Healing Body, Mind, Spirit
Aging, like sickness and death, is part and parcel of life. Everyone who is born must eventually age and die. This is the natural cycle of life. However, not everyone ages in the same way. Some age gracefully. Others age with fear. Fear is Optional If you are fearful of aging, you should know that … Read more
Dying is a more positive experience than most people imagine, psychologists have claimed.
A recent YouGov survey found 68 per cent of people in Britain fear death – but according to the authors of new study, dying is “less sad and terrifying – and happier – than you think”.
Researchers at the University of North Carolina analysed blogs written by terminally ill patients and last words of prisoners on death row.
A seven-year-old boy’s heart has finally stopped beating 22 years after he was shot dead.
Nicholas Green, from the US, was killed during a holiday in southern Italy in 1994 when attackers mistook his family’s rental car for one involved in a jewellery heist.
His brave parents opted to donate their son’s organs and his heart, corneas, kidneys, liver and pancreas were given to seven people in desperate need – changing their lives forever.
Thousands of cancer patients would prefer to die at home but are forced to suffer “traumatic” deaths in hospital, according to Macmillan.
Taboos around talking about death are fuelling a “crisis of communication” in the UK that prevents people from planning their final days, warned the organisation in a new report.
Research by the charity found that while 38 per cent of people who die from cancer die in hospital, just one per cent would choose to do so, with 64 per cent saying they wanted to die at home.
Dr. Kendra Fleagle Gorlitsky recalls the anguish she used to feel performing CPR on elderly, terminally ill patients.
“I felt like I was beating up people at the end of their life,” she says.
It looks nothing like what people see on TV. In real life, ribs often break and few survive the ordeal.
Gorlitsky now teaches medicine at the University of Southern California and says these early clinical experiences have stayed with her.
“I would be doing the CPR with tears coming down sometimes, and saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, goodbye.’ Because I knew it very likely was not going to be successful. It just seemed a terrible way to end someone’s life.”
Gorlitsky wants something different for herself and for her loved ones. And most other doctors do too: A Stanford University study shows almost 90 percent of doctors would forgo resuscitation and aggressive treatment if facing a terminal illness.
A radical procedure that involves replacing a patient’s blood with cold salt water could retrieve people from the brink of death, says David Robson.
Rhee isn’t exaggerating. With Samuel Tisherman, at the University of Maryland, College Park, he has shown that it’s possible to keep bodies in ‘suspended animation’ for hours at a time. The procedure, so far tested on animals, is about as radical as any medical procedure comes: it involves draining the body of its blood and cooling it more than 20C below normal body temperature.
Once the injury is fixed, blood is pumped once again through the veins, and the body is slowly warmed back up. “As the blood is pumped in, the body turns pink right away,” says Rhee. At a certain temperature, the heart flickers into life of its own accord. “It’s quite curious, at 30C the heart will beat once, as if out of nowhere, then again – then as it gets even warmer it picks up all by itself.” Astonishingly, the animals in their experiments show very few ill-effects once they’ve woken up. “They’d be groggy for a little bit but back to normal the day after,” says Tisherman.
Sausages, ham, bacon and other processed meats appear to increase the risk of dying young, a study of half a million people across Europe suggests. It concluded diets high in processed meats were linked to cardiovascular disease, cancer and early deaths. The researchers, writing in the journal BMC Medicine, said salt and chemicals used to preserve … Read more