A hospice nurse has shared what happens to the human body after dying to try and reduce fear of death.
Julie McFadden, a registered nurse, used to work in an intensive care unit so ‘saw a lot of death’ throughout her career.
While she would speak with colleagues about the likelihood of her patients dying, she was much less likely to have these frank conversations with those patients directly, or their families.
So Julie was inspired to start speaking up and advocating for her patients, and she eventually moved into hospice nursing where she ‘saw the power each body has to die naturally and how beautiful it really was’.
She has also written a book and shares videos on her YouTube channel talking about death, dying, and advocating for patients and their families.
Her latest video, viewed nearly 600,000 times, explains exactly what happens to the human body after death, to try and demystify the experience.
Immediately after death, the body completely relaxes in the first stage of decomposition.
Julie explains: ‘This is why people urinate, have bowel movements, sometimes have fluid come up their nose or out of their eyes or ears, all of the things in your body that are holding fluids in relax.
‘That’s why death can be messy sometimes. I like to talk about it so people aren’t surprised if that happens. It’s very normal and to be expected sometimes.
‘The second thing that happens is the body temperature drops.’
Having seen a lot of dead bodies throughout her career, Julie says each person is different and some cool at a different pace to others, eventually reaching the temperature of the room they are in.
Next, all of the blood in the body starts to pool downwards towards the ground.
‘If you let someone lie there for long enough, and then you turn them, you will notice usually the back of their legs and the whole back side of them will look purple or darker,’ Julie explained.
‘That’s because gravity is pulling the blood down.’
Next comes the stiffening of the body, also known as rigor mortis, which Julie says ‘everyone’ knows about.
It usually starts to happen within one to two hours of death, and worsens before then loosening over the next 24-36 hours.
Julie explained: ‘I have seen people become very stiff almost immediately after death, like a few minutes after, and for other people, their body takes longer, so it just depends.
‘There is a stiffening of the muscles, first it will be in the smaller muscles like the eyes and face, then your neck, then gradually you’ll stiffen throughout your trunk and your body going to your extremities, hands, fingers and toes.
‘It happens because your body’s metabolism stops and it can no longer produce ATP which is adenosine triphosphate, the body’s cellular energy.
‘When ATP levels drop, muscle protein filaments bind together and contract permanently, causing muscles to stiffen and lose elasticity.’
Julie also says the body becomes ‘very very heavy’ after death, saying that cleaning someone alone would be ‘almost impossible’ without help to move the body or change their clothes.
After a day or so, the body loosens again as its tissues relax, and by this time the body has usually been taken to the mortuary to prepare for the next steps as decided by the final wishes of the person or their family.
This could include embalming, cremation, or burials.
Over time a body will naturally decompose, working through four stages.
The first, hypostasis, has already been explained above and takes in the first one to two hours after death.
The second stage, called algar mortis, is when the body cools to match the temperature of the room, and it takes about 12 hours for the body to feel cool to the touch.
Autolysis, also known as self digestion, is the third stage of decomposition.
‘Basically, enzymes begin to break down oxygen deprived tissue,’ Julie explained.
‘This process actually begins and starts only several minutes after death.’
The final stage is called putrefaction, starting between four to 10 days after death, and is when gases start being released.
Julie said: ‘There’s an odour, there would be discolouration of the skin and the body.
‘Black putrefaction occurs between 10 to 20 days after death when exposed skin turns black, there could be some bloating, and fluids are released from the body.
‘This is the part where the body is literally decomposing, and how the body would die before we had things like mortuaries, so it’s a very normal thing.
‘However we aren’t usually exposed to it, and when we are it’s usually from some kind of dramatic ending, like when someone finds a body.’
Julie believes it’s extremely important for people to know what they and their loved ones want to be done with their remains after they have died.
She says there are lots of options out there to consider, and it’s important to be informed.
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