It’s easy to forget how fragile our bodies are.

But like it or not, every one of us is one mishap away from a life-threatening emergency. And that means everyone is  always also a mishap away from being a bystander to  someone else’s worst day ever.

Most of us have at least a rough idea of what to do if someone is in distress. But there are also a lot of  first aid myths out there, and knowing what to do in an emergency can be the difference between a good outcome, and…. Not.

So, we decided to bust a few of  the most common first-aid myths out there, and help you fill up  your metaphorical first-aid kit. [♪INTRO] Right off the bat, we have to say  that this is not medical advice, and we are not doctors. We’re just YouTubers. If you’re ever in a situation  where you need to provide first aid to anyone, please call  your local emergency response line and follow the instructions that  trained professionals give you.

Also, always, always, always, check whether the scene of the emergency  is safe, and don’t put your safety at risk to try to save someone else. We’re also going to include  some resources in the video description that go into more  details on exactly what to do in a given scenario, so  feel free to check our work! Okay, now that that’s out of the  way, here are a few harmful myths you might’ve heard about first  aid, and what you can do instead.

Let’s say you’re chilling at your  local park when you see another park-goer get all stiff, and they  crumple to the ground twitching. They’re having a seizure. You spring into action, and  a crowd starts to gather.

Someone shouts that you should put something in the seizing person’s mouth, so they don’t swallow their tongue. Lucky for the person on the  ground, you’ve watched this video, so you know that that’s not great advice. There’s not just one type of seizure,  and they don’t all look the same.

A seizure can last from a few  seconds to several minutes, and may cause the patient to stiffen,  twitch, or jerk their limbs or face, stare blankly, lose consciousness,  foam at the mouth, or collapse. But what they won’t do is swallow their tongue, because that’s literally anatomically impossible. And even if you could flip  it backwards and swallow it, nobody’s tongue is long enough  to block their windpipe, so there’d be no risk of losing oxygen.

Putting anything into a seizing person’s mouth is risky for a whole bunch of reasons. You can break their teeth or injure their mouth, choke them with whatever  foreign object you put in there, or cause them to aspirate on their vomit. And you might even get  yourself bitten in the process, which isn’t great either.

Here’s what experts say to do instead. First, if they’re standing,  gently guide them to the ground and clear the area of any  pointy or otherwise dangerous. If it's possible, and you're sure  there's no chance of a spinal injury, turn them on their left side  with their mouth pointed down, placing their left hand under their cheek and their right hand in front of them.

This is called the recovery position and will help keep their airway clear! Just don't use force to  hold them in that position. Seizures can cause muscle  spasms that are strong enough to break bone, and if you try to  put counter-pressure on the person while that’s happening,  you might cause further injuries.

Also, experts say to call your  first responders or get to the ER if you see any of  the things listed on screen. Seizures can look scary if you  aren’t prepared to deal with them. However, there’s not as  much to fear as you’d think, since a single one isn't all  that likely to cause permanent issues unless those other risk  factors are happening too.

The bigger risks are the possible injuries that someone can give themselves  while they’re having one, and since now you know how to keep that risk low, you should feel prepared and  confident to help if it’s ever needed. And you can tell anybody trying to dispense the wrong advice to put a sock in it. And by it I mean, their own mouth, not the seizing person’s  mouth, because that’s bad… You get it.

Not all first aid situations  happen out of the blue. Suppose you’re at a protest  downtown when the police start shouting for everyone to clear the area. The clearing doesn’t happen fast enough, so the cops break out the pepper spray.

And because pepper spraying protesters is now a common police tactic, it’s common to see activists carrying jugs of  milk to soothe the burn. This seems intuitive. After all,  there is good scientific and anecdotal evidence that milk  helps soothe your burning mouth after going too hard on the Carolina Reaper sauce, so it would make sense that milk can stop the burn everywhere else, too.

Milk works to soothe our  burning tongues because the fats and proteins in milk bind to the  spice-causing capsaicin molecules and wash them away from our tongue’s receptors. But while milk is great for  helping you power through a plate of spicy food, it can do more  harm than good in the eyes. See, milk isn’t sterile, and while  our digestive tract has built-in protections against the microbes  found in milk, our eyeballs don’t.

And while the active ingredient  in pepper spray is capsaicin and it activates pain receptors  similar to those in your mouth, that’s where the similarity ends. Plus, pepper spray isn’t  the only aerosolized weapon that’s used at protests,  and milk wouldn’t work even in theory against tear gas  or any of the other stuff. So, while milk may be a welcome  reprieve for Hot Ones guests, it’s not recommended for pepper spray on the face.

Experts say the best course of action is washing the face and skin with plenty of  plain sterile water or saline, and getting away from the area where the chemical weapon was deployed. Hopefully you don’t ever need this particular tip, but, you know… Just in case. Now with some situations, the real challenge is knowing what not to do.

