What is clinical death? give a full description. Clinical death

You can pull a person out of the other world not only in those 5-7 minutes, but also in much more. But there are several development options here. If a person is resuscitated under normal conditions later than this period, within the next 10 or even 20 minutes, then such a “lucky person”, by and large, will not have to bear the proud title of “man”. The reason is as a result of the onset of decortication and even decerebration. To put it simply, a person will not be aware of himself and will simply be a plant. IN best case scenario, he will be insane.

However, there are situations when successful resuscitation can last the same tens of minutes and the rescued person will be completely capable and generally normal. This happens when conditions are created to slow down the degeneration of the higher parts of the brain, which is accompanied by anoxia (lack of oxygen), hypothermia (cooling) and even severe electrical damage.

History is simply teeming with such cases, from biblical times to modern times. For example, in 1991, a French fisherman discovered the lifeless body of an 89-year-old woman who committed suicide. The resuscitation team was unable to revive her, but when she was taken to the hospital, she revived along the way, thus spending at least 30 minutes in the next world.

But this is not the limit at all. One of the most amazing stories happened in the USSR in March 1961. A certain 29-year-old tractor driver V.I. Kharin was driving along a deserted road in Kazakhstan. However, as often happens, the engine stalled and he set off on foot in the cold. However, the journey was long, which is not surprising for these places, and at one point the unlucky tractor driver decided to take a nap from fatigue and, very likely, from a little too much alcohol. Without realizing it, he began to sculpt one of the most fantastic cases in history, for which he only had to lie down in a snowdrift. He lay there for at least 4 hours before he was found. It is not possible to determine when he died. The fact is that he was found completely numb...

When Dr. P. S. Abrahamyan decided to perform resuscitation for an unknown reason, the characteristics of the tractor driver were as follows: the body was completely numb and when tapped on it a dull sound was made, like from wood; the eyes were open and covered with a film; there was no breathing; there was no pulse; the body temperature on the surface was negative. In other words, a corpse. Having found such a person, it is unlikely that anyone would think of trying to revive him. But Abrahamyan decided to try his luck. Oddly enough, he managed to do this by warming up, cardiac massage and artificial respiration. As a result, the “corpse” not only came to life, but also remained completely healthy in head. The only thing was that he had to part with his fingers. A similar incident occurred in 1967 in Tokyo, when a truck driver decided to cool off in his refrigerator. The situation was almost the same. In both cases, the victims remained alive after many hours of death.

Largely thanks to these cases, in the 60-80s of the twentieth century, the topic of cryonics received a new explosion of interest throughout the world. After such cases, like it or not, you will believe in it. However, as noted in another book in this series, this area is unpromising due to the fact that during final freezing, human tissue is destroyed due to the fact that it consists of three-quarters water, which expands when frozen. Perhaps in the cases described above it simply did not come to this completely. In the case of the tractor driver, only the fingers were completely frozen, and they were removed. A few more tens of minutes in the cold and he would definitely die. However, such times are more the exception to the rule than the norm. Perhaps this was facilitated by excess alcohol in the blood, but no mention of this has survived anywhere to this day.

In the long-term preservation of a person in clinical death, first of all, it is not anoxia that plays a key role, but hypothermia. Because it is in the presence of only the second factor that all the known records in this direction were set, in which several people compete with the tractor driver from Kazakhstan. But the presence of both factors will still not allow you to stay in a revived state for more than 40-45 minutes. For example, Vegard Sletemunen from the Norwegian city of Lilistrom fell into a frozen river at the age of five, but they were able to resuscitate him after 40 minutes. While the tractor driver’s rivals, according to their assurances, were in the next world for up to 4 hours and this always happened in winter (often Canada and the USA). Some of these people, following the cherished rule of American capitalism, even wrote books about their misadventures.

However, all these achievements also look lackluster. If you believe one case that happened in Mongolia. There a little boy lay in the cold at -34 degrees for 12 hours...

When we're talking about about the prolongation of death, in no case should these cases be confused with deep lethargy or the usual slowdown in vital processes. We have all heard about how people are declared dead, but then they come back to life, easily within a couple of days. Naturally, it was not death. The doctors simply could not recognize the signs of life because they were barely noticeable. Similar case occurred in the morgue where my mother worked as a histologist in the early 1990s. The man was long dead when the pathologist attempted to begin the autopsy. However, at the first prick of the scalpel, he perked up and jumped up. Since then, the doctor’s professional passion for laboratory alcohol has worsened significantly.

