Fainting is caused when you don’t get enough blood and oxygen to your brain. Your brain relies on blood and oxygen to function properly. Most of us take our brains for granted, assuming that they’re safely encased in our skulls and don’t require any sort of special attention to function properly. This is the wrong attitude to have. The brain is a highly complex organ and requires special care and attention to operate at its highest levels. Fortunately, the brain responds basically to how we treat our bodies. Taking good care of our bodies, paying attention to diet, exercise, and sleep, means that our brains are being taken care of too.
What is fainting? Fainting is a temporary loss of consciousness. You’re going along just fine one moment, thinking thoughts and having conversations, and suddenly you black out, you’re no longer mentally there. It’s a mysterious process. Where does the mind suddenly go when you faint, and how does it come back? Doctors don’t have the answers to all of the questions having to do with fainting, but there is basic information available that everyone should know about.
The causes of fainting are many. For example, a poor diet can lead to fainting. Not eating and drinking enough is a major cause of the body suddenly losing all energy and ability to function. Low blood pressure causes fainting. Your heart supplies blood to the rest of your body; your blood vessels help to control blood pressure. If your body isn’t getting enough blood, or if your blood vessels are paralyzed due to standing up too quickly or sudden, strenuous effort, fainting can occur. Persons suffering from hypoglycemia, diabetes, and anemia are at risk of fainting. Exercising too vigorously, that is, making demands of the body that the body’s current level of energy can’t sustain, causes fainting. Fainting can even be caused by too much stress in a person’s life.
Some serious causes of fainting include irregular heart beat or a heart beating altogether too slowly. These dire things can come about when a person eats too much fatty foods and doesn’t get enough exercise. What happens is fatty deposits build up in the arteries, causing the blood to move sluggishly. When blood moves sluggishly, it doesn’t reach the heart effectively, and when the heart suffers the rest of the body suffers with it. This condition is very, very dangerous, even life-threatening.
In mild cases of fainting, it is best to lie down on the floor and breathe deeply and evenly until you begin to feel normal again. It isn’t unusually to see tiny bright flecks or spots floating in front of your eyes if you’ve had a fainting episode. Fainting, as noted above, can be caused by something as simple as not eating enough; it can be caused by something as simple as being in a very hot room too long. In these cases, a simple problem has a simple solution. Lie down, have something to eat and drink. Calm down. Relax. Soon the feeling of faintness will pass.
Frequent fainting, however, and especially frequent fainting accompanied by chest pains is a matter to see your doctor about right away. He or she will help you come up with a strategy to heal your body in such a way that fainting ceases to occur. Low blood pressure, a common cause of fainting, can be due to certain blood pressure or heart medications, and it may be that you need to take a smaller dosage of these. Obviously, only your doctor can decide if you should do that or not. It’s crucial, then, if you’re suffering from dangerous symptoms, to get in and see a doctor as soon as possible.