Flo Jo's body pumped enormous amounts of histamines which in turn created enormous amounts of mucus, filling her lungs, body organs and cavities with a tenacious glue. Jo's autopsy is consistent with that of slow heart response type changes, usually noted with respiratory failure or obstruction. She slowly suffocated, gasping for breath while the bronchioles of her lungs filled with mucus, and not the life sustaining oxygen required by every cell in her body. Epileptic seizures often result in damage to the lips or tongue or cheeks. Flo Jo had no such damage.
Strangulation usually breaks the tiny hyoid bone in the neck.
Jo's bone was intact. The black and blues, petechial marks were not delivered by Al Joyner, Flo Jo's grieving husband. These marks could very well have been caused by Flo Jo herself, struggling violently to breathe, gasping for breath which was impossible to take in. As her body died, asphyxiating, the brain triggered an emergency wake-up call, an electrical and biochemical jolt and seizure that could not clear Flo Jo's lungs. This failed jump- start later appeared as an epileptiform seizure on the coroner's report.