Death!!! What can you do when confronted with a near death experience? Should you stand away and call 911? Yell for someone to get hot water and blankets? I don’t know why. Panic and just run away? Or if it is a choking victim take out your pocket knife, cut a hole in somebody’s throat, put a straw in it   and give an emergency tracheotomy like Sandra Bullock did   in   the movie Heat? Don’t do that. If you saw the movie, that wasn’t a very good idea.  But there is a way out there to cheat death and I don’t know why it’s not being broadcast every night on the news.

Now You Can Fight Death  And Win

Bringing the dead back to life has been a dream for humankind since the beginning of time.  Your quest in life could be to accumulate all the wealth in the world but no one has been able to stop ageing or death.  We have new proof that death could be prevented by   exposing the body to extreme cold.  Doctors now believe that if any of those bodies that froze alive in the icy waters after the Titanic Ship sank was saved today, perhaps some of them could have lived.  Medical professionals believe that   potentially dying in  icy water your  brain and cells  would be preserved.  You will live.

Doctor Sam Parnia runs the Resuscitation  Research Program at New York’s Stonybrook Medical School and writes that death is NOT  a moment but a process that can be interrupted and often reversed with the help of new techniques.  In this century since the Titanic  disaster we have learned a few things about cold water.  In 1986 a young girl drowned in an icy stream in Utah.  The girl was submerged for  more than an hour and technically dead but the cold water chilled her temperature down to 66°which was enough to stop brain damage.  Eventually the 2 and a half year old girl Michelle Funk  woke up and went on with her  life.

Michelle remembers nothing of that terrible day and her doctors will never forget it.  Today Hospitals are equipped with cooling devices that can probably go in a picnic basket to keep your  beverages cold except these look like vests or are fitted to parts of your body.  They are created to do the same thing to your body as the icy stream did which is to chill people whose hearts have stopped and preserve their brains till doctors can figure out how to get their hearts  going again.  Cooling people’s bodies down to  66 degrees gives doctors time to fix whatever else is going on and help bring them back to life.  Why aren’t stories like this being reported every night on the nightly news?

The Dr. goes on to say that even if someone collapses and dies at home, what we can do is get all of our frozen peas and meats out of the freezer and pack them around the body and perform CPR at the same time.  I think the cooling suits  should be available for  purchase to the general public.  If it is that effective to be able to keep someone alive it should be available everywhere and everyone should know how important this knowledge is in  first aid.  Cooling the body in combination with CPR efforts can slow down the rate that the body could possibly be getting brain damage.

Despite what we have learned the chances of being brought back from the dead are still pretty small.  Ambulances are not being  equipped with  cooling  devices and people in general are not performing CPR  long enough to bring someone back.  Last year in the United States just  24% of those who had Cardiac Arrest in a hospital survived the experience.  Outside the hospital the survival  rate was only 10%.  The numbers prove how ignorant and helpless we are when it comes to emergencies at home.  Most of us would gladly empty out the freezer and perform CPR if we even knew how important it was in a possible revival of a loved one.  Instead most family members would consider us hysterical, tell us they are dead, go find a bed sheet to put over their face.

One of the reasons why the death rate is still so high is because sometimes emergency workers quit performing CPR too soon.  It is harder than some of the most grueling workouts in a gym.  You have to press  both arms  down on the chest in a rhythm continuously for an hour.  No one person has the ability to be able to do that.  You would need lots of people to take turns every 10 minutes.  Many times after only 10 minutes you are officially declared dead and the organ donor lineup to take your bits and pieces.  Compression machines are available and can carry on for an extended time because longer is often better.  You still do not see  machines in  hospitals pressing down on dead bodies with the hope of reviving the people.

A lot of doctors will stop compressions after  20 minutes but we now know through  research that at least 40 minutes to an hour of compressions will increase the chances of bringing that body back to life.  Knowledge is power and knowing these techniques is powerful enough to possibly bring someone back to life.