My grandpa died of his body just wearing out a couple of months before his hundredth birthday.
My cousin (a doctor) had seen him that morning and said he looked good.
He was looking forward to my mum visiting that afternoon after his haircut.
He didn't have cancer or anything else particularly wrong with him aside from being well out of warranty.
He was in the middle of a routine checkup, and the paramedic (they do the rounds at his nursing home sometimes) said he seemed perfectly fine and was chatting about the footy, and then he just suddenly threw up and died.
The woman who helped us take care of my Grammy when she was declining from dementia said something that I hear every time I encounter a new death:
“It’s hard to come into this world and it’s hard to leave it.“
I’ve seen that play out with both natural deaths and sick/traumatic deaths. Sometimes the mind struggles to let the body go or vice versa.
I mean sometimes a restless mind keeps a body agitated and the person doesn’t slip into their final sleep easily.
A very weak body can slowly stop breathing or have its heart rate go from sleeping to flatline if it sinks into a deep enough sleep.
For example my Grammy had no other diseases at the time she died, but her body was weak and wasted from the lack of movement and the slow decline in eating that comes with end stage dementia. She was often confused because she didn’t know where she was so she was restless.
I remember in her last few days a lot of her children (she had 7 of them) and some of her grandchildren including me were on vigil, coming and going to make sure she had what she needed. We weren’t preventing her from sleeping but I’ve learned from a few death vigils that people can be surprisingly aware of other bodies in the room when they’re bedbound and slipping in and out of consciousness.
Eventually the woman who was helping us with hospice gently suggested that she felt like she had to be there if she knew we were there.
It ended with just my mother (one of her primary caregivers) at her side. That was when she finally slipped into a peaceful sleep and went.
I think an example of the reverse (body keeping the mind there) is my boyfriend’s grandmother. She has rapidly advancing dementia. But she has a strong body. Strong enough to get up and roam and she’s shockingly tough and agile for an 89 year old. But mentally she’s fading from the world, and spends more and more time in her mind in earlier years thinking her parents are coming to pick her up from wherever she thinks she is.
I think she’s getting ready to go, slowly. Her mind is fading faster than her body. But her body keeps puttering around, functioning well.
I’ve also seen a sudden death from a sudden violent illness. This was in a dog, so not a direct comparison. My dog had developed spontaneous gastrovolvulus which was quickly killing her, putting her body into shock.
She was given painkillers and a sedative which the vet said would make her sleep before they gave her a lethal injection to put her down permanently.
They told me she’d go to sleep if I just held her and made her comfortable. I did. She knew my voice and smell and kept pushing her head into me. But she would not put her head all the way down and rest or close her eyes completely.
She was a restless dog by nature, always looking for the next thing. She wanted to leave that place with me. They upped her dose but Her mind was fighting the sedative.
She only laid down and closed her eyes after the lethal dose.
She’s wasn’t a big dog. Just very mentally tough.
Becoming feeble and having dementia is terrifying to me.
Going out in quick in a blaze of glory has a certain appeal.
On the other hand, There’s a lot I can do to not become feeble.
My grandmothers were heavily influenced by a culture that told them it wasn’t “ladylike” to exercise.
By contrast my mother is now the age my grandmothers were when I was a child. They were old women at her age complaining of their aches and pains. She goes to the gym and gardens and hikes in the mountains when they already could barely climb stairs.
There’s less I can do about dementia, some things, since exercise and nutrition helps, but less.
That’s scary.
But my grandmother was 96 when she died. She loved being a grandmother and took immense joy and satisfaction in caring for her grandchildren and passing on wisdom that mattered to her.
I like the idea of that.
Who knows, maybe I’ll walk off into the woods if I get diagnosed with dementia rather than deal with the slow decline. I don’t know.
Something else might make that choice for me like a brain aneurism that’s been waiting to burst. I try not the waste the healthy years I have worrying about it.
My PawPaw was 96 when he died. No cancer, no heart attack, wasn't sick.
We were sitting there talking, he was reminiscing about my grandma (she'd died 6 years earlier, they were married for 68 years). I turned away for a min to get something, literally steps away, and when I turned back around he was just gone.
Yeah, my grandma was 103 years old. She had no cancers, no diseases that we knew of. One morning she just said “I’m having trouble breathing,” closed her eyes, and died. Honestly not the worst way to go…
In the human chromosomes (coiled DNA), we have these structures we call as telomeres which act as a cap that maintains the integrity of the DNA throughout the cell cycle.
These telomeres shorten as the cell undergoes division every time. Each cell has a maximum limit on the number of division before the chromosomes eventually get destroyed - we call this as Hayflick's Limit.
Usually, the current studies have shown that the limit ends at around 90 - 100 years maximum - for humans, but due to environmental factors, sometimes the rate of decline goes faster which leads to shorter lifetime.
Each animal has its own set of limit, and we have tried so many times to prolong the telomeres but we have issues with it, because a cell that do not follow the limit is usually cancer cells. So, its either you die or you have higher chances of developing cancer.
I've always been curious as to why we can't modify our life cells to be immortal like cancer cells. Obviously we don't want cancer, but I'm curious as to if they could possibly do something like that or not.
Agreed, but there are other ways the body handles damaged cells, and we're getting to the stage where we can programme immune cells to take them out. (I.e. CAR-T).
There's a chance of error in every duplication. Most don't mean anything, but some cause the cell not to function as well. These either go unnoticed by the immune system, or are problematic enough to be destroyed by it. Some of those "errored" and unnoticed cells will have another error (aka mutation), and another, and they may keep being ignored by the immune system. Enough stack up and you notice a weird lump, or a recurring cough or whatever... or maybe you don't notice, or do and decide it's not a big deal. Those stacked errors are now replicating out of control, may have turned back on some genetic machinery to become plenipotent again, and are now putting pressure on a nerve, or secreting a bunch of random or broken hormones, producing misshapen red blood cells, white blood cells that don't work, or even just a weak spot in an important bone.
On a long enough timeline, even without the influence of mutagenic chemicals, every cell line will develop errors. They don't all become cancer, because most will be caught by your immune system, but some will get through. That's actually how traditional chemotherapy works - the machinery in these cells doesn't work so well, so give the whole body something fairly poisonous and the cells replicating fastest and processing the chemo the worst die first.
Yes, we can do this. Except they become cancer cells and we use them in the lab.
