The body feels suffocation from CO2 buildup rather than a lack of oxygen, so dying from blood loss wouldn’t cause that feeling because it’s not reacting to a lack of oxygen.
My understanding (as not a medical professional) is blood loss is relatively painless on its own, it makes you sleepy until you just fall asleep and die (if not saved).
When you die from blood loss, you’d lose consciousness long before.
The feeling that makes you gasp for air is *not* due to lack of oxygen: it is due to excess CO2. So even though you’d be lacking oxygen on a whole-body scale, your CO2 levels would theoretically be normal so you wouldn’t feel like you were suffocating.
Most likely, you’d gradually drift into unconsciousness and black out as the brain gets less and less oxygen
The process of exsanguination (death from loss of blood) causes the heart rate to drastically increase in order to effectively pump what blood you have all over the body and most importantly to the brain. At some point, the amount of blood making it to the brain is not enough and you pass out. During this whole process, you become cold and dizzy because not enough blood is circulating around the body. You can feel extremely heavy/weak and, indeed, get short of breath with little feats of exertion.
Two possibilities, inability to maintain blood pressure or hypovolemic shock. It would depend on the rate of blood loss. High rate would likely lower blood pressure (think not enough water in the hose) to the point you could have an arrhythmia (heart malfunction) and brain death in 6 minutes due to no oxygen being pumped to the brain. Lower rate loss leads to Hypovolemic shock Hypo=low, volemic=volume, shock=the inability of blood to perfuse muscle. This means all those important organs (heart, liver) can’t get blood which in turn can’t get oxygen or expel CO2.
I nearly passed out after donating blood because I was dehydrated. My ears started to ring, my vision got blurry/delayed/streaky like I was drunk, my muscles got delayed and less coordinated, and my face felt hot. Sorta felt nauseous. Leaning back with a cold towel on my forehead and a big drink of water and sugar/salt helped. It was definitely disturbing and I was glad to have nurses handy to help me get comfortable and get my blood pressure up again.
No, you don’t feel like you can’t breathe. You feel sleepy because your brain starts to shut down. Your heart slows because it’s the most oxygen consuming organ in the body and without enough oxygen it can’t work. As you drift to sleep, your heart fails, and so do your other organs. By the time this is impactful, you’re already unconscious. You die in your sleep. Other than the “feeling of impending doom” it’s probably one of the most peaceful ways to go.
Better than a pulmonary embolism, which DOES feel like you can’t breathe.
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