Before I get too far into this, let me assure you that what I’m posting about is the first study to find this link, and that does not mean that anything is for really really certain. As with all studies, further evaluation and consensus is required, but it’s interesting stuff.

National Geographic has an article today entitled Near Death Experiences Explained? in which they discuss a recent study in the journal Critical Care that seems to draw a correlation between near death experiences in heart attack patients and the level of Carbon Dioxide in their blood at the time.

I’ve often heard people describe NDEs as being an electrical firestorm in the brain, and while I can’t say that ever sat well with me, it made at least some sense. It would explain why only some patients experience these effects, and why as an intermittent condition it would be so hard to better understand. This new data does not change the equation much, and as was noted in the article, all cardiac arrests show high CO2 with only 10 per cent experiencing an NDE. However, it possibly points us in the right direction for further study.

As a non-medicine-dude, I would assume that we could come up with a device that monitors brain activity and CO2 levels behind the scenes and evaluates the data on a larger scale. If such a device could be incorporated into the Emergency procedures of several hospitals with the data compiled for analysis, it would seem likely that any real pattern could be effectively found out.

I’ve always considered an NDE to be a highly frustrating concept. I don’t believe in God, and see no reason to believe that an NDE is anything more than a hallucination. I’ve taken mushrooms, and I can tell you that our grasp on reality is tenuous at best. While I was experiencing them, my hallucinations were utterly real to me. I have always assumed that an NDE would be like that, so real to the experiencer that no amount of argument could dissuade them. If we could find their cause, we could in theory find a solution, or at the very least educate people on the likelihood of their experiencing something out-of-body.

In any event, it bears further evaluation and scrutiny. But it’s interesting to consider the implications of this information.

Jim