# Can't sleep... must know... **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 2, 2016, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-sleep-must-know/747712 "2016-03-02T05:04:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![blankityblankingblank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@blankityblankingblank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blankityblankingblank)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-sleep-must-know/747712/1 "2016-03-02T05:04:40Z")
I’m new here. … hi everyone! So I’m laying here trying to go to sleep and, as is usual for me, my brain is running rampant. I need to know if anyone knows if during a near-death experience, a person evacuates their bowels. I know this is strange and gross and ridiculous. … the thought process that led me here was much more of all these things. But now I must know. After extensive searches on the Internet, I can find no mention and that is crazy to me. Shouldn’t someone out there be proclaiming that their experience is totally legit because they were so dead that they shat their pants? ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-sleep-must-know/747712/2 "2016-03-02T05:19:26Z")
It’s not even universal that a person with a _full_-death experience evacuates their bowels. It happens sometimes, as everything relaxes, but if you weren’t pretty close to having a bowel movement before you died, there’s not usually enough in the rectum to come out when the anal sphincters relax. (All bets are off once the intestine starts to fill with gasses as you begin to decompose…but that’s well after death.) Of course, it’s possible to become incontinent of stool due to extreme fear, so I’m not going to say it would never happen, either. Sweet dreams! ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-sleep-must-know/747712/3 "2016-03-02T05:26:56Z")
I looked this up long ago but for death row convicts on execution day, not NDE. Online sources say anxiety rarely causes fecal incontinence (it’s usually the other way round.) Bladder control is a different matter and anxious people can pee in their pants more easily. Fecal incontinence is above all a medical condition, and can be caused by different factors, like diarrhea and mental health. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-sleep-must-know/747712/4 "2016-03-02T05:28:02Z")
I’ve heard this “fact” mentioned before but I find it dubious for the reasons \*\*WhyNot \*\*mentioned: It’s not just enough for those muscles to “relax” for there to be a bowel movement, unless the dying person just so happened to be on the verge of a bowel movement and then suffered a sudden death (i.e., bullet to the head). Quite often, there has to be some actual pushing and force and exertion involved when a person is having a bowel movement. A dead person, by definition, can’t exert that sort of effort. So no, I would guess that most dying people do not crap their pants. **Edit** : Oh, sorry, you were referring to _near_-death experiences. Well then, who knows, but since the person is not dead, I would wonder, why would they have that crap-the-pants experience? Do the muscles have the same effect? ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-sleep-must-know/747712/5 "2016-03-02T10:03:59Z")
> [@blankityblankingblank](#): > > So I’m laying here . . . In a thread about people “fowling” themselves. Oh, and welcome to the Dope! ---
**Author:** ![blankityblankingblank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@blankityblankingblank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blankityblankingblank)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-sleep-must-know/747712/6 "2016-03-02T16:13:34Z")
Thanks everyone for the entertaining and (mostly) helpful answers. Not sure I believe in NDE and I’ll admit I failed high school biology so I really don’t know at what point a dead body releases the… goods. But honestly, if NDE is real, and that occurrence happens at the moment of death, one might think that detail would lend an amount of validity to the claims. Then again… it was a thought that popped into my head after 2 benadryl, 2 aleve pm, and a shot of schnapps in a desperate attempt to actually sleep while my brain warred against me. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-sleep-must-know/747712/7 "2016-03-02T18:46:40Z")
Sadly, that fact is rarely addressed in high school biology anyway. But yeah, fouling in death happens much more in fiction than in real life (and likely a substantial number of real life cases involve people who were already incontinent because of whatever they’ve just died from). ---
**Author:** ![blankityblankingblank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@blankityblankingblank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blankityblankingblank)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-sleep-must-know/747712/8 "2016-03-02T18:59:19Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Oh, sorry, you were referring to _near_-death experiences. Well then, who knows, but since the person is not dead, I would wonder, why would they have that crap-the-pants experience? Do the muscles have the same effect? I thought NDE tales involved the person _actually_ dying, experiencing some bright light and whatnot, then miraculously being brought back from the dead. I realize there are science-y type websites out there claiming this is false, but I’m curious about the gory details. I’m talking about more than a brush with death… I’m referring to the (possible whack-a-doos?) people who claim they were actually dead and now they are not. ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2016, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-sleep-must-know/747712/9 "2016-03-02T19:31:17Z")
There are experiences that the medical types call NDE - the heart, lungs, etc are weak to the point of collaspe. Then there are those who loudly proclaim “I was almost to the _other side_[sup]tm[/sup] but _came back_!”. The second group appear to be little different than the “Aliens abducted me and put a probe _up my ass_!” Try not to confuse the two.