In clinical practice, it is also possible to prolong the moment of final death. For example, this is achieved by cooling the brain, various pharmacological agents, fresh blood transfusion. Therefore, in special cases, doctors can prolong the state of clinical death for several tens of minutes, but this is difficult and very expensive, so such procedures are not used for the average person. If previously it was common practice to bury almost every tenth person alive, even now doctors often do not perform procedures that can save one person out of every few dozen.

The term “ Clinical death” became entrenched in the official medical lexicon at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, although it was used back in the 19th century. It is used in cases where the patient’s heart has stopped beating, which means that the blood circulation that supplies the body with oxygen, without which life is impossible, has stopped.

However, cells have some metabolic reserve on which they can survive for a short time without oxygen enrichment. Bone tissue, for example, can be preserved for hours, and nerve cells brains die much faster - from 2 to 7 minutes. It is during this time that a person needs to be brought back to life. If this succeeds, then in such cases they say that the person experienced clinical death.

It is believed that it is in the brain that those amazing experiences that people who have experienced clinical death testify to are formed.

The striking similarity of memories of clinical death

Many are amazed at how similar the memories of people who have experienced clinical death are: there is always light, a tunnel, visions in them. Skeptics ask questions: are they fabricated? Mystics and apologists of the paranormal believe that the similarity of the experiences of those who rose from a state of clinical death proves the reality of the other world.

Visions are generated moments before clinical death

From point of view modern science there is an answer to these questions. According to medical models of the functioning of the body, when the heart stops, the brain freezes and its activity stops. This means that no matter what experience a person experiences, in the state of clinical death itself he does not and cannot have sensations, and therefore memories. Consequently, the vision of the tunnel, and the presence of supposedly otherworldly forces, and light - all this is generated before clinical death, literally a few moments before it.

What determines the similarity of memories in this case? Nothing more than the similarity of our human organisms. The picture of the onset of clinical death is the same for thousands of people: the heart beats worse, oxygen enrichment of the brain does not occur, and hypoxia sets in. Relatively speaking, the brain is half asleep, half hallucinating - and each vision can be associated with its own type of disrupted functioning.

Clinical death for real

An overwhelming feeling of euphoria, unexpected peace and goodness are not harbingers of the afterlife, but a consequence of a sharp increase in the concentration of serotonin. In ordinary life, this neurotransmitter regulates our feeling of joy. Studies conducted in Germany under the leadership of A. Wutzler showed that during clinical death, the concentration of serotonin increases at least three times.

Tunnel vision

Many people report seeing a corridor (or tunnel) as well as a light at the end of the tunnel. Doctors explain this by the effect of “tunnel vision”. The fact is that in ordinary life we ​​see only clear things with our eyes. colored spot in the center, and a cloudy black and white periphery. But from infancy our brain is able to synthesize pictures, creating a holistic field of vision. When the brain experiences a shortage of resources, signals from the periphery of the retina are not processed, which causes the characteristic vision.

The longer the hypoxia, the more the brain begins to mix external signals with internal ones, hallucinating: believers at these moments see God/the devil, the souls of their deceased loved ones, while in people who do not have a religious consciousness, episodes of their lives flash by super intensely.

Leaving the body

Just before “disconnecting” from life, the human vestibular apparatus ceases to behave in a normal way, and people experience a feeling of ascension, flight, leaving the body.

There is also the following point of view regarding this phenomenon: many scientists do not consider out-of-body experiences as something paranormal. It is experienced, yes, but it all depends on what consequences we attribute to it. According to a leading specialist at the Human Brain Institute Russian Academy Sciences Dmitry Spivak, there is a little-known statistics according to which about 33% of all people have at least once experienced an out-of-body experience and perceive themselves from the outside.

The scientist studied the states of consciousness of women during childbirth: according to his data, every 10th woman in labor felt as if she saw herself from the outside. From here the conclusion is drawn that such an experience is the result of a mental program that is triggered in extreme states, built deep at the psyche level. And clinical death is an example of extreme stress.

People after clinical death - are there any consequences?

