By Lynn C. Allison From Newsmax

(Dreamstime)

Can we come back from the dead? It depends, says a leading expert.  Dr. Sam Parnia’s blockbuster book Lucid Dying chronicles decades of research that has led him and other experts to believe that our current methods of reviving those considered clinically dead are antiquated.

“Although for decades scientists believed the brain dies within 10 minutes of oxygen deprivation, recent scientific advances have proven this incorrect,” Parnia tells Newsmax. “Instead, after death, the oxygen-deprived brain and body go through a hibernation-like state for many hours longer. This means that for people who are otherwise healthy, such as those who are victims of accidents, shootings, or sudden cardiac arrests, death should be understood as a medically treatable event ─ like a stroke — for many hours after it has taken place.”

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Parnia, associate professor of medicine at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, has been studying end-of-life phenomena for over 30 years and reveals his eye-opening research in his new book.

He questions when life ends, and when death begins, adding that while we’ve made major breakthroughs in the fields of treatment for cancer, cardiovascular disease and other ailments, our progress in treating death has been stagnant.

“What we believe about death is fundamentally wrong,” says Parnia. It is not the end, he says, but a “reversible state.”

According to Yahoo.com, Parnia says that seeing a flatline on an electrocardiogram (EKG) ─ a measure of the electrical impulses of the heart ─ is not necessarily a death sentence.  Recent evidence backs this up.

Researchers at Yale University successfully revived decapitated pig brains up to 14 hours post-mortem in 2019. In 2022, Yale scientists showed how a modified heart and lung machine combined with drugs restored organs in pigs. “It is just a matter of time,” suggests Parnia, that these results can be translated to humans.

There are also stories about how people have been revived after their hearts stopped for hours because they were in freezing temperatures that somehow preserved the organ. Thanks to a machine called an ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation), which serves as an artificial heart and lung, these patients survived.  Parnia says that cooling the body is highly protective.

In a study published last year, researchers found that in patients who survived cardiac arrest, nearly 40% had brain activity that returned to normal, or nearly normal, even an hour into CPR. An electroencephalogram (EEG) captured the brain activity with electrodes, according to NYU Langone Health. These patients later had clear memories of experiencing death and while unconscious, had brain patterns linked to thought and memory.

“This is the first large study to show that these recollections and brain wave changes may be signs of universal, shared elements of so-called near-death experiences,” said Parnia, who was senior author of that study.

The expert says that we need to revise our thinking and methods of reviving patients. CPR, introduced in 1959, has a paltry 10% success rate and many hospitals now have ECMO machines that are far superior. He acknowledges that not every patient can be brought back from the dead. People with multiple organ failure are unlikely candidates. But others, like himself at age 52, do not have to stay dead.

“I tell everyone, look, I’m going to have a cardiac arrest soon. And I am appalled at the treatment I’m going to get. If I have a heart attack tomorrow, why should I stay dead? That’s not necessary anymore. I have little doubt that, in the future, people who would be declared dead today will routinely be brought back to life.”

Lynn C. Allison 

Lynn C. Allison, a Newsmax health reporter, is an award-winning medical journalist and author of more than 30 self-help books.

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