Separation of Mind and Brain
What Happens When We Die?
Is the mind an extension of the brain or its own entity?
The relationship of the mind to the body has been a debate that’s raged on for centuries. Dr. Sam Parnia, critical care doctor, director of the Human Consciousness Project and author of “What Happens When We Die,” seeks to settle this debate through AWARE (AWAreness during Resuscitation), a division of the Human Consciousness Project. Find out what Parnia had to say when AOL Health sat down with him for an interview.
Longevity Secrets
by Vicki Salemi
Ah, the fountain of youth. When it comes to aging gracefully, let's face it -- we want it all. We want to feel good, look good and, most of all, live a long, healthy life. Here are twenty ways to get your game on and hopefully live to 100 and beyond!
Get Married
Exchanging vows comes with its own medical perks. A study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health showed the death rate for people who were unmarried was significantly higher compared to people who were married and living with their spouses. While the results were significant among the various unmarried subcategories such as divorced, separated, or widowed populations, it was significantly stronger for people who had never been married.
Laugh out Loud
Experts say that laughter is the best medicine. After all, it increases your immune system response, lowers blood sugar levels in diabetics, increases oxygen flow throughout your entire body and helps induce a state of relaxation promoting better sleep. The positive health effects are no laughing matter: according to the University of Maryland Medical Center, average blood flow typically increases 22 percent during and after bursts of laughter compared to a decrease in blood flow by 35 percent during mental stress.
Buy a Pet
Having a dog or cat in the house works wonders by reducing stress, lowering cholesterol and decreasing blood pressure, while increasing physical activity. For example, pet ownership has increased the percentage of people who survived one year after being hospitalized for heart problems. Only six percent of non-pet owners survived whereas 28 percent of pet owners survived. Plus, sharing affection and companionship toward a pet may simply make people smile.
Quit Smoking
Let's face it: smoking is bad for you. Really bad. Need proof? Based on data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, adult male smokers lost approximately 13.2 years of their lives and female smokers lost 14.5 years of their lives because of smoking. Plus, chronic diseases caused by smoking tended to curtail the quality of life of smokers while they were still alive.
Exercise More
Exercise is all around good -- giving you the positive effects of increased endorphins and a reduced waistline. It makes your heart stronger by pumping more blood with less effort, lowers cholesterol and blood pressure, prevents and controls diabetes, strengthens bones and muscles and controls weight. Convinced yet? A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine showed that participants who had moderate to high exercise routines lived 1.3 to 3.7 years longer than their couch potato counterparts.
Give Your Brain a Workout
Having a good workout isn't only limited to your body. Playing chess, reading newspapers, attending plays or finishing a crossword puzzle all have positive health results, experts say. Brain fitness is paramount to maintaining your cognitive abilities. According to one study by Neurology Online, people who mentally exercised their brains had a reduced risk of mild cognitive impairment and a risk of Alzheimer's that was 2.6 times less than people who did not stimulate their mind.
Limit Sun Exposure
Wearing sunscreen, limiting your exposure to the sun during peak hours and wearing sunglasses are some ways to prevent skin damage and cancer. Considering skin cancer is the most common of cancer types -- more than one million cases are diagnosed each year in the U.S. -- prevention and early detection are key to prolonging your life.
Visit the Doctor Regularly
This one's a no brainer: seeing a general physician on an annual basis can significantly lengthen your life by catching ailments before they start or treating emerging ones. An annual exam should include a blood pressure check, cholesterol and sugar level screening, bone density test, and examination of the ears, nose, throat and reflexes. For instance, if high blood pressure is not found and treated, significant health problems such as heart disease, stroke, kidney failure or eye problems may result.
Eat Fish
Eating up to two portions of fish on a weekly basis is beneficial, reported the Harvard School of Public Health. In fact, eating fish could possibly cut the risk of death by heart disease by one-third. Here's why: omega-3's fatty acids are healthy. They keep blood from clotting, lower the amount of fats in the bloodstream and reduce the risk of obesity. Plus, they provide a lot of nutrients like selenium, antioxidants and protein. However, pregnant women and children need to limit their intake of high-mercury fish like swordfish, king mackerel and others.
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How long have you been interested in the dichotomy of the mind and brain?
I first got interested in it when I was a medical student fifteen years ago. When you’re dealing with life and death issues on the wards, doctor’s decisions [on whether to resuscitate a patient] are based on subjective opinions, and there’s a lot of a gray area. I was taken aback by that because there’s no real science about when you get to that real point.
At the end of my training as a medical student, there were a number of patients who had gone into cardiac arrest and died. There was one case in particular, a patient that I got to know personally. I left him one day when he appeared to be well and 30 minutes later, there was a cardiac arrest call. Unfortunately, it was him, and the doctors were working to bring him back.
I remember seeing him in a flat lined state, thinking to myself, “What’s happening to his mind and consciousness? Can he hear us or see us?” I had heard of people who had near death experiences, but there was no scientific answer. That was the defining moment.
Even as a medical student, I was interested in understanding what is the mind and its relationship with the brain. Why are we unique as individuals with personalities, feelings, emotions? I used to believe it was all cut and dry until I started to look into it in more detail. It’s the last completely undiscovered area of science.
What do you hope to achieve through this research? Medical advancement? A better understanding of death?
What we do in medicine benefits in society. If you suddenly discovered a cure for cancer, it’s a medical advancement but ultimately a social advancement. This is a medically-driven study that will benefit all of society. It’s important because we know very little about the mind and brain. In most circumstances, we can’t separate them. Only in clinical death and cardiac arrest, the mind and brain may be separated from each other. If they can be separated, then there are further implications in neuroscience.
A lot of what we do is to study what happens to the brain and the way we can improve resuscitation during cardiac arrest and improve the way we manage patients whose heart has stopped. If we do manage to get patients back to life, there could be less incidents of neurological deficits, cognitive impairments, abnormalities.
It’s really a spectrum. One is pure cardiac and the other is neuroscience. Over all it should benefit everyone.
Next: Verifying Near-Death Experiences