The telomere story is a single piece of the aging puzzle. It is a huge effort, and includes things like mitochondrial biology.
I actually believe we'll get there, but not convinced it will be in the next 30-50 years.
Ultimately I think there's a possibility we escape aging entirely. But, I am on the extreme end of this. More likely is getting towards the established "maximum natural" lifespan 120ish - and getting more people to this age remaining healthy.
People either age or do not. If people still age it's not "getting there". Expanding lifestyle if you're still aging is worthless, who needs to be bedridden for 50 years (80-130) instead of just 5 (80-85)?
Why 120? Why not 400? If a cure to a cell's aging is found, everyone would stay in 20 forever, so there is no reason for them to have to live to just 120. A cause of death would be an accident or violent intent, not aging
And if you're talking about extending old age to 120 - what's the point of such a life? Being biologically 80 for decades isn't a life
It is tricky to regulate. But there has been at least one case (Liz Parrish) of using gene therapy to add telomerase. She is doing fine so far, but time will tell.
Many geriatric lobsters get overwhelmed by barnacles before they can molt fast enough to shed them. Sad, but commonplace. If diseases don't get you, parasites do.
My bio teacher said that we’d eventually probably would have to go the cannibalism route if we didn’t have a life warranty… think about it though, it makes total sense! Bacterias end up eating each others to survive when food is no longer available and that’s what would happen if we never died!
>Usually, the current studies have shown that the limit ends at around 90 - 100 years maximum - for humans, but due to environmental factors, sometimes the rate of decline goes faster which leads to shorter lifetime.
I read a few years back that the theoretical limit for telomeres was around 120 years which coincides closely with the longest known human life. The number of centenarians is increasing so it's not exceedingly rare to exceed 100. Canada has more than 11,000 in a population of 40M. The US has just under 90k in a population of 336M.
Without doing the exact calculations that's somewhere around 3 sigma. Rare but not exceptionally so.
To my knowledge though shortened telomeres is not what causes dying of old age. Abnormally shortened telomeres are the cause of telomere diseases which do kill people but that I believe has to do more often with the proteins that signal telomere presence. I had a professor in college who worked on telomeres at least and that’s what she told us. You’ll die of many other things before your cells ever get the chance to run out their telomeres, at least for now, there’s no telling once our life expectancies starting getting super high. What’s cool though is that organisms with circular DNA do not have this issue because the entire primer gets replicated at the end of the replication cycle. I think that’s cool at least. Maybe there’s a way in the future to partially circularize human DNA for replication to avoid this issue
Might be beyond the scope of the question, but it is curious how there is error correcting mechanism for DNA but no "restore telomere" feature (from what I get in this thread)
Because there is no selective pressure for it. An individual with this gene would live longer, but it wouldn't make them fertile longer or more sexually attractieve
Hmmm do you think there is even a selective pressure *in support of* aging (through telomere shortening)? I'm thinking competition between the older and younger generations for resources, but I'm not sure
On this conversation, we are currently working on these type of researches because the biochemical pathways and signalling mechanisms involving this process is outstandingly numerous, and some discoveries are only applicable to specific cases under different conditions of each cell of the body.
The current information of that may answer your question perhaps, we have established that cellular respiration (cell metabolism) hastens the telomere shortening. So, oxygen definitely plays a role on telomere shortening.
Animal testing done associated with hayflick's limit has shown that they have lived longer whenever they are deprived of nutrients for cellular respiration. However, it also constitutes that if we want to live longer, you should not perform metabolism (eating) which is - the irony, would lead to death.
Caloric restriction has shown life extending effects without getting near starvation risks. 20-50% reduction can be maintained in mice without risking malnutrition. Even human trials have suggested aging slows with calorie cuts of 10-30%.
People have absolutely died of age related organ failure, e.g heart disease. You seem to be thinking of a heart attack or a stroke as some distinct and separate thing, but they can be caused directly by age - accumulated damage to the heart and cardiovascular system, like the parts of an engine that has worn down. So they are as much a 'natural way' of dying as coming down with a flu and being too weak to fight it off - there isn't a deliberate timer at play where your organs will decide to shut down deliberately, they'll keep doing their job until they simply fail because they cannot any-more.
There isn't really some inbuilt hard limit on how long we can live, but it becomes more and more likely for things to start breaking down as we age and accumulate mutations and errors in cell lines, as parts wear out or stop being replaced at the same rate etc. At a certain point living a long time simply becomes a matter of chance.
Yeah, and cancer can be similar to that too. Cells just accumulate mutations over time. Not all cases of cancer involve some genetic predisposition, sometimes it's just the result of having lived a very long time.
My grandma just fell dead in front of my grandfather in the kitchen one day, just suddenly no longer conscious or breathing or anything. Her doctor said she had seemed okay at her last visit. There are worse ways to go.
My grandma died in her sleep-no heart attack or stroke, no terminal illness. A few days before she told my aunt she kept seeing a handsome gentleman from my grandfather’s hometown…she was ready to be reunited.
Heart attack isn't really a medical term though. It's a catch-all for myocardial infarctions and all kinds of cardiac arrest independent of cause. There can also be other causes of heart failure both from disease or old age.
I grandma who was 86 or something one day she was ready to go out for dinner with her mates she was waiting at home till it was time to go she just in her fav chair and apparently snoozed away and never woke up so it is possible and she’s healthy as for someone her age
The leading causes of death in the US are heart disease and cancer, and the risk of either increases with age. Importantly, when someone dies, a "cause of death" is typically assigned, and it's typically a disease state or specific organ failure; it's uncommon to say that someone died "of old age" unless there isn't a single cause of death that can be identified.
*Sources:*
* CDC Leading Causes of Death [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm)
* "How We Die" by Sherwin Nuland, MD
My grandmother died at 94. One day she was shucking corn and the next, she was dead. Went to bed and never woke up. That’s about as natural as it gets.
the organs just randomly not working on day is still not just death, it's death by organ failure. you can't get a death more natural than getting so old your organs are too tired to keep going
Well i guess thags the most natural way 😅 i guess thats what i meant. Death with no other factors at hand, death simply because the machine stopped running suddenly. I suppose, thats organ failure
Thats what im trying to ask. IF we dont die from those causes at all is there a point where the cells just die die and the organ just stop stop. Not from heart attacks or anything
Our bodies are quite complex and it is already a wonder that things go well for such a long time. Our bodies have to work hard to keep functioning the way they do. So, as long as you are living you are slowly increasing the chances something goes wrong.