One of the most mysterious things about clinical death is its consequences. Even if a person was able to be “returned from the other world,” can we confidently say that the same person returned from the “other world”? There are many documented examples of personality changes occurring in patients - here are 3 stories from reports of near-death experiences in the United States:

• teenager Harry returned to life, but did not retain any traces of his former cheerfulness and friendly disposition. After the incident, he began to show so much anger that even his family found it difficult to cope with “this man.” As a result, his relatives made his permanent place of residence a separate house for guests in order to have as little contact with him as possible. His behavior became violent to a dangerous level.
• A 3-year-old girl, who had been in a coma for 5 days, behaved in a completely unexpected way: she began to demand alcohol, despite the fact that she had never tried it before. In addition, she developed kleptomania and a passion for smoking.
• married woman Heather H. was admitted to the department with a skull injury, which resulted in impaired blood circulation in the brain and clinical death. Despite the severity and extent of the damage, she returned to life, and more than richly: her desire for sexual contact became constant and irresistible. Doctors call it "nymphomania." Result: the husband filed for divorce, and the court granted it.

Does clinical death remove the blocking of social prohibitions?

There are no studies that would give a definite answer about the nature of such changes, but there is a fairly realistic hypothesis.

Clinical death has a point of return to the real world, so many believe this state human portal between life and death. None of the scientists can reliably say whether a person in a state of clinical death is dead or alive. Surveys of a large number of people showed that many of them perfectly remember everything that happened to them. But on the other hand, from the point of view of doctors, in a state of clinical death, patients do not show any signs of life, and the return to the real world occurs thanks to the ongoing resuscitation measures.

Concept of clinical death

The very concept of clinical death was introduced in the second half of the last century. This was a period of development of resuscitation technologies, which made it possible to bring a person back to life within a few minutes after he stopped showing signs of life.

People who have been brought back from clinical death typically report amazing stories that happened to them in such a short time real life gap. And not everything can be explained from a scientific point of view.

According to surveys, patients confirmed the following sensations and visions during clinical death:

• Leaving own body and observing the situation, as if from the outside;
• Exacerbation visual perception and remembering events down to the smallest detail;
• Hearing strange calling sounds;
• Vision of a light source or other light phenomena that attracts oneself;
• The onset of feelings of complete peace and tranquility;
• Watching, like in a movie, episodes of a lived life;
• The feeling of being in another world;
• Meetings with strange creatures;
• A vision of a tunnel that you will definitely need to go through.

The opinions of esotericists and scientists regarding clinical death differ significantly, and they often refute each other’s arguments.

Thus, proof of the existence of the soul, according to parapsychologists, is the fact that while in a state of clinical death, a person hears everything that others say, including the fact that doctors confirm his death. In fact, medicine has proven that the core auditory analyzer, located in the temporal cortex of the cerebral hemispheres, can work within a few seconds after breathing and circulation have stopped. This is precisely why the patient, returning to real life, can reproduce what he heard in a state of clinical death.

Very often, people who have experienced clinical death describe sensations of flight and certain visions, including of a tunnel. This effect from a medical point of view is explained by the fact that the brain, after cardiac arrest due to oxygen deficiency, begins to work in emergency mode, which can cause hallucinations. Moreover, this does not happen at the moment of clinical death, but before its onset and during the process of resuscitation. This explains their apparent scale and duration, although in fact the process of returning to life takes only a few minutes. The feeling of flight is explained by disruption of the vestibular apparatus when blood circulation stops. For example, it can be experienced in real life by dramatically changing the position of the body.

Medicine associates the appearance of the tunnel with the peculiarity of the functioning of the cortical visual analyzer. After blood circulation stops, the eyes no longer see, but the brain continues to receive the image with a certain delay. The peripheral parts of the cortical analyzer are the first to experience oxygen deficiency; as a result of the gradual cessation of work, the picture decreases and the so-called “pipe vision” occurs.

Often people who have experienced clinical death. They remember extraordinary calm and tranquility, as well as the absence of any pain. Therefore, esotericists associate this with the fact that after the death of a person another life can come and the soul strives for it.

Scientists categorically deny this version, since they know that peace when a person dies is associated with the body’s natural protection from severe stress. The point is that in critical situations humans produce a large number of special hormones– endorphins. They suppress painful sensations and allow the human body to fight emerging problems with full force. Clinical death is a severe test, so happiness hormones are released into the blood in huge quantities. It should also be noted that when conducting resuscitation measures The use of strong painkillers is always provided. It is these factors that guarantee excellent well-being for a person in a state of clinical death.

Causes

The causes of clinical death can be very diverse. They can be roughly divided into two groups. The first group includes all accidents, such as defeat electric shock, accidents, suffocation, drowning and so on. The second group includes any serious illnesses, when exacerbated, cardiac arrest and cessation of lung function may occur.

