So, I just read an article about a guy in South Africa who had an asthma attack and was pronounced dead…but then woke up in the morgue 21 hours later. A few weeks ago, I read about a woman who woke up during her own funeral and then died from the shock of it. I’m just curious…from a medical perspective…what are the possible causes behind this? I tried doing an Internet search on it and haven’t found an explanation. Maybe I’m not typing in the right words.
One of my mom’s relatives gave people quite the scare when she woke up while being bathed for her funeral. I know this phenomenon happened quite a bit in the olden days when people weren’t 100% certain if you were dead, so they tied a string to the “corpse’s” hand, which was connected to a bell and would alert people that they needed to be dug out. It may not happen as often today…but it makes me wonder “How many dead people are really truly dead?” and that’s kinda creepy. And how often does this happen in countries where medical care is not the greatest? Morbid topic, I know. So, any ideas about the medical reasons behind how/why someone would wake up after being pronounced dead?
1- Death is not an instantaneous process. It is a slow process. Advancing from reversible to irreversible state.
It is observed **all the time **in medicine where resuscitation measures (shocks, CPR etc.) bring back a person from actually dying. Body goes to a suspended state in the meantime.
2- There are methods to pronounce death and mostly they are based on 'observed' vital functions. A very weak and slow heart beat may not be recognized by crude methods like checking the pulse.
3- Possibility of misdiagnosis is number one reason for these events.
4- Then one can talk about why misdiagnosus can occur.
A- Body may go in to suspended state for a while or
B- Vital signs are too weak to be noticed.
5- Comatose state can be misdiagnosed also.
6- There have been many of these events on record. Read about Lazarus syndrome.
7-Also about some info on** Resurrection**. (Experimental and accidental)
P.S. In Philosophy section I had a thread started "What is life?" I think a while ago.
So...let's say that a person is in a comatose state...what exactly causes them to snap out of it? Is it the frigid temperature of morgue or something else?
So...let's say that a person is in a comatose state...what exactly causes them to snap out of it? Is it the frigid temperature of morgue or something else?
The frigid temperature would not bring back the person. If anything it would keep the person in suspended state as one might guess.
Cold temperature puts body in "suspended state".
Most likely it is the spontaneous recovery of brain and other vital organs like the heart functions which would make the person come back to state of conciousness.
Few minutes after a 'failed' attempt to revive, people have been known to "regain life". Actually they do not die for good. Just are in transient state.
There are people who claimed to be seeing themselves on the bed 'from above' and doctors are working on them. (I know at least one person who claimed that)
During heart surgery, at least the heart is made to stop artificially and body/brain functon is maintained by heart-lung machine. Not death per se though.
Wow, spontaneous recovery of the brain....sounds like a miracle. Thanks for the input.
Sure. It sounds miracle but really not. Like I said in medicine it is observed all the time when heart is either stopped by heart attack or goes in to **fibrillation.
**Cardiologists do that regularly when checking a device called ICD or AICD in lab on a patient...but that is for only few seconds
I like learning about the medical reasons behind things......but that spontaneous recovery doesn't happen for everybody does it? And that's what makes it seem more like a miracle.
I like learning about the medical reasons behind things......but that spontaneous recovery doesn't happen for everybody does it? And that's what makes it seem more like a miracle.
It depends on the state of body organs before they go in to suspended state.
As a rule children and especially when drowned or submerged in water for a long time have good chance of recovery.
Children resuscitation efforts are required to be for prolonged duration as opposed to for a person who is 90 year old.
Also it is also required to check the person again in few minutes if CPR is failed and the person is pronounced dead.
The medical reason is that body functions become so low that they can survive on very low oxygen or nutrients.
For a common person these are 'miracles', not really for a medical person or who reads about it in detail.
In today's age of medical technological advances a simple definition of Death is not possible..... earlier it was defined as cessation of pulse and breathing and that lead to many premature burials but now with the advent of CPR , defibrillators , life support machines etc ****** we use cessation of brain activity as a definition of death and thus we doctors use the term "brain death" to pronounce a person clinically dead......so EEGs can be used to clinically define irreversible loss of electrical activity in the brain.
Again we still hear about people coming back from the dead and talk about "near death experiences".....in fact there is a society established for that called the International Association for Near Death Studies which tries to investigate the reason behind near death experiences and they publish a journal of near death studies as well.
Nowadays the definition of life and death has evolved to incorporate consciousness and cognitive function as parameters for life or death........a lot of researchers talk about continuation of consciousness after a person is presumed dead and that extends to questions about existence of an after life.........in fact they use something called the NDE scale to determine a near death experience in researching the loss of brain activity vs consciousness ......***
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