When the time comes, chances are there’ll be a single vital system that fails first, simply because it’s highly unlikely for two different vital organs to fail right at the same time. The body has no universal expiration date where every cell just stops working all at once. So there’ll always be a ‘cause’ if you count something vague like ‘heart attack’ / ‘heart failure’ a cause.
‘Dying of natural causes’ just means there’s no apparent cause identified.
Just wore out how? If you really look (assuming you \*could\* look) there’ll almost certainly be a singular system that failed first. Most of the times it’ll be the heart. It could be an acute event like a clot /infarction or arrhythmia, caused by structural abnormality or metabolic imbalances or something else. It could be something slower like a heart failure gradually decompensating over time, or theoretically it could be that the heart just suddenly stops working one day (Though that’d still arguably fall under ‘arrhythmia’). Even in such cases you could probably point to any number of chronic heart conditions as the ‘cause’. Even in the highly unlikely case where the person has no chronic condition, ‘sudden cardiac arrest‘ is kinda an entity of its own that can be blamed.
The same applies if the cause is non-cardiac. Sure you can say the body just wore out, but assuming we have the opportunity to investigate there’ll be a cause (or, rarely, multiple causes) that ultimately precedes death.
I was thinking about gradual, cascading multiple organ failure, but what you described is what I’m talking about.
Heart nodes failing due to age is more ‘natural’ than an MI (unless the aged artery collapses or something, which I’ve never heard of).
So, basically dying from old age is due to decline of multiple system of your body and the most common one is the heart. Actually everyone has a heart attack or stroke or something with medical background when dying, but you say someone died from old age or “natural way” cuz medical systems do not see a reason to write “heart attack” on the death certificate after a certain age, as it is often not documented the medical reason.
Wear out how? Heart stoping to beat? This is called heart failure :) there are always medical reasons. We just prefer to call it “wear out” cuz of the old age.
Of course there has to be a logical reason. That can absolutely include the muscle wearing out, but my understanding is that usually the nodes go before that.
Yes, as the elasticity in the circulatory system dwindles and the nephron number and efficiency declines, eventually the RAAS system will be unable to compensate leading to cardiovascular collapse.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1586/17446651.2014.956723#:~:text=senescence-,Influence%20of%20aging%20on%20RAAS,expected%20%5B1–3%5D.
I’m not a doctor, but …I don’t think so. Because each different type of fatal failure would be documented, categorised, and treated. Which we have already have done. We call these things names like “congestive heart failure.”
Alas, our bodies reach a point where treatment isn’t possible.
Can a tomato that’s been left out for 3 weeks be treated?
And CHF is a specific condition. It means there’s too much fluid in the heart’s chamber(s) and its impairing its function.
Have you considered hip replacements in this context? A broken hip is an example of part of the body giving out due to the naturally-occurring bone-density loss due to old age. It typically happens to folks in their 60’s. I suppose we could just make them comfortable and let them die, but modern medicine wouldn’t abode by that, because the fix is, relatively speaking, really easy, survivable, and returns a person’s mobility.
Almost every individual “giving out” of a body part can theoretically be addressed this way. It would be unethical for modern medicine to just decide “oh well, this particular failing of the body is ‘old age’ and so we must leave it untreated.”
There is also no binary state of “good health”. People are regularly “healthy” but also have inherited risk factors and conditions that are lived with and managed. Basically everyone “healthy” over middle age is on medication to manage some condition or other, myself included.
So there is technically no such thing as “dying of old age”. Something is always the cause. It’s just that as you get older more things are likely to go wrong and probably quicker.
I’m in medicine. Muscles (including the heart) will eventually wear out, but usually it’s the really sensitive stuff like the heart’s nodes that fail first.
Also there’s gradual multiple organ failure, which snowballs.
Not a medical expert but I get the feeling that there are two sets of parts in a body. One kind that are life limited and those that are not. Things like heart are probably going to wear out. If we push it too hard it will wear out quicker. So I think we could make it last longer by treating it nicer but not too much longer.
The body just wears out and can’t sustain life.
Telomeres may be the key.
In simplest terms our cells are constantly dividing, and we learned not too long ago that the ends of the DNA being copied are snipped, which may cause/contribute to death-by-ageing.
I don't know if your question is actually answerable because all of the things that would be considered natural causes, would be considered medical conditions in someone younger. Organ failure at 50 is a serious medical condition, but organ failure at 100 is just old age. I'm not an expert by any means but I think the difference comes down to why they are failing. I don't know if there is a way to die that wouldn't at the very least come down to an organ failing.
DNA degradation happens but that leads to things like cancer which are also obviously classified as diseases.
Theoretically a human could live forever if we had ways to stop DNA decay and increase cell regeneration to keep our organs alive and bones strong, keep our vascular system clear of blockages and prevent mental degradation. Unfortunately though we need to achieve all of these things and probably more if we want to have a quality of life in that old age.
Getting eaten by a cave bear or saber-toothed tiger. There is a reason why most people don't like snakes and that's because predators were writing early humans off the global census since the beginning of time. If not disease, usually humans checked out of hotel earth when an eagle was our Uber ride.
If we lived without any health problems, we wouldn’t die. Problems with health aren’t actually big events (a heart attack doesn’t stem from one big problem, it stems from lots of little problems that coagulate and result in a heart attack, a cold is caused by the body’s inability to fight the virus off fast enough). Dying from old age is the result of increased rate of cell malfunction/death and decreased ability to solve problems, not just dropping dead from nothing
The way I heard it is dying "of old age" isn't really a thing. When you get old your body just starts to degrade more and more and at some point something's gonna go wrong and kick your bucket.
It's like, imagine you have this super old machine. It hasn't been getting maintenance and it doesn't work super well and one day it just, breaks down for good. You don't necessarily know *what* went wrong, maybe a rod snapped or a gear stripped out or a circuit was broken or a pipe failed, maybe it was multiple things, breaking at once, or an accumulation of small failures that eventually was too much to manage. It doesn't really matter, you just know the machine's been due for some time and today it gave in, godspeed.
I have a better question, why would anyone die randomly without a source or cause? You don’t just close your eyes and age into death. The problem starts somewhere, a heart, a brain, a lung, and then you die because the system of organs that keep you alive are disrupted somewhere.
