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Guess what, Will?
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What s up, Mango?
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I ve been trying to write a promo for our podcast, Part-Time Genius, but even though we ve done over 250 episodes, we don t really talk about murders or cults.
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I mean, we did just cover the Illuminati of cheese, so I feel like that makes us pretty edgy.
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We also solve mysteries like how Chinese is your Chinese food and how do dollar stores make money?
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And then, of course, can you game a dog show?
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So what you re saying is everyone should be listening.
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Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Hey and welcome to the short stuff.
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I m Josh and there s Chuck and it s just us but we re gonna do it.
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No problem.
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Everybody just calm down.
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This is short stuff.
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That s right.
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I thought about getting one together about this topic because my daughter Ruby got the wind knocked out of her for the first time.
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Oh, no.
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A couple of weeks ago and told me about it.
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I wasn t there when it happened.
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It happened at school.
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And she said it was scary.
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And I was like, hey, listen, kiddo, that happened to me.
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I think she got hit in the chest or something.
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But I, when I was young, fell out of a tree about
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I mean, it wasn t super high, but it was probably, like, seven or eight feet, like, directly on my back.
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And got the wind knocked out of me really bad.
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I think maybe the only time that s happened.
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And if you ve never had it happen, it s a very panicky, scary situation, because you literally cannot get a breath.
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You re just like, I wish people could see me now, because I m sort of silently freaking out.
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But you cannot inhale or exhale for a very short period, for a period of a few seconds until you go and get your breath again, finally.
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But I was like, what s going on there?
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And we found out.
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Yeah, also, that s funny that that coincided with somebody wrote in an email in the last week or so asking for us to explain getting knocked out of.
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Yes.
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So it s in the air right now, apparently.
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Well, I wish we could name that person, but I didn t realize that.
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So, thank you to whoever that was.
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So, there s another name for this.
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It s called frenospasm.
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The reason why is it involves your phrenic nerve, which controls your diaphragm, which is essentially at the center of this whole thing.
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And to understand, I guess, how all this works, you kind of have to understand how we breathe, right?
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Yeah.
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Okay, I ll tell everybody how you breathe So that diaphragm is a huge mass of like muscle and tendon.
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It s kind of like dome-shaped.
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It almost looks like the insignia for the Star Trek Federation, right?
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Right underneath your lungs.
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I m trying to bring some of our nerdier fans back Okay
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And when it expands, like we exhale, because it forces our lungs, it forces air out of our lungs.
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When we inhale again, the diaphragm contracts and gets smaller so our lungs can fill with air.
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Eventually they reach a point where they re low enough in pressure that the air inside of our lungs is low enough in pressure compared to the outside air pressure that the outside air is like, I can t stand it anymore, and rushes in to fill our lungs up, which,
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allows us to breathe again.
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Exactly.
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And if we re just hanging out, if we re relaxed, or even if we re doing something athletic, the diaphragm is working as it should.
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Breathing is involuntary.
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It s an automatic function of our nervous system.
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Our body s just doing it, and there s really no problems that are happening.
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The problem with getting winded happens when you get a either like a sock to the chest.
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If you ever look up like like martial arts, like, you know, where should I hit somebody to take them down?
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They ll list a bunch of things like the side of the neck or, you know, all these different places.
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where you can punch someone to kind of, not paralyze them necessarily, but at least stop them.
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And they always say, like, aim for that solar plexus, which is very near the diaphragm, and it sort of acts like a bullseye if you re trying to, say, like, punch there.
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And so if you get socked right there, either by a fist or if you fall out of that tree and land on your back or something, it can potentially, you know, paralyze, at least temporarily paralyze that diaphragm because it s spasming to the point where you re just, nothing is working as it should.
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And it s, it is super, super scary.
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Yeah, so your diaphragm is either, like you said, paralyzed or else it s spasming.
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And when that happens, not only can you not breathe in, the reason you start panicking immediately is part of getting the wind knocked out of you.
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And the reason that name is so perfect is the first part of it is all of the air in your lungs is expelled suddenly.
