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How Does Old Age Kill Us?

As technology helps us to live longer, it will also shape how you die. With a higher brain definition of death, you're gone when your personality is. With a whole brain definition of death, you've lost the ability to breathe on your own again. Each breath provides the oxygen necessary for survival to the rest of your body. Very simply, dying starts to happen when your body doesn't get the oxygen it needs to survive.

Different cells die at different speeds, so the length of the dying process depends on which cells are deprived of oxygen. The brain requires a tremendous amount of oxygen but keeps very little in reserve, so any cut off of oxygen to the brain will result in cell death within 3-7 minutes; that's why a stroke can kill so quickly. When blood is cut off from the heart, a heart attack occurs and can also take a life fairly swiftly. But since our bodies aren't designed to last forever, sometimes the body's systems simply wear out.

There are some outward signs that these symptoms are slowing down. The person will begin sleeping more to conserve the little energy that's left. When that energy is gone, the individual may lose the desire to eat and then drink. Swallowing becomes hard, and the mouth gets very dry, so forcing the person to eat or drink could cause choking. The dying person loses bladder and bowel control, but accidents will occur less frequently as those gastrointestinal functions shut down as well and he or she consumes less.

Any pain that the dying person feels at this point can usually be managed by a doctor in some way, but it can be unbelievably difficult to watch these final stages of a person's life. The stage right before a person died is called the agonal phase. The dying person is often disoriented, and it will seem like he or she can't get comfortable. It will also seem, disconcertingly, like the person can't catch a breath. There may be agonized pauses between loud, labored breaths. If there is fluid built up in the lungs, then that congestion will cause a sound known as the Death Rattle. As the cells inside a person lose their connections, the person may start convulsing or having muscle spasms.

When the heartbeat and breath stop, the person is clinically dead. This is a point where the process is reversible, by means of CPR, a transfusion, or a ventilator.

The point of no return is biological death, which begins 4-6 minutes after clinical death. Rescuscitation is impossible at this point.

Source: {http://www.health.howstuffworks.com/disease-conditions/death-dying/dying3.html}