Life after Death and its stress theory

[Anonymous]

NEW YORK – Ms Carlene Huesgen says she is not afraid of death. Not since she felt herself slip from her body, float to a hospital ceiling and move towards a bright light three decades ago.

‘I feel assured that there is life after death,’ said Ms Huesgen, 61, adding that ‘there really isn’t such a thing as dying’.

To some people, near-death experiences, reported by millions in recent years, are windows to a world beyond. To others, they are simply comforting delusions.

Scientists have tended to fall into the latter group. But in several small studies, researchers are finding that the elaborate accounts of mysterious tunnels, flooded with bright golden light, may be a healthy coping mechanism that protects against traumatic stress.

People who have had such experiences, one study shows, are far better at handling stress than researchers had expected. And scientists have uncovered neurological and biological differences that may lie at the core of the coping mechanisms.

‘We found that people who have these experiences are just the opposite of what people think,’ said Mr Willoughby Britton, a doctoral student at the University of Arizona who is the lead author of a study in this month’s issue of the journal Psychological Science.

‘They aren’t more likely to run away from stress.’

Almost everyone, at some point in life, experiences a moment of fear and anxiety after a catastrophe. For some people like those with post-traumatic stress disorder, the effects can linger for years, returning as flashbacks, nightmares or emotional numbness.

But people who report having had out-of-body experiences like Ms Huesgen, who suffered a near-fatal reaction to an influenza shot 34 years ago, exhibit the reverse. Their lives are changed.

They switch careers and adopt new values. Many fears they had are erased.

Mr Britton and a colleague, intrigued by the lack of scientific information on the subject, compared a group of people who reported near-death experiences, including Ms Huesgen, with a group that had not.

The scientists assumed that the near-death group would show patterns of brain activity similar to those seen in temporal lobe epileptics, who often describe undergoing spiritual out-of-body events during seizures. The abnormal activity, however, did not spring up in the right temporal lobe, as is sometimes the case with epilepsy. Instead, the activity appeared almost exclusively in the left temporal lobe.

Unexpectedly, the researchers also found that the participants, like many people who suffer from depression, had abnormal sleep patterns. But unlike people with depression, who move unusually quickly into the rapid eye movement, or REM, phase of sleep, the subjects who reported near-death experiences took an unusually long time to move into REM.

‘This is the first study to show these kinds of neurological differences in people who have near-death experiences,’ Mr Britton said. Psychological tests showed that the participants’ physiological differences were associated with what the researchers called active coping, a tendency to ‘take the bull by the horns’ in stressful situations.

Dr Bruce Greyson, a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia, has noticed a similar trend in his research. In two studies of hundreds of people who reported near-death experiences, he found that they showed surprisingly few signs of shutting out reality, a behaviour that is known as dissociation.

Though they had slightly more dissociative symptoms – daydreaming, for example, or forgetting to eat lunch while reading a book – than other people, their responses were still far from pathological.

‘They were still within the normal range,’ Dr Greyson said. ‘In fact, people who have near-death experiences tend to be a little healthier than others. They seem to have positive coping skills.’

Between 9 and 18 per cent of people who had almost died, Dr Greyson said, later reported having had near-death experiences.

As medical techniques to save patients become increasingly sophisticated, that number is likely to grow.

Most doctors have dismissed such events as hallucinations caused by medication. Other experts suggest that the illusions are caused by oxygen deprivation or the last-minute firing of neurons in the visual cortex.

But Dr Greyson theorises that the experience may be a protective mechanism that insulates some people against developing post-traumatic stress disorder.

Certain personality traits, he said, may make some people more likely to have near-death experiences, while others are predisposed to developing severe psychiatric illnesses.

Original headline: Coping with stress: There may be a link to near-death experiences

.:Story originally published by:.
The New York Times via The Straits Times / Singapore – Apr 14.04

[Anonymous]

Just want to share my 2 cents worth. I believe there are such cases whereby a person have visions of life after death. It happened to my friend’s father who is suffering from cancer and he had a peek of what is hell and how it feels like. He can even describe that it’s “very cold, dark & lonely…”

His father did lots of bad things before and smokes and take drugs… after those visions he had, he consulted my friend and my friend asked a pastor to pray for his soul to be saved. Being on his death bed and shaken by the visions of hell he had, he repent and receive Christ. A few days later, he passed away.

Lucky for the messenger of death… such a blessing in disguise. My friend’s father is saved. To add on, doctors said that on that day which he had the near death experience, his heartbeat and blood pressure everything stopped and the doctors were about to pronounce him dead but his soul returned after minutes.

