The Symptoms of Dying<br />Some symptoms, like the death rattle, air hunger and terminal agitation, appear agonizing, but aren’t usually uncomfortable for the dying person.<br />Air hunger — the uncomfortable feeling of breathing difficulty — is one of the most common end-of-life symptoms that doctors work to ease.<br />Since air hunger and pain activate similar parts of the brain, opiates may simply work by muting the brain’s pain signals.<br />Some researchers think the discomfort of air hunger is from the mismatch between<br />the breathing our brain wants and our lungs’ ability to inflate and deflate.<br />They take the “hunger” out of “air hunger.”<br />Others believe that the amount of morphine needed to relieve air hunger may have little effect on our ability to breathe.<br />You’d guess that opiates would worsen air hunger.<br />Sometimes the tongue propels saliva backward before the epiglottis has time to cover the airway.<br />The answer hinges on defining why air hunger is uncomfortable in the first place.<br />Opiates provide relief because they tune our brain’s appetite for air to what our body can provide.
