![]() In the UK, cancer research in 2015-2016 was awarded £580m ($756m) whereas palliative care research was awarded less than £2m ($2.6m). Getting the funding to do this research is hard, too. Nevertheless, getting repeated samples, especially blood, in the last hours of someone’s life is logistically challenging. It is an interesting suggestion, however, and the technology to look at endorphin and serotonin levels in humans does exist. We can't rule out that something similar could happen in humans. A study from 2011, however, showed that the levels of serotonin, another brain chemical that is also thought to contribute to feelings of happiness, tripled in the brains of six rats as they died. But we just don't know as nobody has yet explored this possibility. You suggest that there may also be an endorphin rush just before someone dies. These are the chemicals that increase when the body is fighting an infection. For people with cancer, and maybe others, too, inflammatory markers go up. But an as yet unpublished study by my own group suggests that, as people get closer to death, there is an increase in the body’s stress chemicals. The actual moment of death is tricky to decipher. Why contemplating death changes how you think.The woman who forced us to look death in the face.So there are different things going on with different people and we cannot predict them. And some people can actually stay at the cusp of death for nearly a week before they die, something which usually is extremely distressing for families. A number of people, however, will go through this entire phase within a day. It is around this time that experts in palliative care say people are “actively dying”, and we usually think this means they have two to three days to live. Towards the last days of life, the ability to swallow tablets or consume food and drinks eludes them. They typically struggle to walk and become sleepier – managing to stay awake for shorter and shorter periods. During this time, people tend to become less well. ![]() But is it possible, as you suggest, to come to terms with death?Īs an expert on palliative care, I think there is a process to dying that happens two weeks before we pass. It is often assumed that life wages a battle to the last against death. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. The poet Dylan Thomas had some interesting things to say about death, not least in one of his most famous poems:Īnd you, my father, there on the sad height,Ĭurse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Could dying perhaps trigger a flood of endorphins, in particular in the absence of painkillers? Asked by Göran, 77, Helsingborg, Sweden. For decades, I have wondered whether the last minutes of life can be euphoric. But one of my relatives, who had intense pain the hours leading up to his death and lacked access to medical care, had a radiant, ecstatic expression. People often look like they are sleeping just after dying, having a neutral facial expression. ![]()
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