When you die, how long does it take all the cells in your body to die? How many must already be dead for you to die?
Thanks,
Rob
When you die, how long does it take all the cells in your body to die? How many must already be dead for you to die?
Thanks,
Rob
Nobody knows?
tough thing to measure, yeah? I’m not sure what the time limit on transplanting certain tissues like skin, bone and lymph nodes, but it’s awhile.
minimum # of cells for death? Outside the hospital a well placed handful in the brainstem or cardiac conduction pathway will kill you, but a huge # braincells have to die to be pronounced dead inside the hospital
The process of “cell death” begins when the rate of catabolism (metabolic processes that break down molecules) outstrips anabolism (metabolic processes that construct them). There is no simple answer to your question, as different types of tissue break down faster than others and have different resiliencies and rates of recovery. Some organ tissues like muscle and connective tissues (including blood) can survive for scores of hours or even days if chilled to near-freezing temperatures (hence, organ and blood donation); others, like nervous tissue, can survive only spare minutes without a regular oxygen and carbohydrate supply before they suffer irreparable damage.
Death is actually kind of a nebulous concept; when you get down to the cellular level, you realize that individual cells are actually alive on their own, functioning as a cooperative, interrelated colony, and could be removed and sustained indefinitely if the appropriate conditions and nutrients were provided; indeed, with simple organism, this is exactly how they reproduce, while the extracellular structure of more complex animals have such fundamentally interconnected relationships that separation or interruption of outside processes leads to impared functioning and breakdown. From a legal (in most developed nations) and medical standpoint, death is presumed to have occured once the electrical activity in the brainstem has dropped below a measurable threshold, even though the body’s metabolic processes may continue to function for hours longer.
Non-programmed “death” of non-nervous tissue, i.e. necrosis is a progressive problem, the result of trauma, infection, cancer, or destructive malfunction of the body’s immune system. Body death usually doesn’t occur from the immediate destruction of tissue itself, but from blood toxicity (e.g. gas gangrene) and immune response due to bacterial build-up in the necrotic tissue (septicaemia), with resultant systemic failures.
Sorry, I know you intended to ask very simple questions, but there is no simple answer.
Stranger