Published on the first generation Federal Observer, in the category, To Health With You!, December 3, 2001.

Let’s say it’s 6:15 p.m. and you’re driving home (alone of course), after an unusually hard day on the job. You’re really tired, upset and frustrated.

Suddenly you start experiencing severe pain in your chest that starts to radiate out into your arm and up into your jaw. You are only about five miles from the hospital nearest your home, unfortunately you don’t know if you’ll be able to make it that far.

What can you do? You\’ve been trained in CPR but the guy that taught the course neglected to tell you how to perform it on yourself. Since many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack, this article seemed in order.

Without help, the person whose heart stops beating properly and who begins to feel faint, has only about 10 seconds left before losing consciousness.

However, these victims can help themselves by coughing repeatedly and very vigorously. A deep breath should be taken before each cough, and the cough must be deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside the chest. A breath and a cough must be repeated about every two seconds without let up until help arrives, or until the heart begins beating normally again.

Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and coughing movements squeeze the heart and keep the blood circulating. The squeezing pressure on the heart also helps it regain normal rhythm. In this way, heart attack victims can get to a hospital.

Be A Friend And Please Send This Article To As Many Friends And Family As Possible It Could Save Their Lives!

Cory Roncal, M.D.
Senior Drug Safety Monitor

PS ~ And you can also do the Heimlich Maneuver on yourself by bending over a chair so that the top of the back hits you right below the rib cage.