Introduction

Note: I avoid euphemisms here. If you are made uncomfortable by frank discussion of fatal medical conditions, etc., please leave now. Reader discretion is advised.

There is a common notion, which pervades many aspects of our society, that when we reach a certain point, our body is just so worn out and so weak that it can no longer sustain itself, and we "die peacefully in our sleep" or something to that effect. While it does appear that no one can live to see 123 candles on their birthday cake, no one dies of "old age". If every organ in the body functions at its correct, non-diseased capacity, "normal" even for a person's age, we probably would live to be about 200. For example, the maximum heart rate in "healthy" humans is often stated to be 220 minus age. If this can be extrapolated forward, at the age of 200, the hypothetical maximum rate of 20 beats per minute would not be enough to stay alive, thus, a person would "die of old age" because the normal, non-diseased capacity of this organ (the heart) is not adequate to sustain life. The same argument can be made for other organs. Nothing as a result of aging alone, inevitably loses so much capacity that we can't stay alive, at any age that humans have ever reached.

Cells in the human body die when they are deprived of oxygen and nutrients for too long. The respiratory and cardiovascular systems (lungs, heart, blood vessels) are required to deliver oxygen and nutrients, and the brain is needed to keep theses systems running. If these systems are blocked or prevented from working for more than a few minutes, death results, no matter how young or healthy the person was (exceptions can occur if the core body temperature is low enough, but that is another matter...). There are a number of ways this can occur. The top four, in order of decreasing frequency (in developed countries), are:

1. Blood is physically blocked (by a clot, tumor, etc.) from accessing something very important such as a major part of the heart, lungs, or brain. That tissue dies of oxygen deprivation and forms an infarct and can no longer function, or, in the case of lungs, loses its ability to exchange oxygen with the circulation. When this occurs at a large enough scale, vital functions go down, and death results.
2. Part of the circulatory system springs a leak. Blood escapes until the blood volume is too low to meet the needs of the body, and death results. This requires that a very large fraction of the blood (such as 75%) is lost, even at the age of 115. Loss of enough blood is always, unconditionally lethal, no matter what the age or health.
3. Some cells have genetic changes causing them to divide uncontrollably (cancer). If the cancer spreads to more and more parts of the body, eventually a point is reached when some organs can no longer function because too many cells have been taken over.
4. An infection causes toxins to be released into the blood. These toxins act at the cellular level to damage cells in such a way that the vital functions fail, resulting in death. Alternatively, it can result in physical changes to tissue, such as inflammation, that in turn lead to #1 or #2 above. The toxins are not produced in such quantities by normal cells, even at the age of 115. However, at any age and in any state of health a large enough amount of certain bacterial toxins is lethal.

And in most cases, we die of one of these things which can occur slowly, but often is very sudden. We die because of a definite cause, a pathological state of some part of the body, which is not normal for a person's age even if you're 115. We do not die of old age. If we can prevent the above things from happening, could we live to be 200? I don't know, but the main diseases leading to these things are often called "preventable" by the "health and wellness" advocates. In all likelihood, those circulatory system errors are not preventable, but delayable. If it is just assumed that you will be dead by the age of 95, say, then "prevention" of heart disease is merely delaying it from, say, 70 to 90 years of age.

As much as we want to be in denial, Granny didn't die of old age in her sleep. We may wish not to do an autopsy to find that she died because her ruptured arteries caused her to lose several liters of blood suddenly, or we don't like to think that she had massive blood clots in the middle of the night and suffocated to death...

From the Oxford Journals Life Sciences & Medicine The Journals of Gerontology: Series A Volume60, Issue7 Pp. 862-865      http://biomedgerontology.oxfordjournals.org/content/60/7/862.full , we have

"Conclusions. Centenarians [people over 100 years of age], though perceived to have been healthy just prior to death, succumbed to diseases in 100% of the cases examined [in the autopsy study]. They did not die merely “of old age.” The 100% post mortem diagnosis of death as a result of acute organic failure justifies autopsy as a legal requirement for this clinically difficult age group."


I shall end with a quote:

“Among all my autopsies (and I have performed well over a thousand), I have never seen a person who died of old age. In fact, I do not think anyone has died of old age yet. To permit this would be the ideal accomplishment of medical research. To die of old age would mean that all the organs of the body had worn out proportionately, merely by having been used too long. This is never the case. We invariably die because one vital part has worn out too early in proportion to the rest of the body…The lesson seems to be that, as far as man can regulate his life by voluntary actions, he should seek to equalize stress throughout his being…The human body – like the tires on a car, or a rug on a floor – wears longest when it wears evenly.” – Hans Selye, The Stress of Life (quoted in Adrenalin and Stress) Taken from http://missionalthoughts.wordpress.com/2010/06/29/no-one-dies-of-old-age/ on Aug. 22, 2010