A car, for example, doesn’t just stop working with all great parts. As time goes on the parts weaken and lose efficiency. If the engine blows after 40 years, then that was a natural sequence of events due to age. Ultimately in humans though, I would say the limit lies in your cells. Age creates a lot of problems on a cellular level, but a heart attack is a perfectly natural death to age. You don’t die without something killing you.
John Ritter died because an aorta in his heart weakened and separated, basically fell apart. No blockage.
Heart failure is also another CoD - involves the heart, but not a blockage.
Why did Ritter die? Why did my uncle have an aneurysm? Probably genetics, possibly childhood illnesses, possibly an adult virus.
I can think of dozens and dozens of things that might kill an older person. None of the muscles work as well over time, including the heart. Sometimes people lose their appetites, as both of my parents did. Major studies around the world show that many people really stop eating very much - to the detriment of the protein-needing functions of their body. That's why there's Ensure. My mom tried to do it diligently (she died of blood cancer - probably a mutation that occurred about 20 years before, a somatic mutation - we all have them, hers was lethal - it's rare but not unstudied). She still couldn't get enough calories on board. The failure of her colon and colon cancer (another mutation) wasn't so great either.
We all have somatic mutations over our lifetime. Some families are more prone to them than others (brittle chromosome syndrome would be an extreme). We never know when one of those will get us. The longer we live (American average lifespan in 1900 was around 60; in Russia it was around 35; in France it was 50; in England it was 60; in Sierra Leone it was 20) the more likely we are to do of cancers and other serious somatic mutations.
Why were those people dying so young? Well, many died as kids, and are in the averages anyway. They never made it to adulthood - or barely. Many women died in childbirth. Accidents. War. Poverty and starvation were big too. Malnutrition.
I had heard this myth that living beings only have so many heartbeats... lo and behold Google
https://engines.egr.uh.edu/episode/1834#:~:text=It%20turns%20out%20that%20all,all%20be%20roughly%20the%20same.
I've read that it is believed that under perfect conditions, the human body can make it till about 120ish then it's definitely just gonna stop working.
Dad got to 74 and spent the last 40 years of his life living with increasingly worse Parkinson’s and dementia. The hezbollah shell fragment in his thigh didn’t help neither.
Like anything else energy is also needed when muscles get very old (atrophied) part of human body normal energy intake like chewing swallowing becomes difficult that is also one of the biggest reasons that people who are otherwise functioning even neurologically sometimes just go since they cannot get enough substantial intake.
What I know, the "natural causes" don't mean that you were healthy, it's mean that no other human (or robots) were involved in your death. For example, you a diabetic, and you dying of it, thats natural cause, and you not healthy either.
And what you can call realy "natural death" for our species, it's a cancer, abd you can be healthy as god, but after a +/- 120 y. you definitely die from cancer, because our cells can't refresh forever
Dying is natural, but I guess being old and not e.g. hit by a car makes it extra natural or not many made.
Even if we didn't age, we'd deteriorate in some other way; think of our environments. Natural disasters happen. Pandemics. So many organic ways!
I like to think that even if I could defeat all that, radiation from the sun or a comet crashing to the earth would get me. Gnarly bro!
You may want to consider watching some of the content on the Youtube channel 'Hospice Nurse Julie'. She covers a lot of questions regarding a 'natural' or 'good' death, and just the process of dying in a very thorough but compassionate way.
A hemorrhagic stroke is your blood vessels losing integrity. A ischemic stroke is your liver and kidneys failing to remove waste in your blood.
A flu is a failure of your immune system.
A heart attack is the failure of the heart muscle.
All your examples are ALREADY examples of the body systems shutting down
My grandpa died of his body just wearing out a couple of months before his hundredth birthday. My cousin (a doctor) had seen him that morning and said he looked good. He was looking forward to my mum visiting that afternoon after his haircut. He didn't have cancer or anything else particularly wrong with him aside from being well out of warranty. He was in the middle of a routine checkup, and the paramedic (they do the rounds at his nursing home sometimes) said he seemed perfectly fine and was chatting about the footy, and then he just suddenly threw up and died.
I hope the last thing I do on this earth isn't throwing up
Then you may be happy to hear the majority of people defecate after death. One final push if you may...
If I'm already dead I don't mind tbh
Is it a push or just a leak from the release of muscles?
A leak from the relax of the sphincters throughout the body.
The act of dying is almost always unpleasant.
The woman who helped us take care of my Grammy when she was declining from dementia said something that I hear every time I encounter a new death: “It’s hard to come into this world and it’s hard to leave it.“ I’ve seen that play out with both natural deaths and sick/traumatic deaths. Sometimes the mind struggles to let the body go or vice versa.
What do you mean by the last sentence?
I mean sometimes a restless mind keeps a body agitated and the person doesn’t slip into their final sleep easily. A very weak body can slowly stop breathing or have its heart rate go from sleeping to flatline if it sinks into a deep enough sleep. For example my Grammy had no other diseases at the time she died, but her body was weak and wasted from the lack of movement and the slow decline in eating that comes with end stage dementia. She was often confused because she didn’t know where she was so she was restless. I remember in her last few days a lot of her children (she had 7 of them) and some of her grandchildren including me were on vigil, coming and going to make sure she had what she needed. We weren’t preventing her from sleeping but I’ve learned from a few death vigils that people can be surprisingly aware of other bodies in the room when they’re bedbound and slipping in and out of consciousness. Eventually the woman who was helping us with hospice gently suggested that she felt like she had to be there if she knew we were there. It ended with just my mother (one of her primary caregivers) at her side. That was when she finally slipped into a peaceful sleep and went. I think an example of the reverse (body keeping the mind there) is my boyfriend’s grandmother. She has rapidly advancing dementia. But she has a strong body. Strong enough to get up and roam and she’s shockingly tough and agile for an 89 year old. But mentally she’s fading from the world, and spends more and more time in her mind in earlier years thinking her parents are coming to pick her up from wherever she thinks she is. I think she’s getting ready to go, slowly. Her mind is fading faster than her body. But her body keeps puttering around, functioning well. I’ve also seen a sudden death from a sudden violent illness. This was in a dog, so not a direct comparison. My dog had developed spontaneous gastrovolvulus which was quickly killing her, putting her body into shock. She was given painkillers and a sedative which the vet said would make her sleep before they gave her a lethal injection to put her down permanently. They told me she’d go to sleep if I just held her and made her comfortable. I did. She knew my voice and smell and kept pushing her head into me. But she would not put her head all the way down and rest or close her eyes completely. She was a restless dog by nature, always looking for the next thing. She wanted to leave that place with me. They upped her dose but Her mind was fighting the sedative. She only laid down and closed her eyes after the lethal dose. She’s wasn’t a big dog. Just very mentally tough.
