When a person dies, how long are each individual cells in their body alive for? How do they know to die too?
In: Biology
Without oxygen the cells is not able to generate ATP which is used in almost all of the biological reactions. So the cell quickly becames chemically inactive. It does not die as such but it will usually become damaged from things very quickly. There are always some damaging chemical reactions happening as wll as infections from bacteria and other things. And whithout the ability to defend itself, repair damage and replace cells the body quickly becomes inrepairable. This can take anything from a couple of minutes to a few hours. This is why chest compressions are so important as it will make sure that the blood still flows throughout the body delivering oxygen to the cells and removing toxins from them so they can at least protect themselves from damage. This means that if we are able to fix whatever caused the heart to stop in the first place the body may be able to recover.
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