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.
Well obviously blood co2 levels will be higher. If you are not taking in oxygen through breathing, you’re cells can still respire and produce CO2 waste. These high levels of carbon dioxide in the blood are not what cause the out of body experience…its just coincidence.
Well, this explanation is too simplistic. Other than the tunnel vision, how can all these hallucinations be exactly the same? How come someone doesn’t come back, say they see a tunnel of light, and at the end they find dancing bears and floating lolipops?
#14 – Mike — Would you classify the affects of hallucinate drugs as mental (emotional)? If so,would you also start to think that many of the mental (emotional) experiences are caused by physical (drugs or chemicals) experiences?
Re#20, John E. Quantum said,”This conversation won’t really end until science convincingly explains how 3 lbs of meat can see, hear, feel and think.”
Did the 3 lb. of hamburger in the fridge inform you that you’re out of milk again?
Re: # 22 KJohnstone said, “How come someone doesn’t come back, say they see a tunnel of light, and at the end they find dancing bears and floating lolipops?
If you taught, from child to adulthood, dancing bears await them in the afterlife when they die… then yes, upon oxygen starvation, especially in a life-death situation, they might see those entrenched memories kick in.
My wife donated blood and she passed out. She “saw’ a bright light… nothing more. No pre-conceived notions… no illusions.
I think belief is all we have. Does it really matter if in fact when we die we just die?
What if we were told that? What if we found out that their is nothing after death? It is interesting how science and religion are starting to clash.
The “out of body” experience reported by near-death has also been proven to be manufactured by the brain. In order to test this, some doctors put a sign on the operating room light that could only be read from the ceiling. Not one of the people who reported having an out-of-body experience, and who also claimed to have watched their surgery from above, said anything about seeing a sign on the top side of the light.
Why would increased CO2 levels cause specific hallucinations? If I drop acid while listening to the Beatles and see a giant walrus in the wall, does everyone else who drops acid see walrus’s in the walls?
#28, so, you are saying that dropping acid starves your brain of oxygen? Of course not… so your comparison is meaningless.
Your body has evolved survival instincts, some of which are useless some not so useless. Being starved of oxygen is a life threatening situation. Besides an involuntary response of gasping for air, increased heart rate and others, searching the brain for memory about death and survival thereof would be a logical response. All that flashing memory of life experiences that often happens in life threatening situations, might have that objective. Religious people might draw upon learned religious images ad stories, atheists would see a whiteness with no images to draw upon… or they might see the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Is there anything C02 cant do?
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