the wrong tube or the wrong pipe so you should go check that out after this video but i'm sure you've been there if you've ever had water go into your respiratory tract it immediately initiates cough reflex so you're gonna to get it out but that's another problem here you are in the water just and more water is going to flood in so in ten percent or so around ten percent of drowning victims they do find that they uh underwent what's called a laryngospasm that is where and it's gonna be hard to tell but i'm touching with my fingers right now the vocal cords the vocal cords are gonna be on either side and what's going to happen is they're going to slam shut again this is about 10 or so of drowning victims they slam shut in an attempt to prevent more water from going down into the respiratory tract at the same time there could also be they'll grab the section here again we'll open this up you see those branching tubes right here these branching tubes are part of the bronchial tree those can also spasm in what's called a bronchospasm so those can also slam shut in a desperate attempt to seal off and prevent water from going down into the respiratory tract and this is because your respiratory tract is not capable of digesting and absorbing water so this is all just this pathway exists to just get it out but here you are fully immersed in water this is not good and this is going to lead us to the third stage and it's at this third stage that you've pretty much burned through all the oxygen that was available to you and so you're no longer in a hypoxic state you're now moving into an anoxic state and that means trouble just spells trouble for pretty much every structure and organ and tissue in your body but it's especially troublesome for this organ right here called the brain now you're looking at a human cerebrum here it's really awesome and amazing to look at but what i want you to understand is that this organ which is around three-ish pounds or around 1.4 kilograms this 3-ish pound organ consumes 20 of your daily calories that's enormous that's because there are around 86 billion neurons inside of this thing all consuming oxygen to work but here you are you've deprived it for an extended period of time now of oxygen and now what's happening is those 86 billion neurons are beginning to die and when they die you're not going to get them back this is at this point you are you are at an irreversible injury consciousness is lost and things are starting to shut down the inhalation reflex completely ceases which leads you to our fourth stage and it's at this point too much far too many of the neurons have died and at this point the brain just dies you suffer brain death and it's completely irreversible and at this point we can say the individual has suffered a fatal drowning but remember if you're rescued anywhere between that first and third stage that means you experienced a non-fatal drowning but that does not mean that you come away unscathed because if you got to an anoxic state and depending on how long you spent in that anoxic state that means you're going to have suffered brain damage and that obviously can be very variable right there's little brain damage and there's a lot of brain damage that you can still survive from so depending on how long you're in that state that means a lot so while we can definitely say that i experienced a non-fatal drowning i obviously didn't get anywhere near that anoxic state i mean i definitely got to that second stage where i had the cough reflex the inhalation reflex i definitely had aspirated water but luckily that swim instructor was able to get me out in time remove the water and i didn't suffer any cerebral injury so for that i will forever be thankful to that swim instructor wherever you are if you found that interesting then you're definitely going to appreciate the sponsor of today's video brilliant brilliant is an interactive online learning platform for stem subjects that is math logic science and computer science just take a look at their newly redesigned course on logic because this is probably my favorite course that brilliant offers simply because logic is everywhere you find it all throughout life and these challenges are highly interactive while being highly challenging yet fun and engaging which is exactly what you need if you're trying to prevent some intellectual form of drowning as you're attempting to better yourself if you're interested visit brilliant.org iha or you just click the link in the description below and the first 200 people there will get 20 off their annual subscription thanks for watching everybody and i'll see you in the next video [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Institute of Human Anatomy

Views: 5,032,944

Keywords: drowning, what happens when you drown but survived, what happens when you drown, how does drowning work, stages of drowning, hypoxia, anoxia, hypercapnia, respiratory acidosis, respiratory system, breathing, how drowning works, what happens during drowning

Id: gD22A1YMCRo

Length: 15min 54sec (954 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 24 2021