• Question: After the heart stops beating. How long is the brain still alive?

    Asked by angelo775 to Bob, Katie, Nisha, Sallie, Vee on 4 Jul 2012.
    • Photo: Bob Bonwick

      Bob Bonwick answered on 4 Jul 2012:

      3 minutes after the heart stops beating, roughly. after this the damage is considerede to be too great.

    • Photo: Sallie Baxendale

      Sallie Baxendale answered on 4 Jul 2012:

      The brain takes a while to die – the cells begin to die as soon as the blood stops bringing oxygen to them. In very, very rare cases, when it is extremely cold, people have been brought back to life 30 minutes or so after their heart stopped beating, but in normal cases the brain is dead within about 5 minutes.

    • Photo: Katie McDonald

      Katie McDonald answered on 5 Jul 2012:

      Well, it depends on the environment, and why your heart stopped beating in the first place as whatever that was could be directly affecting your brain too. It’s generally after 3 minutes that your brain has suffered irreversible damage.

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