[Author]

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[Anonymous]

NEW YORK – Ms Carlene Huesgen says she is not afraid of death. Not since she felt herself slip from her body, float to a hospital ceiling and move towards a bright light three decades ago.

‘I feel assured that there is life after death,’ said Ms Huesgen, 61, adding that ‘there really isn’t such a thing as dying’.

To some people, near-death experiences, reported by millions in recent years, are windows to a world beyond. To others, they are simply comforting delusions.

Scientists have tended to fall into the latter group. But in several small studies, researchers are finding that the elaborate accounts of mysterious tunnels, flooded with bright golden light, may be a healthy coping mechanism that protects against traumatic stress.

People who have had such experiences, one study shows, are far better at handling stress than researchers had expected. And scientists have uncovered neurological and biological differences that may lie at the core of the coping mechanisms.

‘We found that people who have these experiences are just the opposite of what people think,’ said Mr Willoughby Britton, a doctoral student at the University of Arizona who is the lead author of a study in this month’s issue of the journal Psychological Science.

‘They aren’t more likely to run away from stress.’

Almost everyone, at some point in life, experiences a moment of fear and anxiety after a catastrophe. For some people like those with post-traumatic stress disorder, the effects can linger for years, returning as flashbacks, nightmares or emotional numbness.

But people who report having had out-of-body experiences like Ms Huesgen, who suffered a near-fatal reaction to an influenza shot 34 years ago, exhibit the reverse. Their lives are changed.

They switch careers and adopt new values. Many fears they had are erased.

Mr Britton and a colleague, intrigued by the lack of scientific information on the subject, compared a group of people who reported near-death experiences, including Ms Huesgen, with a group that had not.

The scientists assumed that the near-death group would show patterns of brain activity similar to those seen in temporal lobe epileptics, who often describe undergoing spiritual out-of-body events during seizures. The abnormal activity, however, did not spring up in the right temporal lobe, as is sometimes the case with epilepsy. Instead, the activity appeared almost exclusively in the left temporal lobe.

Unexpectedly, the researchers also found that the participants, like many people who suffer from depression, had abnormal sleep patterns. But unlike people with depression, who move unusually quickly into the rapid eye movement, or REM, phase of sleep, the subjects who reported near-death experiences took an unusually long time to move into REM.

‘This is the first study to show these kinds of neurological differences in people who have near-death experiences,’ Mr Britton said. Psychological tests showed that the participants’ physiological differences were associated with what the researchers called active coping, a tendency to ‘take the bull by the horns’ in stressful situations.

Dr Bruce Greyson, a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia, has noticed a similar trend in his research. In two studies of hundreds of people who reported near-death experiences, he found that they showed surprisingly few signs of shutting out reality, a behaviour that is known as dissociation.

Though they had slightly more dissociative symptoms – daydreaming, for example, or forgetting to eat lunch while reading a book – than other people, their responses were still far from pathological.

‘They were still within the normal range,’ Dr Greyson said. ‘In fact, people who have near-death experiences tend to be a little healthier than others. They seem to have positive coping skills.’

Between 9 and 18 per cent of people who had almost died, Dr Greyson said, later reported having had near-death experiences.

As medical techniques to save patients become increasingly sophisticated, that number is likely to grow.

Most doctors have dismissed such events as hallucinations caused by medication. Other experts suggest that the illusions are caused by oxygen deprivation or the last-minute firing of neurons in the visual cortex.

But Dr Greyson theorises that the experience may be a protective mechanism that insulates some people against developing post-traumatic stress disorder.

Certain personality traits, he said, may make some people more likely to have near-death experiences, while others are predisposed to developing severe psychiatric illnesses.

Original headline: Coping with stress: There may be a link to near-death experiences

.:Story originally published by:.
The New York Times via The Straits Times / Singapore – Apr 14.04

[Anonymous]

Just want to share my 2 cents worth. I believe there are such cases whereby a person have visions of life after death. It happened to my friend’s father who is suffering from cancer and he had a peek of what is hell and how it feels like. He can even describe that it’s “very cold, dark & lonely…”

His father did lots of bad things before and smokes and take drugs… after those visions he had, he consulted my friend and my friend asked a pastor to pray for his soul to be saved. Being on his death bed and shaken by the visions of hell he had, he repent and receive Christ. A few days later, he passed away.

Lucky for the messenger of death… such a blessing in disguise. My friend’s father is saved. To add on, doctors said that on that day which he had the near death experience, his heartbeat and blood pressure everything stopped and the doctors were about to pronounce him dead but his soul returned after minutes.

[Author]

Posts