magz wrote:
I don't know, I've been trekking with heavy backpacks since I was 15 and never witnessed something like this - if there were no other serious conditions, Salad must have neglected a lot of alarm signals from his body.
Which, unfortunately, happens to some autistic people
It's unlikely to happen unless your backpack is grossly unbalanced, but it's a possibility when you are recovering from injury and/or use cane or crutch. When you body compensates misalignment by stiffening your neck and back, you can pinch nerves or blood vessels even without carrying any load.
Yeah, it happened to me, I didn't notice hyperventilating in mildly uncomfortable situations for years and lost consciousness couple times.
I hope this is something trivial like that, not some serious health issue.