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Right.
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So you ve got no air in reserve and you can t breathe.
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That s why it sucks so terribly, terribly bad.
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You re like dying for a few seconds.
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Yeah.
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Pretty much.
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I mean, you are.
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The thing is, is from everything I ve seen, it s not a life-threatening thing.
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Your diaphragm stops spasming like clockwork in just a few seconds and you start breathing again.
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It takes a little while for the panic to subside because your lizard brain is on like overdrive.
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But you will start breathing again.
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And talk about the solar plexus for a second.
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May I stand in my soapbox for a second?
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Yeah, yeah.
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So if you read around the internet what causes the wind to get knocked out of you or what happens, people will add the solar plexus in.
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And at base, the reason that it gets added is exactly as you described it.
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That s where your diaphragm is, right?
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Yeah.
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But the solar plexus specifically is a bundle of nerves that controls like your guts and your stomach and your spleen and your liver and all that stuff.
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And it s actually the thing that slows down digestion when you re in fight-or-flight mode.
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It s that solar plexus bundle of nerves that s like, oh, okay, we ll just sit here for a little while while we run.
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The problem that I found, and this is why I m on my soapbox,
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is plenty of people who ve written articles on this kind of thing go a step further and say, well, your solar plexus is temporarily disabled.
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And so your diaphragm doesn t work.
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Your solar plexus has nothing to do with sending nerve signals to your diaphragm.
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And it just drove me nuts to see it over and over and over again, because they wouldn t, they wouldn t explain it.
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They wouldn t go any further.
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They just toss that out.
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And for anybody who doesn t know or doesn t care to look further, like that s, that s some, somebody who knows what they re talking about, wrote this fact-based researched article and it s just wrong.
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And that drives me so crazy, man.
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It s everywhere.
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It s just so lazy.
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And it s, it s just a form of spreading misinformation through laziness.
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Yeah, and I think, well, first of all, I don t think it s a very big deal.
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So, it s settled down.
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It s not, but collectively, cumulatively, it is.
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Yeah, but it s, I think it s just sort of a more specific bullseye and a shorthand for, like, instead of saying punch someone in the diaphragm or punch someone in the stomach.
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Right.
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It s a little bit higher than that.
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The solar plexus is sort of midway between your navel and, I guess, what is that?
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The bottom of your pecs.
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Yeah, the bottom of your pecs.
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So I think it s just sort of shorthand, but it s such a thing, such a shorthand that getting the wind knocked out of you like a doctor might even call it a solar plexus attack.
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You go go see a different doctor.
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I want to shout out a guy named Kevin Tokoff, T-O-K-O-P-H at Catalyst University.
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Oh, I saw that video.
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Yeah.
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He did a great video on all this and went to the trouble explaining all that, that the solar plexus really doesn t have anything to do with it.
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It just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, basically.
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He didn t get it worked up like you, though, huh?
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No.
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No, he was a cool guy.
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He played it pretty cool.
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Yeah.
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All right.
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Go check out the video because it explains this in a pretty cool way with visuals.
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But we ll be back to talk about what you might do if you have found that you have had a solar plexus attack right after this.
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Guess what, Bango?
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What s that, Will?
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So iHeart is giving us a whole minute to promote our podcast, Part-Time Genius.
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I know, that s why I spent my whole week composing a haiku for the occasion.
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It s about my emotional journey in podcasting over the last seven years, and it s called Earthquake House.
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Mango, I m going to cut you off right there.
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Why don t we just tell people about our show instead?
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Yeah, that s a better idea.
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So every week on Part-Time Genius, we feed our curiosity by answering the world s most important questions.
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Things like, when did America start dialing 911?
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Is William Shatner s best acting work in Esperanto?
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Also, what happened to Esperanto?
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Plus we cover questions like how Chinese is your Chinese food?
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How do dollar stores stay in business?
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And of course, is there an Illuminati of cheese?
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There absolutely is and we are risking our lives by talking about it.
