We have all heard at some time, and taken for granted, the phrase that it is “death improvement” with which we try to explain something we take for granted occurs quite frequently at people when they are about to die.
But what do you feel or see before you die?
It is one of the questions that possibly all of us have asked ourselves at some point in our lives.
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A tunnel with a light in the background
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feeling of peace
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Meeting relatives already dead…
They are the sensations that perhaps we all have in our minds when we think about what is experienced moments before.
Terminal lucidity: the mystery of the last hours
The reality is that everything that surrounds death, which is an inexorable phenomenon, is a mystery.
It is very common for the health of many terminally ill patients to seem to pick up in their last days or hours.
But here we focus on the final recovery of speech, memory…
For decades, not a few scientists have focused their research on trying to find out why the people with Alzheimer’s disease suddenly regain their resources in his last hours of life.
It is precisely what he has done Christopher Kerrmedical director of the , in the state of New York.
In an article published in , the doctor explains that:
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“These events usually occur in the last days of life. Alzheimer’s patients recover cognitive faculties such as speech and memories with other people in what has been defined as “terminal lucidity”.
Andrew Petersonfrom George Mason University (United States), explains that this return of lost communication capabilities it is “something that seems to be quite deep and important to their relatives, who observe lucidity before death, and is what we call the rise of the ‘old me’”.
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“There seems to be a clear evidence that they are aware of their surroundings and that they also understand what their relationships with other people are”.
Are these episodes really common?
The answer of Jason Karlawisha gerontologist at the Penn Memory Center in Philadelphia, is clear:
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“Are quite common. And more frequent in patients with dementiawhich suggests that the idea that these diseases are terminal is not entirely correct.
In a study led by this doctor, they have found that these episodes of lucidity are a more “illness experience”.
“Actually, we have found that these episodes can occur months, even years, before the person dies.”
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Although it is true that these episodes occur when death is relatively close and it is “almost as if they were preparing to die.”
Despite the fact that the latest research has shed some light on these phenomena, Dr. Peterson stresses that:
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“We don’t know yet what happens in the brain during the dying process and whether it might be somehow connected to these episodes.”
What happens in the brain when we die?
A University of Michigan study (United States) and published in , shows that brain activity increases in half of patients who have suffered a cardiac arrest after removal of life support.
Before reaching this conclusion, animals have been analyzed for more than a decade.
And has observed the same increase in in exposed to a cardiac toxineven an increase in gamma wave activity (brain waves in the back) in the first few minutes of cardiac arrest.
These brain waves are related to visual, auditory and movement perception.
As indicated by the neurologist Jimo Borijin:
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If we transfer it to human beings, the people who experience these situations “may be due to desperate efforts of the brain to preserve itself while physiological systems fail.
For his part, sam parniaan intensive care physician at NYU Langone Health in New York, believes that the brain, just before death, loses its usual mechanisms “that allow us to focus on individual tasks during our daily lives.”
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“When you die, your brain is deprived of oxygen and nutrients, so it shuts down. This shutdown process ‘takes off’ the brakes and suddenly you have access to parts of the brain that cannot normally be accessed.
This translates into thoughts, or interactions that come to light and that were previously ‘hidden’.
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“They are not dreams or hallucinations ”, clarifies the specialist. Although his previous studies focused on resuscitated critically ill people, Parnia believes that terminal lucidity in people in a coma or with dementia may be the product of a similar process.
He is currently participating in a study on the latter phenomenon.