![]() ![]() The 11 patients who reported experiencing NDEs tended to have significantly higher levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in their bloodstreams. Researchers looked at blood samples taken from 52 patients shortly after they'd survived cardiac arrest. Since then, a 2010 study published in the journal Clinical Care offers yet another possible explanation. Only 18 percent of them reported experiencing NDEs, and the researchers found no link to the amount of time they were in cardiac arrest, or the drugs they were given. In the largest-ever study of the phenomenon, published in the Lancet in 2001, Dutch physicians interviewed 344 mostly elderly hospital patients who survived brushes with death in which their hearts stopped. However, so far, science has failed to come up with an airtight explanation for NDEs. Still others think that the brain's impending shutdown triggers a flood of euphoria-causing endorphins, or electrical discharges in the hippocampus (the brain area involved in memory), while others think the state is caused by the side effects of anesthesia or medications. Over the years, some have theorized that NDEs result when the brain is deprived of oxygen, or when a mysterious, yet-unverified chemical binds itself to neurons in an effort to protect them from that deprivation. Physicians and neuroscientists who've searched for a less mystical explanation for NDEs suspect they're hallucinations, somehow caused by the process of the dying brain shutting down. There, for whatever reason, he or she is turned away and sent back to resume Earthly life - sometimes with a newfound insight about life's purpose. Those who believe in the metaphysical think that during an NDE, a seriously ill or injured person's soul leaves the physical body and journeys to the entrance of the afterlife. Nobody really knows what NDEs are, or how and why they occur, though there are widely-ranging opinions. ![]()
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