Friday, October 21, 2016

Your Heart Stops Beating...

I am a member of a Speakers' League and this was my speech this week:
I wore a lab coat and used lots of cool images with my speech.



Your heart stops beating.

Your body cools down from 98.6  to  room temperature.  

This is called algor mortis. 

In Latin, “algor” means coldness  and   “mortis”  means  of death.  So, Algor Mortis  is known as “THE DEATH CHILL”.

The next stage is Rigor Mortis.   Because your heart is no longer moving your blood through your body, your blood changes from liquid to semi-solid.  This is called coagulation.

Your  blood has thickened in your veins, arteries and capillaries.  So, your whole body stiffens.  That is why dead bodies are nicknamed  “STIFFS”.  

Your will experience rigor mortis, 2 to 6 hours after you die.

Gravity causes your blood to drain to the lowest part of your body. Since you died here, in this room, sitting up, your legs and feet and hips are the lowest parts of your body.  The blood in your torso drains and settles around your hips.  And, the blood in your legs drains to your feet.

Your hips, legs and feet will turn blueish purple. This stage is called  “Liver Mortis”.  In Latin, Liver Mortis means blueish color.  

Lividity is observed 2 to 4 hours after death.

Next, your body  PUTREFIES.

Your stomach turns green.

Bacteria in your digestive tract eat the protein that make up your body.

The bacteria releases gases, which smell similar to rotten eggs. The gas builds inside you causing you to expand like a balloon.

This causes your eyes to bulge out of their sockets.

And your tongue is forced out of your mouth.
A week passes.

Your skin blisters so much that if someone touches you -- Your skin falls off.
A month later, your hair falls out.

Your nails fall out.
Your organs liquefy.

The bacteria inside you continue to feast. They excrete more and more gas until 
-         POP!  -   You burst open.

The rotting gases in King Henry the VIII’s  gut caused his coffin to burst open. 

In a coffin birth, built-up gas pressure within the putrefied body of a dead pregnant woman can force the dead fetus to burst from the body of the mother.

Instead of letting your body decompose until bacteria feed on your rotting corpse, leaving nothing behind but your skeleton, maybe you want to donate your organs to people who need them.

You can donate tissues such as your corneas, skin, bone marrow, and even heart valves even 15 hours after your last breath.
 
Or maybe you want to donate your body to science? 
 
The best way for a doctor to learn is by using a real body, also known as a CADAVER.

Leonardo da Vinci dissected dead bodies stolen from freshly dug graves. 
 
He would draw what he saw. He identified not only muscles and bones, but also their functions in the body.

Today, doctors can use your body to learn how to perform surgeries.

Different parts of your body will be sent to different doctors.

While your headless body might be in one room with a doctor learning how to crack open a rib cage to perform heart surgery.  Your head might be in another room with a plastic surgeon.  Maybe you’re getting a face lift or a nose job.

Another way scientists’ can use your body is at a body farm.

At the University of Tennessee Medical Center, scientists study how bodies decay.
They do this to help the science of  Forensics.

If a dead body is found, police are called to the crime scene.

FORENSICS  experts examine the body to discover how the person died.  The University of Tennessee’s body farm puts different cadavers in different situations.
For example, they put Body #1 in the Sun, they bury Body  # 2  in a pond and they put Body #3 in a plastic bag.

The bodies all decay differently and these experiments help solve crimes.

A man who claimed his wife died of an epileptic seizure was arrested for her murder when Forensic scientists determined she actually died of hypothermia.
He had trapped her in freezing cold water knowing that an epileptic seizure creates the same effect as shivering in icy water.

Your brain and heart need a constant core temperature to function. 

As the brain detects a fall in blood temperature, it automatically protects itself by shutting down the blood supply to the hands and feet.

You lose feeling. 

If you keep losing heat, the brain shuts down blood circulation over a larger and larger area of your skin.  

Your brain has now shut down circulation to your hands and feet, your skin, and then organ by organ until your brain must choose between blood for itself and blood for the heart.


Your heart stops beating. 

3 comments:

  1. Noor - I got your photos and the speech looks amazing! Congratulations on a great job.

    Das

    ReplyDelete
  2. I wish I could have seen you perform it in your lab coat. :)

    ReplyDelete