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.
I’m an skeptic myself, but this explanation is akin to saying that laughter can only be caused by NO2 (laughing gas) and ruling out the existence of fun.
#31–Caran==NO! Its not like that at all. No wonder you idiots are religious. Can’t even read six short sentences and get it right.
3 Pounds of properly functioning meat = science.
3 Pounds of Hamburger = Religion.
#13–ammaramadingdong: still no progress eh?
“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.” /// Are you and your ilk still sticking with pain in the head or stomach being caused by demons or do you take aspirin?
What a special state of suspension you magical non-thinkers partake of. Over and over and over again.
Silly Hoomans.
#23 Bac
Yes, I would say a drug would effect the mental experience.
I see the physical, emotional and mental operating independently but in conjunction with each other…like I said a synergistic relationship. So, while X might effect Y, Y can also effect X. Neither of them have any priority over the other…they all work together to form a whole experience.
For example, you can take a drug that changes your body’s chemistry and makes you feel happy. But you can also use your focus meditatively to feel happy which will also in turn change your body’s chemistry (this has been scientifically studied).
Both methods have an emotional effect, the former being caused by physical means and the latter by mental means.
To bring it back to my original point. Just because you physically measure what takes place during a mental experience doesn’t negate the validity of that experience.
Science likes to think that the physical is the deciding factor of truth. But the truth is Science doesn’t even know what the physical is. You can magnify of miniify your view of the physical using a microscope or a telescope, either way you run into an unknown. So again, Science can’t even fully explain the very foundation which it rests upon.
That’s not to say Science doesn’t have it’s uses but it could use a lesson in humility.
#34–Hey Mickey==you do know that Science is a process and not anything needing humility???
Good boy.
#32 bobbo, re: “3 Pounds of properly functioning meat = science.
3 Pounds of Hamburger = Religion.”
Beautifully put! 🙂
What you see tends to be what you expect to see. Here in SE Asia, instead of angels and grandparents and Jesus on a throne, they see the white light but at the end of it a golden stupa (the dome-shaped object often seen on the grounds of a Buddhist temple – do a google image search)and a saffron-robed monk to welcome them.
I had a patient in central Africa who told me he entered a white tunnel and at the end of it was a huge banquet table covered in all his favorite foods. All his relatives were there to greet him. Sounds like heaven to me – except for the relatives part.
#33 Bobbo
Me and my ilk don’t see much difference between an aspirin and an exorcism. Having an excess of faith in what you think you know doesn’t make you right. It just makes it harder to discover those things you don’t know. All knowledge is to be taken in the context of the ignorance that contains and limits it.
so they should be able to re-create it with anybody that’s not dying…….right?
This explains all but a few pieces of evidence – such as seeing things that the “dead” person couldn’t see at all (eyes closed, in a nearby place, something that couldn’t be seen from his/her vantage). Still, when someone who is actually dead comes and talks to you and a friend, one tends to believe there’s more to it than just CO2
He don’t ridicule this data. It is true that one sees bright lights and good things awaiting. Back when I was Napoleon and lay dying from the bastards who poisoned me, I saw the light, but to late. Then my next existence as a rat in an Indian Temple was cut short by a stupid jerk on a motorbike, no light then. Maybe that shit head would have seen me if he had one. So I do know there is an afterlife, currently I often feel I’m going to be making the trip again. Especially when I have one of those outrageous orgasms and see bight lights at the end.
The Ayurvedic herb Brahmi (latin: Bacopa Monnieri) causes long-term memory to radically improve when taken orally twice a day for 5 days or more.
In Ayurveda it is used to balance epilepsy. Its effect is similar to that of Ritalin, although much milder. In India it is used by students to prepare for exams etc.
A friend of mine started taking it regularly. A couple of weeks later he was sitting in a chair and had a flash where he experienced the entire past year in the space of a few seconds.
What is interesting about NDEs is not white light, but the fact that having your entire life flash in front of you is a valid experience. Correlate that to active substances in Brahmi and you have a small revolution in crime fighting: in my experience memory becomes very visual and vivid after a few days of regular intake, so witnesses will count for more.
#38–amodedoma==as usual, your words are gibberish. You talk just like a theist.
“All knowledge is to be taken in the context of the ignorance that contains and limits it.” /// OK, very zen and just as pretty. All surface, no depth.
Science. Testing. Reproducible results. Best explanation always open to a better one. Concepts of “ignorance” really have no function outside of a poetic nihilism of no import.
Every thought, notion, dogma, precept offered by religion has either been proven false or is not falsifiable, and yet it continues. Its not bounded by ignorance at all. Such as: no difference between the science of aspirin and the religion/ignorance of exorcism? That’s ok, I know you are joking.
So silly. Saying things you obviously don’t believe and not understanding the “point” you are unintentionally making.
So silly.
#35
Hey bobby, it sounds as if I offended you, I didn’t mean to. And yes, I do realize that science is a process, thanks for stating the obvious.
Furthermore, science is also a religion and a lot of others tihings as welll…it depends on how and who’s looking at it. Someday you’ll have the perspective to understand what I meant by it benefitting from more humility. Though you probably already do, but for some reason you just felt like being a smart a*s.
Thanks again, I’m glad you’re helping so much to bring things together, you’re one in a million, I’d be hard pressed finding someone like you on an internet comment board.
Correlation does not equal causation. Unless you can use a correlation to mock a bunch of non-materialists and their silly beliefs. Then the normal rules of logic go right out the window!
Science was so much more fun when it was about discovering the nature of reality rather than denying it.