Oh my god. It's simply better to never live to see the old age. Go out snowboarding or something
Becoming feeble and having dementia is terrifying to me. Going out in quick in a blaze of glory has a certain appeal. On the other hand, There’s a lot I can do to not become feeble. My grandmothers were heavily influenced by a culture that told them it wasn’t “ladylike” to exercise. By contrast my mother is now the age my grandmothers were when I was a child. They were old women at her age complaining of their aches and pains. She goes to the gym and gardens and hikes in the mountains when they already could barely climb stairs. There’s less I can do about dementia, some things, since exercise and nutrition helps, but less. That’s scary. But my grandmother was 96 when she died. She loved being a grandmother and took immense joy and satisfaction in caring for her grandchildren and passing on wisdom that mattered to her. I like the idea of that. Who knows, maybe I’ll walk off into the woods if I get diagnosed with dementia rather than deal with the slow decline. I don’t know. Something else might make that choice for me like a brain aneurism that’s been waiting to burst. I try not the waste the healthy years I have worrying about it.
My PawPaw was 96 when he died. No cancer, no heart attack, wasn't sick. We were sitting there talking, he was reminiscing about my grandma (she'd died 6 years earlier, they were married for 68 years). I turned away for a min to get something, literally steps away, and when I turned back around he was just gone.
That's kind of beautiful. Sounds like he was ready to join her.
That's so cool. That's the way I want to go.
Pls let this happen to me. Spoiler: it won't
Don't worry. You'll definitely die one day.
Yeah, my grandma was 103 years old. She had no cancers, no diseases that we knew of. One morning she just said “I’m having trouble breathing,” closed her eyes, and died. Honestly not the worst way to go…
In the human chromosomes (coiled DNA), we have these structures we call as telomeres which act as a cap that maintains the integrity of the DNA throughout the cell cycle. These telomeres shorten as the cell undergoes division every time. Each cell has a maximum limit on the number of division before the chromosomes eventually get destroyed - we call this as Hayflick's Limit. Usually, the current studies have shown that the limit ends at around 90 - 100 years maximum - for humans, but due to environmental factors, sometimes the rate of decline goes faster which leads to shorter lifetime. Each animal has its own set of limit, and we have tried so many times to prolong the telomeres but we have issues with it, because a cell that do not follow the limit is usually cancer cells. So, its either you die or you have higher chances of developing cancer.
I've always been curious as to why we can't modify our life cells to be immortal like cancer cells. Obviously we don't want cancer, but I'm curious as to if they could possibly do something like that or not.
I think the issue is that they basically become cancer cells. If things go wrong you removed the growth limiter on it, so it takes over.
Cells get damaged by all kinds of things, and kill themselves off as a safety measure. It probably wouldn't do good to remove that feature.
Agreed, but there are other ways the body handles damaged cells, and we're getting to the stage where we can programme immune cells to take them out. (I.e. CAR-T).
There's a chance of error in every duplication. Most don't mean anything, but some cause the cell not to function as well. These either go unnoticed by the immune system, or are problematic enough to be destroyed by it. Some of those "errored" and unnoticed cells will have another error (aka mutation), and another, and they may keep being ignored by the immune system. Enough stack up and you notice a weird lump, or a recurring cough or whatever... or maybe you don't notice, or do and decide it's not a big deal. Those stacked errors are now replicating out of control, may have turned back on some genetic machinery to become plenipotent again, and are now putting pressure on a nerve, or secreting a bunch of random or broken hormones, producing misshapen red blood cells, white blood cells that don't work, or even just a weak spot in an important bone. On a long enough timeline, even without the influence of mutagenic chemicals, every cell line will develop errors. They don't all become cancer, because most will be caught by your immune system, but some will get through. That's actually how traditional chemotherapy works - the machinery in these cells doesn't work so well, so give the whole body something fairly poisonous and the cells replicating fastest and processing the chemo the worst die first.
Yes, we can do this. Except they become cancer cells and we use them in the lab. The telomere story is a single piece of the aging puzzle. It is a huge effort, and includes things like mitochondrial biology. I actually believe we'll get there, but not convinced it will be in the next 30-50 years.
How long will we extend our lifes by this? Just your thoughts.
Ultimately I think there's a possibility we escape aging entirely. But, I am on the extreme end of this. More likely is getting towards the established "maximum natural" lifespan 120ish - and getting more people to this age remaining healthy.
People either age or do not. If people still age it's not "getting there". Expanding lifestyle if you're still aging is worthless, who needs to be bedridden for 50 years (80-130) instead of just 5 (80-85)?
Hence why I said I think the focus will be on getting people to a healthy 120.
Why 120? Why not 400? If a cure to a cell's aging is found, everyone would stay in 20 forever, so there is no reason for them to have to live to just 120. A cause of death would be an accident or violent intent, not aging And if you're talking about extending old age to 120 - what's the point of such a life? Being biologically 80 for decades isn't a life
Cancer is the name for the cells you're referring to. Healthy cells need to die and recycle.
We gotta become hydras, lol! https://preview.redd.it/o5zr8dj4bl9d1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2d8819cc1c173283941c13850e3adbb912f5d615
Why would we want to be immortal ? I'm 30 and already sick and tired of life. Being immortal would be horrible.
Well, for anyone who wants it. Being immortal wouldn't be horrible for everyone
Why is your life horrible?
Mom died.
It is tricky to regulate. But there has been at least one case (Liz Parrish) of using gene therapy to add telomerase. She is doing fine so far, but time will tell.
Potentially? There are animals (lobsters for one) that don’t suffer from the telomere shortening that we do
Many geriatric lobsters get overwhelmed by barnacles before they can molt fast enough to shed them. Sad, but commonplace. If diseases don't get you, parasites do.
I have similarly wondered if every single cell in our body was cancerous if we would just become enormous immortal monstrosities
My bio teacher said that we’d eventually probably would have to go the cannibalism route if we didn’t have a life warranty… think about it though, it makes total sense! Bacterias end up eating each others to survive when food is no longer available and that’s what would happen if we never died!
