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What kills healthy people?

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a thing

Greenlighter
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What are the leading causes of death among healthy people (especially in developed areas with reliable access to clean food, water, and medical facilities) that avoid easily preventable infectious diseases, AIDS, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer? I have no particular reason for asking; I am just curious.
 
If there are no other external causes of death, eventually aging will weaken the body enough that something will happen. This is due to a mechanism called telomeric aging. Each chromosome has a tail of essentially nonsense base pairs that gets a bit shorter each time the cell splits. After the cell runs out of telomere (the nonsense bit), then important stuff starts to get axed, and the cell basically dies. It's been theorized that this originally developed as a means of preventing cancer by reducing the likelihood of any individual cell living long enough to get a random uncorrected mutation.

In the end though, it's often it's pneumonia that does people in. We all owe death a life.
 
I like to think I am leading a healthy lifestyle. I do what I can to avoid disease.
I bet I'll die from a freak brain aneurysm but I won't be around to collect.
 
Old age?

If a person is truly health (no health complication related deaths) then it should be a natural old age death...
 
Dave said:
If there are no other external causes of death, eventually aging will weaken the body enough that something will happen. This is due to a mechanism called telomeric aging. Each chromosome has a tail of essentially nonsense base pairs that gets a bit shorter each time the cell splits. After the cell runs out of telomere (the nonsense bit), then important stuff starts to get axed, and the cell basically dies. It's been theorized that this originally developed as a means of preventing cancer by reducing the likelihood of any individual cell living long enough to get a random uncorrected mutation.
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Hmm, interesting. Is this a hypothesis or is this solidly proven? I was under the impression that there are several or many hypotheses of how aging works, but none have been very solidly proven.

rike1 said:
Old age?

If a person is truly health (no health complication related deaths) then it should be a natural old age death...
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Yeah, I know. But I was looking for an explanation of what exactly that is.
 
a thing said:
What?


I do not doubt that stress can contribute to death, especially in people with cardiovascular problems. However, I do doubt that it is a significant direct cause of death.
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Really you question genetics. So how is it that a person who eats healthy and exercises regularly dies from a heart attack or some other disease. Seems like a condition passed on by a family mutation. Lets look at some other examples. Take for example heart disease, sickle cell disease, hemoglobin M Disease... the list goes on. . Many diseases are related to genetic deformities so don't dismiss them so easily. A person can be healthy their whole life and quickly die from one of these genetically passed diseases.

And really you doubt stress is a leading cause of premature death. That is surprising considering the effects stress can have on your body. It pretty much suppresses all functions of the immune system causing underlying diseases to flourish significantly affecting your health.
 
Stress causes disease. When cells are exposed to cortisol (a hormone released when a person is stressed) they close the pores that allow nutrients in and excrement out. This weakens the cells and creates illness.
 
As a population ages, there are more individuals that are prone to disease such as heart disease or cancers. Cancer in particular can strike "healthy" individuals with out apparant cause.

If you look at causes of death for under 20 yr old, this group would be considered a relative healthy group. Most in this age group die from accidents, drownings etc, motor vehicle accidents would also be high. Suicide in Australia is definitely top 5 in this age group.
 
a thing-- telomeric aging is proven to exist, but it is expressed differently in different species and even differently in different tissues within the same organism. It's also not the only mechanism behind aging. I don't know the current research, but I know that oxidative stress also plays a part.
 
cocacrazy said:
Really you question genetics. So how is it that a person who eats healthy and exercises regularly dies from a heart attack or some other disease. Seems like a condition passed on by a family mutation. Lets look at some other examples. Take for example heart disease, sickle cell disease, hemoglobin M Disease... the list goes on. . Many diseases are related to genetic deformities so don't dismiss them so easily. A person can be healthy their whole life and quickly die from one of these genetically passed diseases.
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Yes, many diseases are strongly related to genetic deformities. However, these diseases are quite rare. But it is not as simple as your genes tell you to die at age X.

cocacrazy said:
And really you doubt stress is a leading cause of premature death. That is surprising considering the effects stress can have on your body. It pretty much suppresses all functions of the immune system causing underlying diseases to flourish significantly affecting your health.
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Sorry if I was not clear in the OP. I meant this thread to be about healthy people that live to old age. What eventually does them off?
 
Dave said:
a thing-- telomeric aging is proven to exist, but it is expressed differently in different species and even differently in different tissues within the same organism. It's also not the only mechanism behind aging. I don't know the current research, but I know that oxidative stress also plays a part.
Click to expand...

Look up advanced glycated end products. These are the actual mechanism of oxidative aging. Essentially, your own metabolic process is what ages you through free radical byproducts.
 
I vote for cancer/heart issues. I'm not sure why you think cancer is easily preventable and heart issues can affect anyone regardless of how healthy they are. Especially when you're genetically predisposed to it. I know a guy who did triathlons and ate nothing but organic shit and blah blah blah was in perfect shape and one day he was out jogging and had a heart attack out of nowhere.

The funniest part is that he pulled out his cell phone and begged these people who were walking by to call 911 for him because he was having a heart attack and they just stared at him weird and walked away so he had to do it himself.
 
Crazy ex-girlfriends! =D Sorry I didn't read how you said into old age. Heart disease I'd guess, even if you're considered 'healthy' That plaque just builds up slowly over time.
 
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