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Death is something you and I can't escape. It's a necessity. We must all die. It's part of the characteristics of living organisms. But, have we ever wondered what happens to the human body when it dies?
Death is a disturbing reality for all of us, but very few people know what happens to the body once we pass away.
Take a look at 10 strange things that happen to your body after you take your final breath.
1. You Release Urine And Feces
All of your muscles relax after you die because they are no longer receiving instructions from your brain. As soon as your body expires, it releases urine and feces because the muscles holding those fluids back are no longer tense. You probably stink a little, and it’s a mess to clean up.
2. Your Skin Shrinks
Legend has it your hair and nails grow a bit after you die. That’s not really true because, in reality, it’s your skin shrinking. Your skin loses its moisture and its elasticity, so it shrivels up a bit. This effect makes it look like your fingernails, toenails and hair grew longer since you passed away. It’s not a magic trick, just an optical illusion.
3. You Get Really, Really Tense
Within minutes to a few hours after death, a condition known as rigor mortis sets in. This occurs when calcium builds up in your muscles and causes your limbs to go completely stiff. Your muscles start to degrade after a day or two, so then you become your bendable, pliable self again.
4. Red Splotches Appear
Red splotches appear on your skin, not from blood seeping to the surface but because gravity pulls your skin downward. Areas appear redder than normal because your skin becomes pale while blood maintains its color. At about the same time, your body starts to really smell because decaying flesh releases certain chemicals into your body.
5. You Might Moan And Groan
You still have air in your lungs, which means you might moan or groan after you’re dead. Minimally you could sigh or squeak.
No, that doesn’t mean you come back from the dead. This means someone handled your body in such a way that the air in your lungs escaped through your throat and into your vocal cords.
If someone rolls you over onto your side, air would bubble up from your lungs, into your throat, over your vocal cords, and through your mouth or nose. A mortician could freak people out doing that trick.
6. You Decay For Several Weeks
Bacteria, especially those that normally live in your gut and aid digestion, start to work on your body once they realize they are free to roam about your corpse. Maggots might take hold and consume around 60 percent of your body within a week. If you are in a sealed casket at 50 degrees Fahrenheit, scientists estimate it takes about four months for your flesh to rot away until you become a literal skeleton of your former self.
Don’t worry–you have nothing to fear. You don’t feel or see any of this happening because your brain dies shortly after your body. A study in 2017 reveals that a patient’s brain may emit brainwave activity for a few seconds up to 10 minutes after your body expires.
7. Your heart stops beating and blood pools.
The moment the heart stops beating is what doctors officially regard as the time of death. Once it stops, the rest of the body begins to die, albeit at different rates. With the heart no longer pumping, the first thing to happen in the process of death is that our blood stops flowing and pools wherever it is in our veins and arteries.
8. Our body changes colour
With our blood suddenly non-mobile, our bodies begin to change color. Part of our bodies change to purplish-red or bluish-purple because the blood settles, due to gravity, in the lowest part of our bodies. Other parts turn deathly pale, since the blood (reduced hemoglobin, to be exact) is less concentrated or more drained in those areas.
9. The immune system shuts down
Our bacteria-rich guts become a breeding ground for a massive explosion of bacteria. Once our immune system shuts off, our gut bacteria begins digesting our intestines before spreading to other organs.
10. Our eyes bulge and tongues swell
The gases produced in our intestine and from our decomposing organs also make our eyes bulge from their sockets and our tongues swell up and extend out of the mouth.
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