If you’ve spent any amount of time on the internet, you may be under the impression
that corpses can pass wind. And while that seems like something your 14-year-old nephew
might share for the shock value without verifying his sources, it’s actually true. The bacteria in
the intestinal tract responsible for flatulence don’t die off just because the body is no longer
in operation. And because our sphincters have relaxed post-mortem, morticians may sometimes have
to work with a literally farting corpse. Even just repositioning a body can force out trapped gas.
Autopsies: funnier than you’d think. But there are plenty of actual misconceptions
about death, unrelated to posthumous toots, that you have been misled about, and we’re
going to exhume them all today. It’s next on this edition of Misconceptions. Let’s get started.
Hi, I’m Justin Dodd, and like all of you, I’m here for a good time, not a long time.
One day, I will pass away, hopefully without a ton of regrets or a true crime podcast
focused on my mysterious final hours. Death is just one of those absolutes in life, like taxes.
Unless you’re a billionaire, in which case you’re probably doing everything you can to avoid both
of those nuisances. Everyone watching this will some day experience the inevitable transition
from being a functioning and binge-watching member of polite society to … well, whatever
comes next (which, as I’ve already mentioned, might include some posthumous flatulence.)
We’re here to dispel some misconceptions, but we can’t promise you’ll be reassured about anything.
In fact, you’ll probably be a little freaked out. Especially the cremation part. Fair warning.
It’s one of those often-repeated factoids that gets passed around. They—whoever
they are—say that your fingernails and even your hair continue to grow after your demise.
Nope. Sorry. You will not be needing a manicure during your dirt nap. While some argue that it’s
technically possible for nails and hair to grow a teeny, tiny bit after death because skin cells
don’t need as much oxygen as, say, your brain, you’re not going to sprout claws
or a Jason Momoa-esque mane. Nails need glucose to grow. Without that
glucose, you’re in no need of clippers. This myth is likely rooted in the fact that,
after death, the skin begins to tighten and shrink due to dehydration. That change can cause nails
to appear to grow. Facial stubble can also seem to stick out more, but it’s because the skin is
drying out, not because follicles are sprouting. But don’t worry. If your nails are looking a
little brittle or your beard is looking a little bristly,
a good funeral director will take care of that. I also want to mention a couple of cool nail
facts. Nails on your dominant hand tend to grow a little faster than on your non-dominant hand,
and toenails tend to grow more slowly overall. Huh. But again, this only applies to the living.
Hopefully when it’s your time to go, it won’t be due to a bear mauling, a murder hornet attack,
or anything that involves you seeing the inside of yourself before you expire. Some
people think the best way to kick it is to go in your sleep. It sounds really comforting,
actually. “He went peacefully in his sleep.” So relaxing. Like dying at a spa.
But while you can certainly depart the land of the living while sleeping, it’s not always peaceful.
Just because you hear about a person passing on while in bed doesn’t mean that’s exactly what
happened. If the cause of death was something the family of the deceased wishes to keep private,
“peacefully expiring” might be a euphemism for “choked to death practicing for a hot dog eating
contest.” In actual cases of nocturnal death without an external factor like carbon monoxide
poisoning, a person might have had heart or cardiovascular disease.
While a heart arrhythmia or brain aneurysm may prompt a fairly painless death while dozing, there
are other causes, and they’re a bit more grisly. It’s possible a person suffering from a heart
attack or other catastrophic body failure will wake up before dying, giving them
a few terrifying moments of clarity and physical discomfort before heading to parts unknown. Health
officials would likely have some idea whether a person experienced these unpeaceful moments:
sheets may be folded up around the deceased or otherwise disturbed, indicating distress.
That’s not to say a tranquil passing is always an illusion. If the person looks peaceful,
they very well could have died peacefully. But don’t count on it happening to you. Sorry.
We’ve all been there—hanging out with the guys,
wandering aimlessly around town, stumbling across a bloated corpse while Richard Dreyfuss
narrates our story. As you’re standing around the unidentified corpse, as one does, you might stop
to consider whether being close to a dead body could be harmful. What if they carry diseases?
Fleas? Fungus? Some people believe just being near a body is an automatic cause for antibiotics.
