Chris Brown is being hailed a hero for catching a young boy who appeared to faint onstage during his concert at the BB&T Pavilion in Camden Wednesday night.
Video footage shows Brown with his arm around the unidentified boy as they bounce to the music. Seconds later, the boy appeared to lose consciousness and Brown — without missing a beat — picked him up and handed him off to a man in the audience before dancing off.
The 29-year-old singer posted video footage of the incident on his Instagram.com page, along with the caption: “LOVE MY FANS BRO … I WAS SCARED FOR A SECOND … THE KID IS LEGENDARY”.
From Frank Sinatra to Michael Jackson, fans — mostly women — have routinely fainted at pop concerts. The fainting spells usually occur when fans are overcome with excitement or hysteria.
But doctors are skeptical of the phenomenon. The fact that multiple women tend to faint at the same concert suggests the fainting is self-induced.
The medical term for fainting at concerts (or before class exams) is “fainting larks”.
A “lark” is defined as an activity done for fun or a foolish waste of time. Fainting larks is common among women but can also occur among children.
Self-induced Fainting, aka Fainting Larks
The faint is initiated by the subject first hyperventilating while squatting, then standing up quickly and performing a forced expiration against a closed glottis. These manoeuvres combine the cerebral vasoconstriction induced by hyperventilation, with acute hypotension induced by standing quickly, with reduced venous return and cardiac output induced by straining. Almost instantaneous syncope occurs. The same combination of factors is probably involved in epidemic syncope in female teenage fans during rock concerts. The fainting lark has also been used as a research tool to study the sequence of events during syncope in young adults.