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But if you love mind-blowing facts, incredible history, and really bad jokes, make your brains happy and tune in to Part-Time Genius.
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SPEAKER_01
Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeartRadio
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Last season, millions tuned into the Betrayal podcast to hear a shocking story of deception.
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I m Andrea Gunning, and now we re sharing an all-new story of betrayal.
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Stacey thought she had the perfect husband.
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Doctor, father, family man.
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SPEAKER_04
It was the perfect cover for Justin Rutherford to hide behind.
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SPEAKER_05
They led me into the house, and I mean, it was like a movie.
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He was sitting at our kitchen table.
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The cops were guarding him.
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Stacey learned how far her husband would go to save himself.
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I slept with a loaded gun next to my bed.
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He did not just say, I wish he was dead.
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He actually gave details and explained different scenarios on how to kill him.
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He, to me, is scarier than Jeffrey Dahmer.
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Listen to Betrayal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Well, the stuff that we found is basically talking to the coach of the little league team.
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Basically, what you want to do is you have the person who had the wind knocked out of them take a knee.
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Right?
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So when he s on the ground, when he s forward, have them raise their hands above their head and arch their back and stick their chest out.
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You want to hold their hands up and kind of pull it back a little bit and tell them to breathe deeply.
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Long inhalations, short inhalations, long exhalations, and very quickly you will start breathing normally or the kid will.
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Yeah, if you re by yourself, try to get into that, you know, position and raise your arms yourself.
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But if you re too freaked out, maybe just sit up in like a crouch position.
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Try and, again, breathe through your mouth.
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Breathe in through your mouth, that is.
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Push your stomach out, then suck your stomach back.
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Like, try and be real just intentional with your breathing.
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And try and relax, try and stay calm.
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That s like the biggest thing is like, all right, I know what s happened to me and that I will breathe again.
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So try and kind of dim the panic a little bit.
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I ve also seen where if you if you re near a pillow, if you fall out of a tree, you re kind of out of luck, I guess.
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If there is a pillow, you can put a pillow under your knees and head, and that will, I guess, get you in a better position.
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But again, if you re with someone, try to get them to help you, or hopefully they ll know to help you with the over-the-head stuff.
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Right.
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I guess you could be a kid who knew they were going to fall out of a tree, but they were jumping out of a tree, so they strapped a pillow to their front and back as padding and then found it didn t work, but then you have the pillows handy when you re trying to get the breath back in you.
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Yeah, yeah.
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But just know that you ll start breathing.
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You ll get that big inhale in a matter of seconds, and then you ll be just sort of breathing normally in a few minutes, usually.
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I saw like 10 to 15, but I haven t seen that it really even takes that long.
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Really long.
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Yeah.
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I don t remember when I or what the circumstances were for me getting the wind knocked out of me, but I definitely have.
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It feels like a rite of passage.
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I think so.
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And hopefully it does not happen to you.
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But if it does, stay calm.
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One other thing, though, if the breathing does not return to normal within several minutes or 10 to 15 minutes, go to the hospital because you might have like a fractured rib or a collapsed lung.
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Totally.
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Something worse could have happened, but that s how you tell.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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I have a tailbone bruise from spring break like two and a half weeks ago that just will not go away.
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Man, those hurt.
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Yeah, it s just every time I m sitting for a while and I get up and walk, it just feels like someone s stabbing me in my right butt cheek.
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Oh, you need one of those inflatable donuts.
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I guess that would help.
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It s just I think that a deep tailbone bruise just takes a long, long time.
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Yeah.
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To go away.
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You going to tell us how you got that?
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Was it through rope trauma?
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No, a golf cart injury.
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One of those deals, you know the golf carts when you re sitting there, they have the little handrail that s very hard on the side, right by your hip.
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If you go to sit down and your golf cart buddy hits the gas, and it just drove right into my butt bone.
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Oh my god.
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Yeah.
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I m alright though.
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That s a great way to end this one.
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Alright.
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Short stuff s out.
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Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
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For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.