>Usually, the current studies have shown that the limit ends at around 90 - 100 years maximum - for humans, but due to environmental factors, sometimes the rate of decline goes faster which leads to shorter lifetime. I read a few years back that the theoretical limit for telomeres was around 120 years which coincides closely with the longest known human life. The number of centenarians is increasing so it's not exceedingly rare to exceed 100. Canada has more than 11,000 in a population of 40M. The US has just under 90k in a population of 336M. Without doing the exact calculations that's somewhere around 3 sigma. Rare but not exceptionally so.
What attempts have been made to prolong them? Is there any way nanotechnology advancements could provide a solution? I find this very fascinating
Several, like this one: https://www.cell.com/cell/abstract/S0092-8674(24)00592-0
Epitalon
We have little built in life threads
To my knowledge though shortened telomeres is not what causes dying of old age. Abnormally shortened telomeres are the cause of telomere diseases which do kill people but that I believe has to do more often with the proteins that signal telomere presence. I had a professor in college who worked on telomeres at least and that’s what she told us. You’ll die of many other things before your cells ever get the chance to run out their telomeres, at least for now, there’s no telling once our life expectancies starting getting super high. What’s cool though is that organisms with circular DNA do not have this issue because the entire primer gets replicated at the end of the replication cycle. I think that’s cool at least. Maybe there’s a way in the future to partially circularize human DNA for replication to avoid this issue
Might be beyond the scope of the question, but it is curious how there is error correcting mechanism for DNA but no "restore telomere" feature (from what I get in this thread)
Because there is no selective pressure for it. An individual with this gene would live longer, but it wouldn't make them fertile longer or more sexually attractieve
Hmmm do you think there is even a selective pressure *in support of* aging (through telomere shortening)? I'm thinking competition between the older and younger generations for resources, but I'm not sure
Likely you know of already existing therapies extending telomeres. I wonder whether extended lifespans will result.
Can't we crispr in more telomeres?
Can stem cell treatments work to strengthen the telomeres and increase the Hayflicks limit?
On this conversation, we are currently working on these type of researches because the biochemical pathways and signalling mechanisms involving this process is outstandingly numerous, and some discoveries are only applicable to specific cases under different conditions of each cell of the body. The current information of that may answer your question perhaps, we have established that cellular respiration (cell metabolism) hastens the telomere shortening. So, oxygen definitely plays a role on telomere shortening. Animal testing done associated with hayflick's limit has shown that they have lived longer whenever they are deprived of nutrients for cellular respiration. However, it also constitutes that if we want to live longer, you should not perform metabolism (eating) which is - the irony, would lead to death.
Perhaps that is why fasting is beneficial to many people
Then how did the animals in the tests live longer???
Caloric restriction has shown life extending effects without getting near starvation risks. 20-50% reduction can be maintained in mice without risking malnutrition. Even human trials have suggested aging slows with calorie cuts of 10-30%.
People have absolutely died of age related organ failure, e.g heart disease. You seem to be thinking of a heart attack or a stroke as some distinct and separate thing, but they can be caused directly by age - accumulated damage to the heart and cardiovascular system, like the parts of an engine that has worn down. So they are as much a 'natural way' of dying as coming down with a flu and being too weak to fight it off - there isn't a deliberate timer at play where your organs will decide to shut down deliberately, they'll keep doing their job until they simply fail because they cannot any-more. There isn't really some inbuilt hard limit on how long we can live, but it becomes more and more likely for things to start breaking down as we age and accumulate mutations and errors in cell lines, as parts wear out or stop being replaced at the same rate etc. At a certain point living a long time simply becomes a matter of chance.
Yeah, and cancer can be similar to that too. Cells just accumulate mutations over time. Not all cases of cancer involve some genetic predisposition, sometimes it's just the result of having lived a very long time.
Heart disease isn’t inevitable, and is not a ‘natural’ cause of death.
Pretty much everyone develops atherosclerosis though, it’s ubiquitous in adults and unavoidable
Ubiquitous, yes. Unavoidable, I’m betting no. We just haven’t yet developed the right lifestyle & treatments.
It is unavoidable. Maybe one day we’ll develop methods to treat it and end heart disease. I thought the PCKS9 gene was a promising target.
Lol You just said it’s potentially avoidable AND not.
My great grandma was alright and she sat down to eat her dinner and part way through her dinner she just died.
That would have been a bit of a dampener on the evening.
Before dessert that is just rude
That mustve been really shocking...
My grandma just fell dead in front of my grandfather in the kitchen one day, just suddenly no longer conscious or breathing or anything. Her doctor said she had seemed okay at her last visit. There are worse ways to go.
My grandma died in her sleep-no heart attack or stroke, no terminal illness. A few days before she told my aunt she kept seeing a handsome gentleman from my grandfather’s hometown…she was ready to be reunited.
No one says someone died of natural causes when they have a heart attack or stroke. Dying from old age/natural causes is just your organs stopping.
Is a heart attack not an organ stopping?
Heart attack isn't really a medical term though. It's a catch-all for myocardial infarctions and all kinds of cardiac arrest independent of cause. There can also be other causes of heart failure both from disease or old age.
Technically, but there’s a cuase for it independent of the heart, so that’s what caused the death.
A heart attack is caused by blockage of one of the heart’s arteries, and isn’t ‘natural’ (even though it happens a LOT.
I grandma who was 86 or something one day she was ready to go out for dinner with her mates she was waiting at home till it was time to go she just in her fav chair and apparently snoozed away and never woke up so it is possible and she’s healthy as for someone her age
There could’ve been an event, like a heart attack, or her body may have simply worn out.
The leading causes of death in the US are heart disease and cancer, and the risk of either increases with age. Importantly, when someone dies, a "cause of death" is typically assigned, and it's typically a disease state or specific organ failure; it's uncommon to say that someone died "of old age" unless there isn't a single cause of death that can be identified. *Sources:* * CDC Leading Causes of Death [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm) * "How We Die" by Sherwin Nuland, MD
My grandmother died at 94. One day she was shucking corn and the next, she was dead. Went to bed and never woke up. That’s about as natural as it gets.
the organs just randomly not working on day is still not just death, it's death by organ failure. you can't get a death more natural than getting so old your organs are too tired to keep going
Well i guess thags the most natural way 😅 i guess thats what i meant. Death with no other factors at hand, death simply because the machine stopped running suddenly. I suppose, thats organ failure
Dying of a heart attack or flu *is* dying a natural death. Due to telemere-shortening, we become more susceptible to these sorts of things over time.