Take this example: You’re snowed  in on a cozy winter night, when your brother trips and smacks  his head hard on the bookshelf. You aren’t sure if he’s got a concussion, but it’s getting late, and he wants to go to bed. But a lot of people say that if someone with a concussion goes to sleep  they can end up in a coma, so your sister says that  you should keep him awake.

Lucky for your brother, the evidence says that you don’t have to make  him pull an all-nighter. First, if the injury was  bad enough to cause a coma, that would happen whether or  not you let the person sleep. Which is why you should call  a doctor ASAP when someone sustains any head injury that’s  bad enough to make you worry.

If the person who whacked their  head gets super disoriented, their pupils are really dilated  or are two different sizes, or they lose consciousness and can’t be woken, those are all signs they need a doctor, pronto. But if none of those things are happening, there’s no reason to keep  someone awake against their will. And even if you do have some  of those worrying signs, you can get right back to your usual sleep habits, after you see a doctor.

Doctor  first. I cannot stress that enough. Getting your sleep helps the brain heal, and research shows that  when concussed people don’t get their beauty sleep, their  injuries don’t heal as well.

So as long as your brother passes all those tests, he’s free to go to sleep. You can tease him about tripping in the morning. But our brains aren’t the only  extra-important body parts worth protecting, so let’s move from the  head down to the neck and spine.

Say it’s Monday morning  and you’re walking to work, when you see a pedestrian get hit by a car. They’re alive and awake, but they’re  also lying there in the street and it’s a busy road, so you want  to get them to safety. But wait!

On TV, whenever you see anyone  getting moved out of danger, they strap them to a back  board to keep their spine safe. One wrong move, and you could paralyze this accident victim for life, right? Well, it turns out that  there’s not as much evidence for immobilizing the spine as you’d think.

For decades, spine immobilization  has been a standard practice for victims of car crashes or other  blunt force trauma, like falls, getting crushed, sports collisions,  or just general violence. It’s based on the concept of delayed paralysis. See, in 1966, researchers  published a retrospective study on two patients, one of whom  was injured in a car crash.

The patient was able to move  their limbs when they were transported to the hospital, but  developed paralysis after a few hours, which was later determined to be caused by an undiagnosed spinal fracture from the crash. Sadly for this patient, the  paralysis was permanent. Those researchers said that  if the patient’s fracture had been recognized in the first place and she’d had her spine immobilized, this  could have been avoided.

From then on, first responders  were trained to assume that any patient with blunt  force trauma has a spinal injury, whether they show signs of one or not. If you immobilize everyone’s  spines, nobody gets paralyzed. But it turns out that the fear of  delayed paralysis is a bit overblown.

This paper really only discussed  two patients in detail. Studies have been pouring out since  the ‘90s showing that, not only does immobilization not help if  you’re unsure about a spinal injury, but in some cases, immobilization  could make things worse. Being strapped to a backboard  can cause pain, pressure ulcers, breathing difficulties, and  can even worsen injuries.

If the victim doesn’t say they have any pain in their neck or back and can  move their arms and legs, experts say there’s no reason to brace the spine. But even with all of the  evidence that’s piled up against standard spine bracing, some healthcare providers still do it across the board, no pun intended. In any case, as long as the person in the road says their spine feels okay,  you should feel free to help get them out of the road.

But look both ways! And before we get to our next myth, all research needs funding, including ours. So, here’s a quick ad break.

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You’re at a pickup basketball game, and someone on the other team falls to the ground. You check for a pulse and don’t feel a heartbeat, but you see there’s a defibrillator on the wall. Should you use it to restart their heart?

I mean, that’s what happens on TV. You hear a flatline, then the doctor pulls out the paddles and yells clear. After two or three zaps, the heart  rate monitor starts beeping again, everyone relaxes, and Chasing Cars  plays softly in the background.

But yet again, that whole  scene is not based on reality. That’s not to say that  defibrillators aren’t lifesavers — there’s a reason you see them  in so many public places. It’s just that they’re not always  the right tool for the job.

See, there are a few different ways  that your heart’s electrical signals can get out of whack and cause  your heart rate to go haywire. That messes up the coordination of the heart's different parts and gets  everything beating out of sync, which can slow or stop the  flow of blood around the body. That’s called fibrillation.

Which is why we need to  defibrillate, hence the name. Defibrillators work by pausing  the heart’s electrical signals in the hopes that they’ll start  back up in correct formation, and the heart will get back to pumping. But defibrillators won’t work on a stopped heart, because there are no electrical signals to pause.

Someone who’s flatlining  needs their heart actively pumped for them, and a  defibrillator can’t do that. But you know what can? CPR.

Evidence shows that even when  defibrillation is called for, the patient still needs CPR to prevent brain damage from oxygen deprivation, since chest compressions also expand and compress the lungs, oxygenating the blood. The fear is that unrealistic TV  and movie scenes could give people the wrong impression about what  to do, and delay CPR for too long. The good news is that modern,  fancy defibrillator paddles are designed to detect the heart’s  electrical signals and advise whether a shock could help, and the machines  usually come with instructions.

