How is the heimlich maneuver different from punching the air out of someone?
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When you punch someone and they find it hard to breathe, most likely you’ve struck their solar plexus (a little bit above where your last ribs join at the bottom of your chest) and sent their nerves that control breathing movement into spasms. That’s why you can’t catch your breath. Normally a strike to the “stomach” (it’s not, your stomach is behind your rib cage) – meaning the soft area underneath all your ribs – usually hurts but is unlikely to “wind” you.
You don’t want to strike their solar plexus if they’re already struggling to breathe, it’s going to make everything so much worse. Punching them in the “stomach” (belly area) won’t do anything to help clear the obstruction.
The Heimlich, if you look, is pulling on the solar plexus area (which means it’s compressing the lungs behind the rib cage) but without the shock that sends the nerves into spasm making it hard to breathe.
Basically, you’re getting the “best” place to squeeze as much air out of the lung as possible (even though it’ll likely break a few ribs, because the ribs are there to explicitly stop the lungs being compressed like that!) without any huge negative side-effect that’ll affect breathing or damage internal organs (but still, broken ribs). Same place, by the way, that you perform CPR on. Same reason. You’re trying to keep the lungs pushing air out as much as possible (and keep the blood moving a little bit) so that they reinflate when they return to shape.
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