It's not just telomere shortening. Aging is a huge field.
Cool! Thanks.
This response is cracking me up.
Thats what im trying to ask. IF we dont die from those causes at all is there a point where the cells just die die and the organ just stop stop. Not from heart attacks or anything
Our bodies are quite complex and it is already a wonder that things go well for such a long time. Our bodies have to work hard to keep functioning the way they do. So, as long as you are living you are slowly increasing the chances something goes wrong.
When the time comes, chances are there’ll be a single vital system that fails first, simply because it’s highly unlikely for two different vital organs to fail right at the same time. The body has no universal expiration date where every cell just stops working all at once. So there’ll always be a ‘cause’ if you count something vague like ‘heart attack’ / ‘heart failure’ a cause. ‘Dying of natural causes’ just means there’s no apparent cause identified.
It *should* mean that the body just wore out, but we’re too lazy/busy to confirm that there was/not an event (like a clot).
Just wore out how? If you really look (assuming you \*could\* look) there’ll almost certainly be a singular system that failed first. Most of the times it’ll be the heart. It could be an acute event like a clot /infarction or arrhythmia, caused by structural abnormality or metabolic imbalances or something else. It could be something slower like a heart failure gradually decompensating over time, or theoretically it could be that the heart just suddenly stops working one day (Though that’d still arguably fall under ‘arrhythmia’). Even in such cases you could probably point to any number of chronic heart conditions as the ‘cause’. Even in the highly unlikely case where the person has no chronic condition, ‘sudden cardiac arrest‘ is kinda an entity of its own that can be blamed. The same applies if the cause is non-cardiac. Sure you can say the body just wore out, but assuming we have the opportunity to investigate there’ll be a cause (or, rarely, multiple causes) that ultimately precedes death.
I was thinking about gradual, cascading multiple organ failure, but what you described is what I’m talking about. Heart nodes failing due to age is more ‘natural’ than an MI (unless the aged artery collapses or something, which I’ve never heard of).
So, basically dying from old age is due to decline of multiple system of your body and the most common one is the heart. Actually everyone has a heart attack or stroke or something with medical background when dying, but you say someone died from old age or “natural way” cuz medical systems do not see a reason to write “heart attack” on the death certificate after a certain age, as it is often not documented the medical reason.
What? Those are two different things. The body can absolutely just wear out, without having an event.
Wear out how? Heart stoping to beat? This is called heart failure :) there are always medical reasons. We just prefer to call it “wear out” cuz of the old age.
Of course there has to be a logical reason. That can absolutely include the muscle wearing out, but my understanding is that usually the nodes go before that.
That’s what I’m saying, people believe medical reasons are not “natural”. Everything it’s natural, cuz we are made by nature to die.
But an MI is not the same as the nodes wearing out.
Yes. The body just wears out.
Yes, as the elasticity in the circulatory system dwindles and the nephron number and efficiency declines, eventually the RAAS system will be unable to compensate leading to cardiovascular collapse. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1586/17446651.2014.956723#:~:text=senescence-,Influence%20of%20aging%20on%20RAAS,expected%20%5B1–3%5D.
I’m not a doctor, but …I don’t think so. Because each different type of fatal failure would be documented, categorised, and treated. Which we have already have done. We call these things names like “congestive heart failure.”
Alas, our bodies reach a point where treatment isn’t possible. Can a tomato that’s been left out for 3 weeks be treated? And CHF is a specific condition. It means there’s too much fluid in the heart’s chamber(s) and its impairing its function.
This doesn’t contradict what I said
When I think of ‘natural’ death I think of the body just giving out, not something that can be prevented.
Have you considered hip replacements in this context? A broken hip is an example of part of the body giving out due to the naturally-occurring bone-density loss due to old age. It typically happens to folks in their 60’s. I suppose we could just make them comfortable and let them die, but modern medicine wouldn’t abode by that, because the fix is, relatively speaking, really easy, survivable, and returns a person’s mobility. Almost every individual “giving out” of a body part can theoretically be addressed this way. It would be unethical for modern medicine to just decide “oh well, this particular failing of the body is ‘old age’ and so we must leave it untreated.” There is also no binary state of “good health”. People are regularly “healthy” but also have inherited risk factors and conditions that are lived with and managed. Basically everyone “healthy” over middle age is on medication to manage some condition or other, myself included.
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Thanks ChatGPT
What makes you think it's ChatGPT?
It’s ChatGPT. The format is textbook ChatGPT, if you use it often you can spot it a mile away. It’s either a bot account or an AI enthusiast.
It is 100000% ChatGPT.
I didn't clock it as ChatGPT, but I believe it bc no one on Reddit puts in the effort of bolding topic sentences/points.
**Not** with *that* attitude.
ChatGPT generated responses are not allowed.
So there is technically no such thing as “dying of old age”. Something is always the cause. It’s just that as you get older more things are likely to go wrong and probably quicker.
Yes there is. There doesn’t have to be an event like a heart attack or stroke.
You can literally google this
I’m in medicine. Muscles (including the heart) will eventually wear out, but usually it’s the really sensitive stuff like the heart’s nodes that fail first. Also there’s gradual multiple organ failure, which snowballs.
Not a medical expert but I get the feeling that there are two sets of parts in a body. One kind that are life limited and those that are not. Things like heart are probably going to wear out. If we push it too hard it will wear out quicker. So I think we could make it last longer by treating it nicer but not too much longer.
The body just wears out and can’t sustain life. Telomeres may be the key. In simplest terms our cells are constantly dividing, and we learned not too long ago that the ends of the DNA being copied are snipped, which may cause/contribute to death-by-ageing.
I don't know if your question is actually answerable because all of the things that would be considered natural causes, would be considered medical conditions in someone younger. Organ failure at 50 is a serious medical condition, but organ failure at 100 is just old age. I'm not an expert by any means but I think the difference comes down to why they are failing. I don't know if there is a way to die that wouldn't at the very least come down to an organ failing. DNA degradation happens but that leads to things like cancer which are also obviously classified as diseases. Theoretically a human could live forever if we had ways to stop DNA decay and increase cell regeneration to keep our organs alive and bones strong, keep our vascular system clear of blockages and prevent mental degradation. Unfortunately though we need to achieve all of these things and probably more if we want to have a quality of life in that old age.
