Jayden Gallmon remembers the first time it happened like it was yesterday. He was 5 years old watching a movie with his family when a gory scene popped up on the screen.
He felt a cold sweat rush through his body as he left to go to the bathroom and later awoke to his brother who found him passed out on the bathroom floor.
Gallmon’s family immediately wanted answers as to what caused this reaction.
“Initially we were thinking it was some type of heart condition, because my family struggles with heart conditions,” Gallmon said.
However, while no tests could point to the cause of this reaction, it wasn’t until Gallmon’s mother posted his symptoms on Facebook and someone mentioned the possible condition, vasovagal syncope.
Gallmon and his family brought this to the doctor and they confirmed that was the condition he had.
Gallmon, who is now an adult in his twenties, hasn’t had a reaction in years, however he isn’t alone in living with this condition.
Vasovagal syncope is in general a brief loss of consciousness according to Candace Makant, a registered nurse for 14 years, who works at the Georgia Southern nursing department via email.
“Typically, this is caused by a lack of blood flow to the brain for various reasons,” Makant said via email.
Makant looks at this condition as something relatively harmless and this seems to be the general consensus across the field of medicine as well.
Emergency Room Dr. Dennis Holder has seen a lot of vasovagal syncope cases throughout his 20 years in the field. Dr. Holder explained that it's not even the patients he sees that have this condition, it's the family members who take the patient in to get helped.
“Your brain lives on two things, oxygen and sugar,” Dr. Holder said. “If you’re choked and you don’t get oxygen, you pass out and if your blood sugar drops, you pass out.”
There can be many triggers for this loss of consciousness when it comes to vasovagal syncope, the sight of blood or needles, high anxiety and even just the thought of pain can cause this reaction.
These triggers are also more sensitive when the temperature is high. This is the result of a process called vasodilation.
Vasodilation is when your body widens the blood vessels to help cool off your body by promoting easier circulation, at the cost of lowering your blood pressure, which can lead to an easier path to syncope according to Dr. Holder.
While the triggers may be a bit different depending on who you talk to, the root problem that causes this reaction is the same.
“It’s an overactive vagus nerve,” Dr. Holder said. “They don’t really understand why but, what it does is cause the heart rate to slow down so you’re not perfusing the brain.”
Makant added via email that the most common vasovagal syncope episodes she has seen is when people strain to void, which is the muscular effort needed to start urination, and holding your breath. These examples also dictate a squeezing of the body, causing the heart to strain and slow down.
Even so, with this being the understood cause of the reaction, doctors still don’t really know why some people have this.
Dr. Holder likened vasovagal syncope to being similar to irrational fears. He explained that he is afraid of heights and when he is on a tall building even he experiences similar symptoms to vasovagal syncope.
While there isn’t necessarily a cure for this condition, people like Gallmon have found ways to prevent the symptoms of syncope and avoid passing out.
“I found this out from being at the dentist, they were pulling my teeth and I started to feel the symptoms,” Gallmon said. “So, they tilted my chair to where my head was tilted downwards and that was the first time I felt like I was going to pass out and didn’t.”
Gallmon then explained that since that, he could be found a time or two hanging upside down off the couch while watching movies at his house.
Another way of preventing these reactions is little by little exposure therapy, according to Dr. Holder.
“It’s almost like allergy shots,” Dr. Holder said. “You take a little small bit of antigen and you slowly increase it so your body kind of get used to it.”
Dr. Holder also recommended the use of caffeine as it causes the heart rate to increase and that could minimize some of the overall symptoms of syncope.
Luckily, this kind of condition is normally found early on in life according to Dr. Holder. Which can give those with the condition a lot of time to better understand their personal triggers and better prepare for those reactions.
“You can kind of protect yourself and try to minimize injury,” Dr. Holder said. “If you know it's going to happen then try to make it where it doesn’t happen as often.”
Vasovagal syncope is one of those things that people like Gallmon just kind of have to live with ultimately. However, it’s not something that derails a person’s life either. It just means you won’t be catching Gallmon enjoying a gory horror film any time soon.