Is there life after death? Scientists reveal how your body keeps working AFTER you die
Our cells "die" in several steps and carry on working after organs have shut down
OUR bodies keep trying to patch us together after death, scientists have discovered.
Cells continue to work after organs shut down, similarly to the super-hero style regeneration we see in Hollywood blockbusters, a study has found.
Gene expression — which controls protein production or important chemical reactions in our body — increases in some cases after death, according to the study "Tracing the dynamics of gene transcripts after organismal death" published in the journal Open Biology.
This means that not all cells die when a human is declared dead, and the body will still try to repair itself for some time.
Understanding that the body dies in prolonged "steps" could have huge implications for how we treat terminal cancers, for example.
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The international team of scientists, led by Washinton University pHD student Alex Pozhitkov, studied zebrafish and mice and believe that the phenomenon occurs in all animals, including humans.
In the case of the zebrafish, the researchers monitored the animals before sending them to a "kill" chamber filled with ice water.
To test their hypothesis, their cell renewal was monitored after their death.
Incredibly, they found that inflammation, stress and disease continued after death.
The study stated: "The increased abundance of inflammation response transcripts, for example, putatively indicates that a signal of infection or injury is sensed by the still alive cells after death of the body."
Living longer is on the front of Brits' minds thanks to a landmark court ruling over a girl who had requested to have her body cryogenically frozen in the hope she would be woken up when there was a cure for her illness.
But if you're afraid of dying, there's help at hand.
A virtual reality death simulator could "cure society’s fear of dying".
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