Tyler Rigsby, 15 of Columbus, Ohio passed out after a four-day video gaming marathon inside his room. Tyler only goes out when he needs to go to the bathroom, take quick showers and pick up snacks from the kitchen during his almost four days inside his bedroom. The teenager locked himself inside his bedroom playing Modern Warfare 3 on his Xbox.
Tyler went out of his room on Tuesday morning where he went with his mother to the house of his aunt where he passed out three times.
Jennifer Thompson, aunt of the teenager said that his nephew is looking directly at her but he was not really there as if Tyler was staring through her. She continued that they were talking when suddenly Tyler just fell and passed out. Jessie Rawlins, mom of Tyler says that his son got very pale with his lips turned blue in color. She adds that she got very scared and thought that it was the end of her son as he passed out three times.
Paramedics were called into the house of his aunt who delivered Tyler to the nearest hospital where IV tube is attached to him and fluids were pumped into him due to severe dehydration. Emergency physician, Doctor Mike Patrick at Nationwide Children’s Hospital stated that severe dehydration is a very dangerous medical condition that may turn deadly.
When a person is dehydrated, the fluids inside the whole body are reduced and that will include fluids that are inside the blood vessels, meaning that the blood volume of an individual is also decreased leading to low blood pressure. Doctor Patrick continued that when the blood pressure of a person reached a fixed point, the body will be deprived of enough blood that goes towards the brain. If little oxygen is delivered into the brain, the person will collapse and may even cause the person to die.
When the brain is deprived of oxygen, it will first make the person dizzy when he/she standup quickly. Eventually, oxygen deficiency will begin to kill the cells in the brain. The change in the blood pressure due to dehydration can trigger blood clots formation which can eventually move to the lungs or heart which will be fatal.
Doctor Patrick continues that staying awake for days will make the body to shut down by its own. Neurons are being fired by the system that activates the reticular into the brain which keeps a person awake. When the neurons are eventually exhausted of juice, it cannot send anymore signals to the brain to stay alert and awake.
Once neurons are not anymore fired, the boy will just shut down automatically, meaning that those chemicals inside the brain are already exhausted. The body needs plenty of good and quality sleep in order for the activating system to remain active and keep people awake. Playing video games nonstop will stop your body to rejuvenate itself and will eventually shut down. That is the point when people eventually collapse. So, if you don’t want to collapse after marathon gaming, you have to eat lots of foods and take fluids into your body, take breaks and control yourself and get decent sleep.