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 But an as yet unpublished study by my own group suggests that, as people get closer to death, there is an increase in the body’s stress chemicals.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.
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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