Another great podcast and two words on the "chocking game"

I discovered another great podcast to listen on the go to get updates and have the chance to meditate on interesting medical topics: it's the Johns Hopkins Medicine Weekly Health News with Elizabeth Tracey, director of electronic media for Johns Hopkins Medicine, and Rick Lange M.D., chief of clinical cardiology at Johns Hopkins.

I listened to the two latest News Roundups while running and I was rather impressed by an issue that was discussed: the so called "chocking game" among the US teenagers (or black-out game, pass-out game, the scarf game, space monkey game). I had seen a famous mtv stunt man doing it some time ago - I think these kind of examples just foment the peer pressure that affects teenagers.

In Legal Medicine you might study that you can find a person self hanged or with plastic bags around their head - for erotic purposes.

This game is pretty much based on the same principle: by being strangulated or by self strangulating you can induce an euphoric state which is meant to be temporary but can be fatal. Yes, you can indeed die in this nonsense way. It's sort of like a russian roulette.

Johns Hopkins podcast points out that a study done in 2006 in a county in Ohio estimated a 19% of participation between young people 17-18 year old.

So really beware of any allarming signs such as the teenager speaking of this game, marks on the neck, etc.

Here is a youtube video on this: life is too precious to play games.