As the cells inside a person lose their connections, the person may start convulsing or having muscle spasms. If there is fluid built up in the lungs, then that congestion will cause a sound known as the death rattle. There may be agonizing pauses between loud, labored breaths. It will also seem, disconcertingly, that the person can't catch a breath. The dying person is often disoriented, and it will seem like he or she can't get comfortable. The stage right before a person dies is called the agonal phase. The dying person loses bladder and bowel control, but accidents will occur less frequently as those gastrointestinal functions shut down as well and he or she consumes less.Īny pain that the dying person feels at this point can usually be managed by a doctor in some way, but it can be unbelievably difficult to watch these final steps of a person's life. Swallowing becomes difficult and the mouth gets very dry, so forcing the person to eat or drink could cause choking. When that energy is gone, the individual may lose the desire to eat and then to drink. The person will begin sleeping more to conserve the little energy that's left. There are some outward signs that these systems are slowing down. When someone dies of extremely old age, and the family is gathered around the deathbed, you're basically observing the breakdown of these systems. But since our bodies aren't designed to last forever, sometimes the body's systems just simply wear out. When blood is cut off from the heart, a heart attack occurs and can also take a life fairly swiftly. The brain requires a tremendous amount of oxygen but keeps very little in reserve, so any cutoff of oxygen to the brain will result in cell death within three to seven minutes that's why a stroke can kill so quickly. Very simply, dying starts to happen when your body doesn't get the oxygen it needs to survive.ĭifferent cells die at different speeds, so the length of the dying process depends on which cells are deprived of oxygen. Each breath provides the oxygen necessary for survival to the rest of the body. With a whole-brain definition of death, you've lost the ability to breathe on your own again. With a higher-brain definition of death, you're gone when your personality is. As technology helps us to live longer, it will also shape how we die.
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