Not true. The International Committee of the Red Cross has said that dead bodies are,
quote, a “negligible health risk.” That doesn’t mean zero—it’s theoretically possible for someone
like an aid worker who is directly moving or otherwise handling the body to contract
hepatitis or tuberculosis if they’re not taking precautions, but only for a few days after the
body expires, at most. Any longer and you’re not likely to contract anything. That’s true
even if the body carries a rather pungent odor, as dead bodies tend to do. I’m told.
The World Health Organization concurs, saying that bodies “…only pose a substantial risk
to health in a few special cases, such as deaths from cholera or haemorrhagic fevers.”
And the safety experts at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA,
also have an opinion, saying that: “There is no direct risk of contagion or
infectious disease from being near human remains for those who are not directly
involved in recovery or other efforts that require handling the remains…Viruses
associated with human remains (e.g., hepatitis B and C, HIV, various bacteria, etc.) do not pose
a risk to someone walking nearby, nor do they cause significant environmental contamination.”
So, walking by or possibly poking a dead body—no issue. Well, no medical issue. What
are you doing with that stick? Cut that out. Handling a dead body? No issue if you do it
carefully. What you really want to avoid is leaving a dead body near a source of drinking
water, as leaking feces can contaminate the supply and potentially sicken people.
According to OSHA, the biggest concern when handling a dead body
may actually be injuring your back: “Having more than one person involved
in lifting the human remains will help to reduce the potential for injury. Following
appropriate lifting techniques will also help to protect people,
as will the use of mechanical lifts or other devices when available.”
I can’t tell you the number of mob guys I know who have messed up their back lifting
improperly. Remember—lift with your legs.
Cremation is an appealing option for those who are afraid of feeling claustrophobic for all of
eternity. If you’re like me, you assumed that the process involved placing the body into a furnace
and heating it up until it’s a pile of powdery soot. Let’s just say it’s a good thing you’re dead
when you’re cremated, because the reality involves a bit more smashing than you might prefer.
Cremation leaves residual bone fragments that need to be mechanically
pulverized. Before that step, the remains look less like powder and more like gravel.
And because we know you’re wondering—no, it’s not recommended that anyone with a medical device or
implants be cremated without the foreign objects being removed prior to the cremation.
Something like breast implants might even cause environmental harm when burned.
Saying goodbye to the dearly departed can
sometimes mean saying goodbye to your vacation fund. According to the party animals at the
National Funeral Directors Association, the average cost of a farewell ceremony
is over $7000. But celebrating a life doesn’t have to mean taking out a small loan.
Cremating a body is significantly less expensive than embalming and burying one,
and it saves you big money on caskets, which average around $2400 and can go for up to $10,000.
Why pay used car prices for a metal box that can’t even go anywhere?
And while you can opt for a big and potentially expensive bash at a funeral home, some states
allow you to transport the body and obtain a death certificate yourself. Instead of using the funeral
home’s facilities, you can opt for visitation or a viewing at a private residence or possibly
even a place of worship—though I do recommend getting permission from the venue in advance.
Some people even decide to make a loved one’s departure a festive event by holding a barbeque,
though we wouldn’t recommend trying to save any money on cremation in the process.
Bottom line? You can honor the recently-passed without plunging into debt. You just need some
creative thinking—and possibly a midsized sedan.
When we think of hospice care, we generally associate it with end-of-life arrangements
and making someone who will never rebound comfortable before they pass.
Some people like to use the term palliative care to lessen the stress associated with the term.
But hospice is not always synonymous with the end of life. Patients are candidates for hospice when
their illness is incurable, not necessarily imminently fatal. And while some hospice
programs may require a diagnosis expecting the patient to not live beyond six months,
that doesn’t always mean they won’t. In fact, thanks to specialized care, hospice patients may
wind up living longer than if they were receiving other kinds of care. It’s actually even possible
to flunk out of hospice because a physician no longer believes a person’s chance of dying
is sufficiently high enough to keep them there. Now, I’m not telling you hospice is a promising
development. In many cases, it’s not. But it’s not a guaranteed one-way trip, either.
