What happens when you die? It's an age-old question I think about on an all-too-regular basis if I'm totally honest, and no one really knows the answer. Or do they?
Well, there are a few people out there who perhaps have a better understanding of the afterlife than most of us, because they've actually experienced it.
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You always hear those stories of people who've died on the operating table only to jolt back to life and describe strange visions they saw.
Tina Hines is one of those people.
She suffered a cardiac arrest back in February 2018, and despite the best efforts of her husband Brian to resuscitate her, she died.
En route to the hospital, Tina was revived six times by medics, effectively dying for 27 minutes in total.
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However, after being intubated at hospital, she eventually awoke, immediately asking for a pen and paper to write down an ominous message for her family.
In barely legible handwriting, Tina wrote the words 'it's real'. When she was asked what was real, she simply nodded upwards.
"It was so real, the colours were so vibrant," Tina told AZfamily.com
She said she saw a figure that she believed to be Jesus.
But experiences such as this aren't that rare.
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According to studies, while most people have no memory of the period during which they were technically dead, around 10 to 20 percent have some sort of visual or sensory episodes during the time.
And although they may seem mystical, scientists have been getting closer to finding out the truth of what happens during these near death experiences.
Researchers at University of Michigan conducted a study on some rats in 2013.
According to reports, a surge of activity in the brain just before death is higher than during the most waking, conscious state.
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The leader of the study, Dr Jimo Borjigin, of the University of Michigan, said: "A lot of people thought that the brain after clinical death was inactive or hypoactive, with less activity than the waking state, and we show that is definitely not the case.
"If anything, it is much more active during the dying process than even the waking state."
The nine rats were monitored while they were dying, and in the 30-second period after the animal's hearts stopped beating, a sharp increase in high-frequency brainwaves was measured.
Could Tina's experience have just been the result of a surge in high-frequency brain waves? We'll likely never know.
Topics: Health
Dominic Smithers