If you get your nuts in a vise, you'll be lucky to have them in a sling afterwards. In fact, you'll be lucky to stay alive. It's physiology!

Struck by the recent story of an Irish teen who went into cardiac arrest and a coma after getting nutzed at school, VICE News wondered how prevalent life-threatening ball-injury side-effects were, so they solicited experts who had "done extensive research on the topic of scrotal injuries." Their response was a swift kick to the nardal region:

Dr. Lee Zhao, an assistant professor of Urology at New York University's Langone Medical Center, told VICE News he believes the teen in Ireland suffered a vasovagal syncope response. Basically, the pain was intense enough to make him faint. "[Vasovagal syncope] is a well known phenomenon in which the body overreacts when there's a trauma, and it causes people to pass out," he said... Dr. Deepak A. Kapoor, president of Advanced Urology Centers of New York, told VICE News that trauma to the body can be both emotional and physical, and that "such an assault on the genitalia, no matter what the intent, could certainly precipitate an episode from either mechanism."... When asked about the validity of Kapoor's theory, Zhao agreed. "Heart attacks are the second-most common cause of death in the United States," he said. "Heart attacks are often induced by stress, and there are probably not many things more stressful than having your testicles squeezed."

VICE also cited our own Jesus Diaz's story in 2012 about a shop owner in China who "died after a woman squeezed his testicles too hard during a sidewalk altercation."

On the plus side, this hardly ever happens to younger men, since younger men are less heart-attack-prone, but you know, wear a cup, bro. Just in case.

[Photo credit: maxriesgo/Shutterstock]