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- Can Earing a sandwich stop your heart?
- It can, if nerves become blocked.
- A woman with fainting episodes found that they coincided with eating sandwiches and drinking fizzy beverages.
- Her findings: during dizzy spells (following eating or drinking) the patient experienced complete atrioventricular block, a condition in which the electrical current traveling from the top two chambers of the heart (atria) to the bottom two chambers (ventricles) is disrupted. "I picked this up and referred her to the cardiologists," Martin says.
- Diagnosis: swallow syncope
- What is swallow syncope?
- It is when swallowing induces loss of consciousness. The swallowing triggers a vagal [nerve] reflex from the esophagus to the brain and back to the heart [that] is excessive in its reflex strength. The heart is very sensitive to that reflex response… (and this leads to) a slowing of the heart rate so as to create insufficient blood flow to the brain, causing someone to black out. No one knows why they have these very unusual reflexes.
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