Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola Fact Checked January 16, 2023
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
Over the past two years (2021 and 2022), more than 1,650 professional and amateur
athletes have collapsed due to cardiac events and 1,148 of them proved fatal
Damar Hamlin, a 24-year-old Buffalo Bills football player went into cardiac arrest on live
television after being tackled during a January 2, 2023, game against the Cincinnati
Bengals. Team trainers and emergency medical staff performed CPR for more than nine
minutes, which saved his life
Whether the COVID jab played a role in what happened to Hamlin is impossible to know
for sure, but Dr. Peter McCullough suspects it may have played a role — provided he
actually got the shot
A condition called commotio cordis is known to occur in baseball when a player is hit
hard on the breastbone, thereby causing cardiac arrest. There are approximately 20 to 30
such cases each year, but never in pro football. In McCullough’s view, commotio cordis
can likely be ruled out. The more likely cause for Hamlin’s cardiac arrest, he believes, is
hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), or abnormal thickening of the heart muscle, which
is the primary cause for athletes suffering cardiac arrest
During exercise, adrenaline is pumping, and when the heart is damaged this adrenaline
rush is what triggers the cardiac arrest. This helps explain not only the death of athletes
on the field, or people dying while jogging, but also why so many are dying in their sleep,
because adrenaline is released between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m., as your body readies to wake
up