Hospice nurse shares brutal reality of what happens to human body for up to three weeks after death
An end of life nurse has shared the six brutal things that will happen to the human body up to three weeks after death.
Hospice worker Julie McFadden, from California, US, wants to make patients feel as comfortable as possible in their final moments.
Taking to her YouTube channel (Hospice Nurse Julie), the 41-year-old aims to remove the stigma surrounding death because, after all, it will happen to all of us.
Sorry for that depressing reminder, but we move.
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In a video from three months ago, the healthcare professional explained what would happen in the moments after someone dies.
The body 'relaxes' after death
Julie revealed that the body relaxes just moments after death, calling it a 'messy' process.
"So what happens immediately to your body after it dies? It relaxes, like I've been saying," she said.
"Hence why people urinate, have bowel movements, sometimes have fluid come up their nose or out of their eyes or nose, ear.
"I mean, all of the things in your body that are holding fluids in relax. That's why death can be messy."
Body temperature drops
"The second thing that happens, and you probably have noticed this, the body temperature drops," she said.
"Now I have noticed, personally, just through seeing a lot of dead bodies, that people's bodies are different. Some people start getting cooler immediately.
"Some people take a while, maybe an hour, maybe an hour and a half. It just depends, but their body temperature will drop.
"Technically speaking, the body temperature should drop about one and a half degrees Fahrenheit per hour to eventually match whatever the temperature is in the room that they're in."
Blood will pool downwards
Julie says that most people will not be aware that the blood in the body moves towards the ground when someone dies.
"So if they're at the house, the body will be laying there, and if you turn them, you will notice, usually the back of their legs, the whole back side of them, will look purple or darker," she said.
"That's because all their blood is pulling down. Gravity is pulling it down, so they will eventually get have, like, a darker colour tone of skin on their backside."
Stiffening of muscles after death
The stiffening of the muscles, otherwise known as the rigor mortis, is when the body's metabolism stops.
Nurse Julie said: "I have seen people become very stiff almost immediately - like a few minutes - after death and other people, their body takes longer."
Body will feel cool to the touch
Around 12 hours after death, the body will feel cool to the touch, she claims.
"It happens because your body's metabolism stops and it could no longer produce ATP, which is adenosine triphosphate, which is a mouthful for me to say, but it's the body's cellular energy," she added.
The putrefaction process
On the last stage, referred to as purification, Nurse Julie said: "This is the part when the body is literally decomposing and how we would die and how the body would die before we had things like mortuaries. So it is a very normal thing.
"However, we usually aren't exposed to it... but this is a natural part of the body decomposing."
Topics: Health
Anish Vij