A Gift to Humanity That Really Grabs You
After a recent evening spent sipping cocktails with L.A.’s charming British consul, I couldn’t imagine my life getting any more glam. But then, last week, it happened. A famous man rolled into town--a man nearly all of you have heard of. I met him in a restaurant. He stood behind me. Put his arms around me. Then he clenched his fist and shoved it into my gut.
I’m sure, if I’d had a piece of steak stuck in my windpipe, it would have flown clear across the room. My mystery man? None other than Cincinnati surgeon Henry Heimlich, of Heimlich maneuver fame, generously demonstrating his move on me.
This year is the 25th anniversary of the journal paper that first described Heimlich’s maneuver, which (for anyone who doesn’t know) is a series of abdominal thrusts just below the diaphragm that can save the life of someone whose airways are blocked by food or some other foreign object (https://www.heimlichinstitute.org/hmother.htm).
Heimlich has also invented a slew of other things including a chest drainage valve and a way to provide portable oxygen to people with lung disease. He decided to look into anti-choking remedies after learning that such deaths were surprisingly common. In those days, sharp backslaps were the recommended method for dislodging airway obstructions. (But backslaps, warns Heimlich, may actually drive food even deeper.) He went about his investigation scientifically, figuring out where one could press on a beagle to get air moving out of the pooch’s airways.
The name wasn’t his idea, explains Heimlich (who was visiting L.A. to put the final touches on an educational video for school kids, called “Don’t Choke.”) A few months after his paper was published, he says, editors at the Journal of the American Medical Assn. proposed giving it a fancier name: Did Dr. Heimlich prefer “method” or “maneuver”? We know which he chose, though the “Heimlich method” got used for something else in the end: a way to help restore swallowing ability in people who’ve had strokes.
It took a decade for the American Red Cross and the American Heart Assn. to formally adopt the Heimlich maneuver. It found its way into the dictionaries in 1980--and we can forgive Dr. Heimlich for some gloating over the fact that the dictionary devoted more space to his technique, (with a picture) than it did to its entry on Abraham Lincoln.
The Heimlich maneuver is estimated to have rescued tens of thousands of choking victims, including former New York Mayor Ed Koch (sauteed watercress), President Ronald Reagan (peanut) and Cher (vitamin pill).
This Fish Story Is a Cautionary Tale
Speaking of food hazards, we would like to assuage the fears of one Mary Woo, who recently wrote to us, asking whether she dare eat the Chilean sea bass sitting in her freezer.
Woo had read somewhere that large sea bass--those weighing about 10 pounds or more--are among the types of fish that can harbor a dangerous toxin called ciguatera, which can cause nausea, cramping and diarrhea when eaten. (Barracuda, red snapper and grouper can also harbor the toxin.) Because Woo’s fish came in 1 1/2-pound chunks, she had no way of knowing if it had originated in a brute of a bass.
It doesn’t matter, says Vera Trainer, a scientist who works--hold your breath--with the Marine Biotoxin Group in the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in the National Marine Fisheries Service in the government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (It had to be the government with a moniker like that.)
Ciguatera, she explains, builds up in the fat of fish that feed on tiny algae--or in fish that eat those fish. The toxin can reach dangerous levels when the fish are old (and thus large).
Ciguatera-containing algae tend to grow around tropical reefs, which is why most U.S. cases of ciguatera poisoning occur in Florida, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, the Virgin Islands and Guam. Eat fish from the tropics with care, Trainer cautions: “If you knew it was just a piece, and you couldn’t tell how large a fish it came from or what species it was cut from, I would be rather careful.”
But Chilean sea bass live in temperate, not tropical, waters. So don’t worry about that fish of yours, Ms. Woo. Just take small bites! Don’t choke!
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Have an idea you’d like to submit to Booster Shots? Send your suggestions to Rosie Mestel by fax at (213) 237-4888 or e-mail rosie.mestel@latimes.com.