Even when you imagine the worst about hospice, consider this. This specialized care—which can
be administered at home, not just at treatment centers—also places a focus on supporting loved
ones and offering tools to help them cope with end-of-life issues. It’s as much for the living
as the possibly-soon-to-be departed. But I also need to tell you that decisions about hospice
or any other kind of medical care should be made by you in concert with medical professionals—not
someone on YouTube, even if their content is highly engaging educational content delivered
with signature irreverence. I’d run the whole funeral-at-home idea by someone,
too, while you’re at it. Misconception: 35-Year-Olds
There is no question that advances in medicine
have saved people from diseases and other ailments that would have wrecked them centuries ago. But
we might get a little cocky, at times, about how smart we modern humans are. Sometimes we chuckle
about those poor people in the Middle Ages whose “average life span” topped out in the thirties.
Forty? You were practically Bob Barker. But here’s the secret behind those short life
expectancies of the olden days: They were based on averages and skewed by tragedy. According to a
2018 BBC article by Amanda Ruggeri, our concept of “average life expectancies” in the past is colored
by high childhood mortality rates. Imagine you had two siblings: one died as a 1-year-old and one
at the age of 70. You’d get an average sibling life expectancy of 35. When you
hit your 34th birthday, though, you probably wouldn’t feel like you were on death’s door.
If you apply the same averaging method to a larger population and get the same mean age of death,
it doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone in that population was dropping dead at 35.
A 1994 study of ancient Greek and Roman men found that people mentioned in the Oxford Classical
Dictionary who were born before 100 BCE lived to a median age of 72 years. That’s not far off from
the 75 years of modern American males. Another study of people born between 475 and 625
CE—specifically, their teeth—found that it wasn’t unusual to live into one’s seventies. The human
body has long been capable of aging normally. The problem was all the battles and terrible
medical care, not premature “old age.” There are some notable asterisks to this.
In the past, poorer people tended to have legitimately shorter life spans due to
wear and tear, thanks to hard labor. So did women, who faced untreatable pregnancy complications that
men didn’t have to deal with. But in terms of the aging process itself—with all things being equal,
bodies of old-timey people held up relatively well. As Ruggeri says, “Particularly if you
were an infant, a woman of childbearing years or a hard labourer, you’d be far better off choosing
to live in year 2018 than 18. But that still doesn’t mean our life span is actually getting
significantly longer as a species.”
Of all the misunderstandings
surrounding death, there’s one that stands out as the most mysterious:
that a human body will lose a precise amount of weight at the exact moment of expiration—a
total of 21 grams. Some people believe it’s the weight of the soul leaving its physical host
to go on to live an ethereal existence elsewhere. The idea came from a doctor named Duncan
MacDougall. In the early 20th century he convinced six terminally ill patients,
four of whom were suffering from tuberculosis, to rest—and eventually expire—on
a bed that was arranged on some scales. He measured weight loss in the time leading
up to death and then looked for a dramatic jump in weight loss at the moment of death.
But of the six patients, only the first one lost 21 grams. Well, actually three-fourths of an
ounce because MacDougall didn’t use the metric system. Without getting totally bogged down in
the details, suffice to say that there’s evidence that it was more like 24 grams than 21 grams.
So what of the other five subjects? According to MacDougall’s report, one wasn’t useful because
“the scales were not finely adjusted and there was a good deal of interference by people opposed to
our work.” Another died before the beam could be adjusted, so their data was also of no
use. The others lost varying amounts of weight. The findings caused quite a stir, with scientists
arguing that things like sweat, bodily fluids, and other excretions made precise measurements of
the body after death difficult if not impossible. But MacDougall swore he accounted for variables.
Today it’s universally agreed that the sample size was too small and the results
WAY too inconsistent to draw any conclusions. Critics have offered up a number of possible
explanations for MacDougall’s results, from faulty measurements to outright fraud.
For his part, MacDougall did caution against making too much of his supposed results, writing
“I am aware that a large number of experiments would require to be made before the matter can
be proven beyond any possibility of error, but if further and sufficient experimentation proves that
there is a loss of substance occurring at death and not accounted for by known channels of loss,
the establishment of such a truth can not fail to be of the utmost importance.”
To date, no such proof has been found. I guess the weight of a soul departing the
body is still yet to be determined. Thanks for watching Misconceptions.
If you’d like us to cover a topic in a future installment of Misconceptions,
let us know in the comments. And don’t put it off. You never know when it might be your time.