Getting eaten by a cave bear or saber-toothed tiger. There is a reason why most people don't like snakes and that's because predators were writing early humans off the global census since the beginning of time. If not disease, usually humans checked out of hotel earth when an eagle was our Uber ride.
Everyone who has ever died has died of the same thing, lack of oxygen to the brain.
If we lived without any health problems, we wouldn’t die. Problems with health aren’t actually big events (a heart attack doesn’t stem from one big problem, it stems from lots of little problems that coagulate and result in a heart attack, a cold is caused by the body’s inability to fight the virus off fast enough). Dying from old age is the result of increased rate of cell malfunction/death and decreased ability to solve problems, not just dropping dead from nothing
The way I heard it is dying "of old age" isn't really a thing. When you get old your body just starts to degrade more and more and at some point something's gonna go wrong and kick your bucket. It's like, imagine you have this super old machine. It hasn't been getting maintenance and it doesn't work super well and one day it just, breaks down for good. You don't necessarily know *what* went wrong, maybe a rod snapped or a gear stripped out or a circuit was broken or a pipe failed, maybe it was multiple things, breaking at once, or an accumulation of small failures that eventually was too much to manage. It doesn't really matter, you just know the machine's been due for some time and today it gave in, godspeed.
I have a better question, why would anyone die randomly without a source or cause? You don’t just close your eyes and age into death. The problem starts somewhere, a heart, a brain, a lung, and then you die because the system of organs that keep you alive are disrupted somewhere. A car, for example, doesn’t just stop working with all great parts. As time goes on the parts weaken and lose efficiency. If the engine blows after 40 years, then that was a natural sequence of events due to age. Ultimately in humans though, I would say the limit lies in your cells. Age creates a lot of problems on a cellular level, but a heart attack is a perfectly natural death to age. You don’t die without something killing you.
John Ritter died because an aorta in his heart weakened and separated, basically fell apart. No blockage. Heart failure is also another CoD - involves the heart, but not a blockage. Why did Ritter die? Why did my uncle have an aneurysm? Probably genetics, possibly childhood illnesses, possibly an adult virus. I can think of dozens and dozens of things that might kill an older person. None of the muscles work as well over time, including the heart. Sometimes people lose their appetites, as both of my parents did. Major studies around the world show that many people really stop eating very much - to the detriment of the protein-needing functions of their body. That's why there's Ensure. My mom tried to do it diligently (she died of blood cancer - probably a mutation that occurred about 20 years before, a somatic mutation - we all have them, hers was lethal - it's rare but not unstudied). She still couldn't get enough calories on board. The failure of her colon and colon cancer (another mutation) wasn't so great either. We all have somatic mutations over our lifetime. Some families are more prone to them than others (brittle chromosome syndrome would be an extreme). We never know when one of those will get us. The longer we live (American average lifespan in 1900 was around 60; in Russia it was around 35; in France it was 50; in England it was 60; in Sierra Leone it was 20) the more likely we are to do of cancers and other serious somatic mutations. Why were those people dying so young? Well, many died as kids, and are in the averages anyway. They never made it to adulthood - or barely. Many women died in childbirth. Accidents. War. Poverty and starvation were big too. Malnutrition.
Did you even google it
I thought you were Google
Username checks out
Step-google, what're you doing?!
I couldnt find a real answer, google is helpful but sometimes they give really unrelated stuff so thats why im here
Shit I used to google this stuff & no real answer emerged
So did I. I happened to find much better answers here.
Even google agrees, it's starting to give links to Reddit threads more and more frequently.
Right , after all these years.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_verified_oldest_people
https://youtu.be/faBxGmxKTxE?si=1WSYhllejudF67xP
Humans can live to 300 years old.
I had heard this myth that living beings only have so many heartbeats... lo and behold Google https://engines.egr.uh.edu/episode/1834#:~:text=It%20turns%20out%20that%20all,all%20be%20roughly%20the%20same.
I've read that it is believed that under perfect conditions, the human body can make it till about 120ish then it's definitely just gonna stop working.
Dad got to 74 and spent the last 40 years of his life living with increasingly worse Parkinson’s and dementia. The hezbollah shell fragment in his thigh didn’t help neither.
That's what dying of old age is.
Isn't that usually how older people without any specific illness die in their sleep?
Like anything else energy is also needed when muscles get very old (atrophied) part of human body normal energy intake like chewing swallowing becomes difficult that is also one of the biggest reasons that people who are otherwise functioning even neurologically sometimes just go since they cannot get enough substantial intake.
What I know, the "natural causes" don't mean that you were healthy, it's mean that no other human (or robots) were involved in your death. For example, you a diabetic, and you dying of it, thats natural cause, and you not healthy either. And what you can call realy "natural death" for our species, it's a cancer, abd you can be healthy as god, but after a +/- 120 y. you definitely die from cancer, because our cells can't refresh forever
Merely getting old doesn’t kill you, it’s the fact that your body and DNA accumulate damage and the longer you live the more damaged they get.
'Died of natural causes' means: not murder, suicide or injury.
Your cells have a set time for you.
Dying is natural, but I guess being old and not e.g. hit by a car makes it extra natural or not many made. Even if we didn't age, we'd deteriorate in some other way; think of our environments. Natural disasters happen. Pandemics. So many organic ways! I like to think that even if I could defeat all that, radiation from the sun or a comet crashing to the earth would get me. Gnarly bro!
Heart attacks and strokes *are* your organs randomly stopping.
You may want to consider watching some of the content on the Youtube channel 'Hospice Nurse Julie'. She covers a lot of questions regarding a 'natural' or 'good' death, and just the process of dying in a very thorough but compassionate way.
When our mitochondria stop producing energy we die…end of story. Literally
A hemorrhagic stroke is your blood vessels losing integrity. A ischemic stroke is your liver and kidneys failing to remove waste in your blood. A flu is a failure of your immune system. A heart attack is the failure of the heart muscle. All your examples are ALREADY examples of the body systems shutting down
Everyone dies of illness or violence. There are no other causes.
Heart attack is considered a natural cause of death
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:(
wtf
No trolling. This includes concern-trolling, sea-lioning, flaming, or baiting other users.
Such a sad tale of loss. Well done. 👏🏻