Which is why we recommend  taking a CPR class just in case, so you can be confident that you  know… ♪ how to save a life. ♪ There are some situations  like those last few where knowing how to do it yourself can be a big help, but for this next one, the real  takeaway is the total opposite. You’re on a lovely neighborhood bike ride with your partner when she takes a tumble. She yelps in pain, and after a close look, you think her shoulder got dislocated.

Action heroes might grit their teeth, jerk the shoulder back into place, and go on with saving the day. This seems like a super-tough move, but you probably shouldn’t try it at home. Dislocated bones, especially in the  bigger joints like the shoulders, can be way more dangerous than they seem.

A dislocated shoulder can come  with all kinds of other injuries, like muscle damage, torn ligaments or tendons, and even nerve or blood vessel damage. It’s a high-traffic area with a  lot of delicate bits in there, so knowing how to get the  bones back into place while avoiding all those sensitive  structures is a huge challenge. It can be so tricky to fix a  dislocation that, in some states, EMTs aren’t even allowed to do it because they aren’t trained on the process.

Plus, depending on the  technique that’s called for, popping a dislocated bone  back in can be super painful, so you probably want some good  drugs to get you through it. Now that said, some people  with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome or other medical issues might be extra bendy, and for those people, dislocations  might be much more regular. In those cases, your doctor will probably have given you advice on  how to treat yours at home.

But unless your partner’s  doctor has said otherwise, they shouldn’t be a hero, and you  both should high-tail it to the ER. But sometimes, an accident only becomes a full emergency because you  can’t get to help right away. Say you’re out in the woods on a hike, and your friend trips and gashes his leg open.

It’s bleeding pretty badly, but lucky for you, you’ve got a first aid kit that has a tourniquet. You go to put it on him, but he’s like “No way, I don’t want to lose my leg!” What do you do? Let’s talk tourniquets and amputations.

Despite their current bad PR, we’ve been using tourniquets to  stop blood loss for centuries. They work by restricting blood flow  to the part of you that’s bleeding. Think of a tourniquet like putting a kink in your garden hose to stop the water from flowing.

However, a lot of people tend  to think that using a tourniquet on an injury is basically a  one-way ticket to amputation city. After all, we know that  blood is important for you, so it does make logical sense that deliberately cutting off blood flow to  any body part could be bad. Thing is, tourniquets really only lead to amputations if you use them wrong.

For instance, in World War II,  a lot of medics would just slap tourniquets on people even if  their bleeding wasn’t that severe, and due to the logistics of field  transport or in situations where there were just too many injured soldiers, those tourniquets would get  left on for way too long. But tourniquets have become a lot less risky thanks to better devices and protocols. Most experts will say that you  don’t need any formal medical training to be able to apply  a tourniquet in an emergency, without putting anyone’s limbs at risk.

But before you bust out that tourniquet, experts say you should try to control  the bleeding with direct pressure, since that won’t cut off all  the blood supply to the limb. Push down really hard on the  area above the injury to squeeze those blood vessels shut,  and keep something absorbent like a cloth between your hands  and the injured person’s skin. If the cloth becomes saturated, add more fabric, keep pressing, and try  shifting to a different spot.

If the bleeding stops with that pressure, hold it there until emergency assistance arrives. But if the direct pressure  isn’t stopping the bleeding within a few seconds, that’s when some experts recommend busting out the  tourniquet from your first aid kit. First aid courses will go over the  specifics, but you usually want to put the tourniquet a couple inches above  the wound, closer to the heart.

So if they’re bleeding from the  elbow, you might put it about here. Avoid putting the tourniquet directly on a joint. Then follow the instructions on the label to tighten and secure it in place.

If the bleeding stopped, congratulations. You did great. If not, the  Red Cross says to leave the first one in place and then  add another even higher up.

Even if the tourniquet seems too  tight, do not remove or loosen it. Leave that to a trained professional. We should add that use of  tourniquets can be associated with loss of limbs, but mainly  because an injury severe enough to need a tourniquet is just  more likely to end that way.

What we do know is that using  tourniquets also prevents you from dying of blood loss,  which is pretty important. Once your friend gets some stitches, you guys should be back to hiking in no time. And if your buddy did need an amputation, as long as you did the tourniquet right, it probably wasn't your fault.

So there you have it, a few of the most popular misconceptions about first aid. Knowing what to do, and what not  to do, can make a huge difference. Now, if you really want all the  best details on how to save a life, taking a first aid and CPR course would be ideal.

Like I said, we’re a science  show, not medical doctors. But it’s worth it for bystanders to  try their very best, with the most accurate information, like anyone  would want for their loved ones. And most importantly, stay safe out there! [♪OUTRO]