Week 1 - Hans at the Football

Hey guys, welcome to the new blog! Hope you all figure it out ok...
To post all your information, just reply to this post as a comment, that way it's all under the week 1 heading. Whoever is chairing next week just create a new post by signing in...
Good luck!

Shane


Unconsciousness:
"A dramatic alteration of mental state that involves complete or near-complete lack of responsiveness to people and other environmental stimuli"
eg. a coma
Unconsciousness is not an altered state of consciousness (eg. delerium), normal sleep, or hypnosis, as response to stimuli is shown.
Unconsciousness should not be confused with the psycoanalytical unconscious (cognitive processes)
Causes include traumatic brain injury, brain hypoxia, poisoning with CNS depressants, and severe fatigue.

Syncope:
The medical term for fainting.
"Syncope is a sudden (and generally momentary) loss of consciousness, or blacking out due to the Central Ischaemic Response, [due] to a lack of sufficient... oxygen reaching the brain"
Symptoms immediatly before fainting include:
- dizziness
- dimming of vision
- tinnitus
- hot flush

Causes:
- dehydration
- hypotension
- hypoglycaemia
- lack of sleep
- excessive physical exertion
- arrythmia
- other cardiovascular conditions (eg. subclavian steal syndrome, aortic stenosis)

All quoted or paraphrased from Wikipedia (keywords "unconsciousness" and "fainting")