Near-death experiences are tricks of the mind triggered by an overload of carbon dioxide in the bloodstream, a new study suggests.
Many people who have recovered from life-threatening injuries have said they experienced their lives flashing before their eyes, saw bright lights, left their bodies, or encountered angels or dead loved ones.
In the new study, researchers investigated whether different levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide—the main blood gases—play a role in the mysterious phenomenon.
The team studied 52 heart attack patients who had been admitted to three major hospitals and were eventually resuscitated. Eleven of the patients reported near-death experiences.
During cardiac arrest and resuscitation, blood gases such as CO2 rise or fall because of the lack of circulation and breathing.
“We found that in those patients who experienced the phenomenon, blood carbon-dioxide levels were significantly higher than in those who did not,” said team member Zalika Klemenc-Ketis, of the University of Maribor in Slovenia.
Oh Buruther! It must be Sunday. Catch y’all later!
The brain dumping all it’s endorphins may help. I do get irritated when the phrases like, “he was dead for four minutes”. No he wasn’t or he wouldn’t be drinking that damn bullion in his hospital bed. When someone makes a complete return trip after real death, then tell me the story.
Who didn’t think this already?
Just goes to: “Personal Experience is not proof.”
Are we men of science, or the perpetual self delusion?
Sadly, I know of 2 people who have experienced the white light, they KNOW it was god. They are also republicans. Flame bait, but it is true.
I know many who claim the former who are the latter. A degree in science does not mean an understanding of science. The belief in an afterlife of some sort is paramount to society for better or worse. They must believe in a higher power, to justify the concept of good an evil. They don’t want to believe that good and evil are constructs of the human mind. The catholic priests who taught my ethics classes called it the naturalistic fallacy. The wolf eating the sheep is evil, as opposed to the fact the wolf was just hungry and had no evil intent other than to eat. The meaning of good and evil have undergone significant changes in the last few thousand years. There are no concrete definitions of good or evil (its all relative) sorry to disappoint the many.
“… they .. saw bright lights, left their bodies, or encountered angels or dead loved ones”. Yeah, I hate it when that happens.
hmmmmmm ……
Tunnel with a white light at the end where you go into a new world? That’s not death – it’s BIRTH!
Think about it.
Just gas? Oh, yeah, heathen? Well, then who invented CO2?
Jesus’ Dad, that’s who!*
* Not valid in most parts of the world.
Well, it’s nice to know that some doctors studied a few medical charts and put thousands of years of religion and millions of individual’s personal experiences to bed.
Now as a society we can get back to all the important things like raping, murdering, getting stoned, getting drunk, lying, stealing, cheating, oh and blaming the other political party. It’s always the other political party that causes our problems and makes us act a particular way as a society. Then if we for a moment have any remorse, simply realize we only feel that way because we have gas and need to fart.
Done the near death white light thing. Seriously. Not joking.
Before experience, hardcore Catholic. After, all religions are full of cow dung. My advice? Stop worshipping death and get on with living. There will be plenty of time for death later.
Sadly, more proof that when you die, you are simply dead.
#9–Shen==You are either in the Party of God, or the Party of Satan.
Sorry, no fence sitting allowed.
Raise your hand: Who here thinks religion is not inconsistent with science?????
Hee, hee. Stoopid Hoomans.
Oh yeah, here we go again. The mystery and majesty of the human experience reduced to what simple explanation physical science can provide. Everything else is superstition and ignorance. Yawn, troll bait.
This study, like most sciences do (and expectingly so because of the limited knowledge we have access to), focuses only on the physical and disregards the emotional and mental as being capable of driving an experience.
My guess is that the physical world is not the only experience to be had.
The physical body works in synergy with the other emotional and mental aspects of experience.
When a person has a “near death” experience iit is mostly emotional and mental (obviously because the body is dying or close to dying), but still the body reacts and does it’s own thing accordingly.
Someday sciience along with physics will give us a better explanation of what exactly experience is in general…until then if you want to understand the Big Picture, and not just the physical, unfortunately it’s guess and check.
With that said, I see God as a word that communicates a concept which is best understood through experience.
Religions have taken this simple concept and created elaborate stories, truths, half-truths and lies that allow them to control the way people think and act….and feel for that matter.
#10 agreed, I have nothing against religion. If it works for you fine, just don’t use it as a crutch. I find it interesting that a number of people that I work with who are religious, spend more time thinking and preparing themselves for “what” comes after. They spend all day Sunday at church being “good Christians” so that when they die they go to heaven. They are so consumed with the “process” they forget that the journey not the destination is the important part. If you travel the road you will end up where you need to be. That was way to philisophical for today, think I will go fishing, ya’ll have a good day.
Get busy living, or get busy dying.
#15 clancys_daddy said: “think I will go fishing”
Now that’s wisdom.
Aw God damn it, and I thought I was going home to say Jesus and shit.
er, see Jesus – whatever…
Since it is Sunday, I’ll leave some stained glass here:
http://tinyurl.com/y6mvtp5
This conversation won’t really end until science convincingly explains how 3 lbs of meat can see, hear, feel and think.
Well obviously blood co2 levels will be higher. If you are not taking in oxygen through breathing, you’re cells can still respire and produce CO2 waste. These high levels of carbon dioxide in the blood are not what cause the out of body experience…its just coincidence.
Well, this explanation is too simplistic. Other than the tunnel vision, how can all these hallucinations be exactly the same? How come someone doesn’t come back, say they see a tunnel of light, and at the end they find dancing bears and floating lolipops?
#14 – Mike — Would you classify the affects of hallucinate drugs as mental (emotional)? If so,would you also start to think that many of the mental (emotional) experiences are caused by physical (drugs or chemicals) experiences?
Re#20, John E. Quantum said,”This conversation won’t really end until science convincingly explains how 3 lbs of meat can see, hear, feel and think.”
Did the 3 lb. of hamburger in the fridge inform you that you’re out of milk again?
Re: # 22 KJohnstone said, “How come someone doesn’t come back, say they see a tunnel of light, and at the end they find dancing bears and floating lolipops?
If you taught, from child to adulthood, dancing bears await them in the afterlife when they die… then yes, upon oxygen starvation, especially in a life-death situation, they might see those entrenched memories kick in.
My wife donated blood and she passed out. She “saw’ a bright light… nothing more. No pre-conceived notions… no illusions.
I think belief is all we have. Does it really matter if in fact when we die we just die?
What if we were told that? What if we found out that their is nothing after death? It is interesting how science and religion are starting to clash.
The “out of body” experience reported by near-death has also been proven to be manufactured by the brain. In order to test this, some doctors put a sign on the operating room light that could only be read from the ceiling. Not one of the people who reported having an out-of-body experience, and who also claimed to have watched their surgery from above, said anything about seeing a sign on the top side of the light.
Why would increased CO2 levels cause specific hallucinations? If I drop acid while listening to the Beatles and see a giant walrus in the wall, does everyone else who drops acid see walrus’s in the walls?
#28, so, you are saying that dropping acid starves your brain of oxygen? Of course not… so your comparison is meaningless.
Your body has evolved survival instincts, some of which are useless some not so useless. Being starved of oxygen is a life threatening situation. Besides an involuntary response of gasping for air, increased heart rate and others, searching the brain for memory about death and survival thereof would be a logical response. All that flashing memory of life experiences that often happens in life threatening situations, might have that objective. Religious people might draw upon learned religious images ad stories, atheists would see a whiteness with no images to draw upon… or they might see the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Is there anything C02 cant do?