Death comes for us all here on Earth at a rate of nearly 7,000 people every hour. Yet, despite its inevitability, most of us know very little about the experience. This is what happens to your body and mind as you slip away — and it’s not as frightening as you might think.
Illustration by Jim Cooke.
[referenced url=”https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2017/02/youre-going-to-die-heres-how-to-deal-with-it/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/hc1bv2wnnsi6l0upabst.png” title=”You’re Going To Die, Here’s How To Deal With It” excerpt=”Aside from birth, the only other thing that is guaranteed to happen to every single person on the planet is death. No exceptions, no way around it. Your own death aside, chances are good that you will be affected by deaths of loved ones and most likely have to plan a funeral or two before your own comes about.”]
What Happens to Your Body
Dying can vary quite a lot, so, for the sake of this piece, let’s assume you’re dying of natural causes and that you’re on your way out. First, it’s important to know there isn’t a precise “death moment.” Dying is a process, and one where there are a lot of grey areas because there’s still a lot we don’t know. That said, we can legally define death in two stages. Right now, your body is gradually approaching what’s known as “clinical death,” which occurs when your heartbeat, breathing, and circulation stop. But your body’s cells are still alive after that for the next four to six minutes until “biological death” occurs. At that point, your brains cells have begun to die and resuscitation is impossible.
OK, we know what death means legally now, but let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here. How does that process feel? Well, according to James Hallenbeck, a palliative-care specialist at Stanford University, your last few days on Earth are what’s known as the “active dying” phase. You rapidly start to lose your natural urges and most of your senses. Hallenbeck says things start to go in this order:
- You stop being hungry.
- You stop being thirsty.
- You stop being able to speak.
- You stop being able to see.
- You stop being able to hear.
- You stop being able to feel touch.
Other side effects include shortness of breath, depression, anxiety, extreme fatigue, mental confusion (likely due to lack of oxygen), constipation or incontinence, and nausea. Your brain is basically slowly sacrificing less critical functions in order to perpetuate your survival. Even your skin will begin to show signs of your demise. It will get cold, turn a light bluish grey, and might even show signs of mottling.
Soon you’ll be too weak to cough or swallow, and your breathing will make a disturbing, guttural sound in the back of your throat called the “death rattle.” As far as doctors can tell, though, the death rattle doesn’t hurt — even if it sounds bad to everyone else. But doctors aren’t sure how much pain people actually feel as they die. Obviously, being burned alive or being shot are probably painful ways to go, but when you’re dying of natural causes in a hospital bed it’s hard to say. Your pain is usually being managed by healthcare professionals and you’ll likely lose consciousness in your final hours, so it’s likely very minimal.
When your body finally lets go, what little brain function you had left rapidly fades away. This means your brain can no longer keep your body in check, so you might urinate, defecate, and possibly even ejaculate (but that’s rare). Now, that all might sound terribly uncomfortable and frightening, but your brain has a few tricks up its sleeve.
What Happens In Your Mind
Right when your body starts to flat line, your brain does its best to prepare your consciousness for the jump to the great beyond. In their final moments, many people have out of body experiences, a rendezvous with relatives in a peaceful place, a feeling of greater connection with the universe, and of course, see the classic bright light at the end of the tunnel. But what’s really happening in there?
For one, you probably won’t be afraid of what’s happening to you in that mental state. One study, from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, compared the mental states of terminally ill patients and inmates on death row with those of people told to imagine they were dying. Their findings suggest the closer you get to death, the more positive of an outlook you have on it. Perhaps it’s because you become more accepting of death when it’s less abstract and you have to face the reality of it. Or maybe it’s because you’re having peaceful dreams and visions.
In a study conducted at a hospice center in Buffalo, New York, researchers found that dying people have a lot more dream activity than normal. 88% of the study’s participants claimed to have dreams or visions that felt more real than normal dreams, and they often carried on into the waking state. Most people dreamed about reuniting with people they knew who had already died, others said they dreamed about preparing to travel somewhere, and some re-witnessed meaningful experiences from their past. For many of these people, their dreams and visions comforted them and decreased their fear of death.