Despite the fact that no signs of life are detected, during clinical death a person is not considered dead because:

• The brain continues to work;
• Saved normal temperature bodies;
• Metabolism continues.

This condition can last no more than 6 minutes, but successful resuscitation and returning a person to life without negative consequences is possible only within the first three minutes. Otherwise, individual areas of the cerebral cortex may be damaged.

Today, the time for possible full resuscitation is extended by various using medications, such as:

• Rapid slowdown of metabolism;
• Extreme drop in body temperature;
• Artificial immersion of a person into a state of suspended animation.

Signs

The signs of clinical death are quite vivid and difficult to confuse, for example, with fainting.

To diagnose the condition, you need to pay attention to the following:

• Stopping blood circulation. This is detected by palpating the pulse in the carotid artery. If it is not there, then blood circulation has stopped.
• Stopping breathing. It is desirable in addition to visual detection of natural movement chest, bring the mirror to the person’s nose. If it doesn’t fog up, it means breathing has stopped.
• Lack of pupillary reactions to light. You need to open your eyelid slightly and shine a flashlight on the pupil; if there is no movement, then the person is in a state of clinical death.

It should be remembered that the first two signs are enough to begin resuscitation measures.

Consequences

The consequences of clinical death can be different, and a person’s condition after it entirely depends on the speed of resuscitation measures. Quite often, people who received timely, qualified assistance lived a long and happy life. There are facts that people after clinical death began to manifest some amazing abilities.

But, unfortunately, people also often experience various disorders after returning to life. mental nature. Moreover, doctors agree that they are not a consequence of the lack of blood circulation and breathing for some time, but the result of severe stress, which is for human body clinical death in general. It is difficult for a person to realize that he has been beyond the line of life and returned from there. It is this factor that leads to slower recovery. Minimize Negative consequences clinical death is possible if the recovering person is always surrounded by close and dear people who can provide timely support.

Meanwhile, loved ones crying over the deceased distract the soul from reflection, which, according to esotericists, has a negative effect.

What do those who experienced this phenomenon remember?

Experts agree that not many people who stood in the middle of the path from life to death can return and tell what happened to them, what they experienced there.

Some can remember everything in detail. For others, only certain fragments of the Supreme Court are reflected in their memory; they say that their whole life flashed before them in a split second. Some people don’t remember anything at all.

According to psychologist E. Kübler-Ross, who specializes in patients who had clinical death, only 10% of respondents remembered what happened and could report what happened. For other specialists, this figure is about 15-35%.

• But be that as it may, after experiencing clinical death, anyone begins to perceive this life differently. People understand that life after death exists, they cease to be afraid of death, and acquire many good qualities. This is the purpose of clinical death: it is a very serious means used By Higher Powers to guide a person along the right path.

IN Everyday life angels have a connection with humans through inner voice. But when he doesn’t want to listen to this voice, then they can organize his own meeting with himself.

The most famous scientist who studied the features of clinical death is Roland Moody. He was closest to realizing those phenomena that are evidence of the existence of life after death.

Moody was the first to seriously claim the existence of an afterlife. He actively promoted the idea of ​​the “other world” from which patients returned after clinical death. The scientist published the book “Life after Death,” which became a bestseller in many countries; this work made Moody famous. He also researched another no less interesting question– travel to past incarnations.

The scientist interviewed more than one and a half thousand people and carefully analyzed their stories. As a result, Moody pointed out 11 main aspects of what a person feels and realizes when he finds himself on the very edge.

Having analyzed the testimony of people who experienced clinical death, he established the most common facts about what a person sees in such a situation - sometimes he sees himself from the outside, rushes along a corridor or tunnel, at the end of which he sees light, sees departed loved ones, remembers the most important moments of life, feels freedom and does not want to go back.

At the same time, some doctors believe that such experiences are a kind of hallucinations caused by disturbances in brain activity at the stage of dying: for example, a tunnel with light is nothing more than a consequence of deteriorating blood flow and visual impairment.

After Moody, interest among scientists in issues of clinical death rapidly increased. Clinical death is “accepted” by many scientists who do not deny “life after death.”

For example, one of the Russian research institutes has been studying and trying to answer the question for many years: what is clinical death? Domestic experts organized the following experiment: while a person was alive, they were weighed on ultra-precise scales. When a person was in a state of clinical death, his body weight decreased by 21 grams. Based on this, scientists came to the conclusion that the soul has such weight.