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Old 27-Jun-14, 17:27
Peter07 Peter07 is offline
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Default Re: The safety of smother KOs

I am no expert but as far as I know, the exact mechanism is unknown. A theory is that when the carotid arteries on both sides of the neck are compressed, the baroreceptors of the carotid arteries (baroreceptors are sensors in the carotid arteries that regulate blood pressure) trick the body to think that the blood pressure has increased. The baroreceptors send this signal to the brain/heart through the vagus nerve. This causes the blood vessels in the brain to widen to compensate for the “fake” increase in blood pressure. The blood pressure really has not increased though because the body was only “tricked” into this by compressing carotid arteries and in turn affecting baroreceptors in carotid arteries. So the widening of the blood vessels causes a dramatic decrease in blood pressure to the brain, which causes a knockout by blood choke. (this can be explained by fluid dynamics and Bernoulli's equation). The baroreceptors in the carotid arteries main job is to maintain the blood pressure at an equilibrium (not fluctuating).

Think of it this way if you have a garden hose and a larger fire hose and you have the water at a certain same pressure for both of them the garden hose will be moving the water faster because it is more compressed. The same reason why when you put your thumb half way over a garden hose the water squirts out faster. In arteries the same principle applies a dilation/widening of the blood vessels slows the bloodflow (lower bloodpressure).

The vagus nerve runs alongside of the common carotid artery basically from the brain to the heart. Therefore, during a bloodchoke it is very possible that the vagus nerve gets somewhat compressed/disturbed. As far as safety I cannot say for certain. I do think that people with heart conditions, diabetes, overweight, have high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, smoke, elderly people are much more at risk from blood chokes. As far as I can tell MMA fighters and martial artists that are put out with blood chokes seem to handle them well. Of course, these people probably have excellent cardiovascular health.
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