Once you begin to clinically die, your brain kicks into overdrive — with a surge of electricity and spike of activity in various regions throughout the brain — and it begins to release neurochemicals that excite it far beyond normal. This is when all of those “bright white light” experiences occur. One study, published in the Journal of Near-Death Studies (seriously), suggests those who have had a near-death experience all tend to witness the same things — though they varied depending on each person’s cultural and religious beliefs. However, another recent study, published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, suggests when these experiences occur, and in what order, varies from person to person. So, you’re likely to experience these things, in no particular order:
- A hyper aware mental state, or very clear consciousness. This may be in a waking or dream state.
- An out of body experience, usually in the form of you hovering above your own deathbed. Possibly caused by your brain’s temporoparietal junction (TPJ) being damaged from a lack of oxygen.
- Your life flashing before you eyes. Many people see significant moments in their life play back for them.
- A reunion with lost loved ones — sometimes even with ancestors you never met in life. Or maybe visiting a strange world and meeting beings made of light. Lack of oxygen to the brain can cause hallucinations.
- An overwhelming sense of peace and rest, possibly triggered by a rush of endorphins.
- A bright white light at the end of a tunnel. Your visual system gets overly excited and flooded with carbon dioxide, causing you to be much more sensitive to light. You also have other heightened senses for a brief amount of time.
You may experience all of these things, or only a few of them. And there’s no telling when or in what order they will occur. According to near-death survivors, these experiences make death feel ok, and almost welcoming. By the time your mind has finished its farewell ceremony, you’ll be ready to go. We may never know for certain what’s beyond death, if anything at all, but you can at least rest easy knowing your brain will try to make it as comfortable as possible.
Comments
12 responses to “What It Feels Like To Die”
One amazing fact about Near Death Experiences is that many (most?) people who have them and return, come back totally transformed.
e.g. they no longer fear death, and are often totally different from who they were before. Their focus changes, they let go of trivia, and become peaceful and loving.
They don’t come back religious, they come back spiritual.
Not everybody, but a huge proportion. It’s a fascinating subject.
Well said. Although from what I’ve read the effect wears off somewhat with time, but the underlying attitude remains.
Killing numerous brain cells makes people more spiritual.
Fascinating…
There is a lot of anecdotal evidence to show that there is something happening after (clinical) Death. Obviously this can’t be called proof, but the evidence is so strong that I cannot consider it a figment of the imagination of your consciousness. There is an excellent four part series called “Life, Death and Reincarnation” released through Vimeo. I thoroughly recommend you watch it through before you come to your conclusion on the subject, I can assure you it is scientifically researched.
Thanks, I’ll check it out! I’ve come to a similar conclusion after starting off as a typical athiest skeptical left brain Mensan chess playing programmer 🙂
There is just too much evidence from so many areas. e.g. NDEs, Shared Death Experiences, Past Life Regression, Channelled messages, writings of spiritual masters, Deathbed Experiences, writings of hospice workers, the list goes on.
I’m currently tutoring a course at the local u3a called: Always Look on the Bright Side of Death. We’re all having some great discussion.
Funny how this thread is almost deserted 🙂
I’ve had the NDE, twice.
The hyper awareness, the tunnel effect, the peace.
Zero evidence of an afterlife, it was merely exactly what I’d expect from parts of my brain undergoing dying process.
Your consciousness runs on your brain. No more Brain, no more You.
So live life well, while you have the fabulous opportunity to do so.
I’ve yet to see you leave a positive reply to pretty much any comment and here you are again, mister know-it-all.
As I mentioned in my post, make your mind up after you’ve seen the evidence. You might also try having an open mind first though. So, needless to say, you probably won’t look at the evidence, anecdotal or not, but no doubt you’ll still consider yourself an expert. Any further reply you make on this is just verbal flatulence as far as I’m concerned.
Appreciate the positivity in your response 🙂
So I’m genuinely interested.
What mechanism do you hypothesize for consciousness surviving the destruction of the brain?
bringerofmuffins, you bring up a great question, at the root of much of these discussions. I agree that it might just be our dying brain doing its thing, in this instance.
What I find far more convincing is Shared Death Experiences, where often the family of a dying person actually SEES and FEELS what s/he speaks of, as it happens, as they die, and do not return.
Often these family members are athiests, skeptics, perfectly healthy, and nowhere near death themselves.
Things that make you go hmmm …
Are you familiar with the term ‘pious fraud’?
Yes indeed. But why would athiests and people of different often opposing religious beliefs report exactly the same shared experience?