Why do some people straighten up when they die, but bend their hands and feet in a weird posture when drowning?
How did the dead body happen?
Within tens of minutes after death, the muscles are no longer innervated and become very soft due to relaxation. For example, the bladder sphincter and anal sphincter will also relax. Therefore, urinary incontinence or fecal incontinence will occur after death, as well as coma patients. A similar situation occurred.
If it is a corpse, this time of limpness will not last long. Generally, after tens of minutes to a few hours, corpse stiffness will appear slowly (the corpse stiffness will appear earlier after vigorous exercise before death). The muscles of the body are stiff, and the joints are gradually fixed. It usually occurs within 1 to 3 hours after death, develops to the whole body after 4 to 6 hours, and reaches the highest peak in 12 to 15 hours. At this time, use the corpse as mentioned above. The stool won’t bend when it stands up.
The Physiological and Chemical Process of Necrosis
In the muscles of living organisms, ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate), which provides energy, prevents the combination of myosin and actin in muscle fibers to form actomyosin, but after death, the body is oxidized The phosphorylation process gradually stops, no longer synthesizes ATP, the residual ATP in the muscle decreases, the calcium ion-ATPase pump on the cell membrane is turned on, the intracellular calcium ion concentration rises, and the muscle fiber condenses into actomyosin, causing the muscle to lose elasticity and contracture.
This is the physiochemical process of zombies, but this process will not last too long, because it will soften again later, but it is not resurrection from the dead, but autolysis occurs:
After death, the cells have lost their normal functions, and the lysosomes in the cytoplasm are broken, releasing various hydrolytic enzymes, such as tissue proteolytic enzymes, etc., so that the proteins and nucleic acids of their own tissues, such as high molecular compounds and sugars, are released. Complexes such as protein and glycolipids are gradually degraded, and the morphology of tissue cells is destroyed until they are completely dissolved and liquefied
The first organs that autolysis occur are the pancreas and intestines. Because the pancreas is an organ that secretes a variety of digestive enzymes, the autolysis of the pancreas develops the fastest and the most serious. Another thing that must be reminded is the autolysis of the pancreas even in freezing conditions. It will continue to progress in the state, and autolysis will occur in just a few hours after death, and it will be completely degraded within 36-48 hours, which means that the pancreas may disappear during dissection.
Autolysis of other organs, such as liver and myocardium, starts 12 hours after death, and renal tubule epithelial cells begin to degrade 24 hours after death, so if an autopsy is to be carried out as soon as possible.
Why do the arms and legs of a drowning person bend?
The process of drowning death seems very simple, but the physiological process is more complicated. In the initial stage of drowning, it is generally instinctive to hold your breath, which can cause apnea and bradycardia. The capillaries constrict and supply blood to the brain and important organs. This is not as cold as the cold. The stimulation is somewhat similar, but the former guarantees blood oxygen supply, while the latter maintains body temperature.
Later, due to hypercapnia and hypoxemia, the respiratory center will be stimulated again, and it will begin to enter the non-spontaneous breathing phase. At this time, the breathing is involuntary. The performance under water is breathing and swallowing, and the action is a bit like spasm, because The inhaled water will enter the lungs, thereby expelling the air into more severe hypoxia, and then hypercapnia and metabolic acidosis.
There are many uncommon sense phenomena in the process of drowning. For example, many people think that drowning people will be struggling violently for help, but in fact, this is the danger of people who can swim or filming TV for everyone to watch. People who really drown always die quietly. !
Because the first thing to call for help is to breathe normally. When the snout and nose sink and float, the drowning person will first ensure breathing, so he will not have time to call for help, and the other is the drowning person desperately trying to surface, so his hands and feet will thump, causing There is no way to leave the water to make a wave of hands.
Therefore, many children drowning have their noses and mouths submerged in the water, floating and dying quietly. Just like this is the case when some parents play with mobile phones and cause their children to drown. They will think that if they drown, they will struggle desperately and go to rescue. But it is a pity that this is an uncommon sense phenomenon, so children must pay attention when playing in the water.
Why do the arms of a drowning person bend?
In the end, drowning people often struggle in vain, even holding on to the water and weeds. This is generally described as “the straw in the hands of the drowning person”. Therefore, you must pay attention to your own safety when rescuing, and when you die at the last minute, you will suffer from a lack of brain. Oxygen loses control of the body’s muscles and will stay in the last state!
Of course, it will also change this form due to the impact of water or obstacles. In the future, corpse stiffness will occur. At this time, the state will gradually be fixed, and its state is difficult to predict. However, after a longer period of time, autolysis of the corpse occurs. When it becomes soft again, most of the corpse will be relatively calm, and then corruption and giantism will occur. If you are interested, you can learn about it, and I won’t repeat it in this article.
There have always been people who died from drowning. Men face down and women face up. In 2017, the Guangzhou Public Security Bureau and Shantou Public Security Bureau police published a paper in the Chinese Journal of Forensic Medicine. After observation and analysis of 751 floating corpses, the following statistics were obtained:
Almost 80% of men and women are prone, the difference between the two is only 1%, so nothing is reliable, or scientific statistical methods are more convincing.
