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Death and the Causes of Death

Updated on 6th August 2008 by Dr Charles Tweed and Alistair Tweed.

What kills us? There are several possible culprits for the cause of your death. For most of human history, these causes have remained fairly constant, but we now live in a rapidly changing world and the main players such as the four horsemen of the apocalypse have undergone a stringent round of redundancies and cut backs. Indeed, only 'Death' is still gainfully employed. 'War', 'Conquest' and 'Famine' appear to have been outsourced to the developing world and appear to be only working part-time. Indeed, the relegation of 'Famine' is particularly noteworthy bearing in mind that obesity is a now a major cause of illness, premature aging and death.

Let's introduce you to Death's current methods and the causes behind them:

Trauma or accident.
Cardiovascular disease.
Neurodegenerative diseases and conditions.
Cancer.
Diabetes.

Trauma and Accident - Don't die before your time.

The greatest cause of death in the 15-40 year old population in most western societies is trauma, primarily road accidents (outside of the US). Fully 50% of these road accidents involve alcohol. The majority of the others involved travelling at excess speed. Planning good health for your latter years is pointless if you don't make it to middle age. Whatever your age, the take home messages are not hard to spot: Don't drink and drive, and slow down. Even minor reductions in speed increase the chances of survival, and think of the petrol you will save!

Unfortunately, making these behavioural adjustments yourself isn't enough to remove the risk of road use completely. You are still at risk from those people not bright enough to have spotted the take home messages - they don't just kill themselves. Consequently, when you travel by road, we recommend doing so in a larger vehicle wherever possible as this significantly decreases the chances of death and injury. So maybe you won't save any petrol after all. Sorry about raising your hopes back there...

Cardiovascular Disease, Neurodegenerative Conditions, Cancer and Diabetes.

If you are able to survive the risks you expose yourself to during youth, ultimately, these are the diseases of aging that you are eventually likely to succumb to. It may seem strange to lump all these disparate conditions together, but we do so for a very good reason.

In most cases, these conditions are either brought on by, or exacerbated by, poor lifestyle choices. Therefore, we can use the same strategies to take them all on. To do this, we need to do two things:

Firstly, we must look at what risk factors increase the likelihood of us falling victim to one of them.
Secondly, we must look at the strategies that decrease those chances.

Risk Factors.

There are many factors and lifestyle choices that can impact general health and well being. Obviously, staying away from black market drugs and excess alcohol are sensible health choices. So is avoiding unprotected sex with anyone who is not forthcoming about their sexual health status and history. However, there are two risk factors that are far more prevalent. These are smoking and obesity.

Smoking.
Far and away the single most important of these is smoking. Pretty much everything else is a waste of time if you continue to smoke: it is the single most important, modifiable risk factor for heart disease, lung disease (COPD and asthma), stroke, high blood pressure and most cancers, along with a list of other diseases that would stretch from one end of a coffin to the other. Cigarette smoke contains over 4000 different chemicals. Many of these chemicals are potent carcinogens. All of these are inhaled to obtain just one: nicotine. Some studies have shown it is harder to give up smoking than to give up heroin, however, it is paramount to do so if you wish to lead an active and healthy life. Cutting down is not an option, you need to quit. Using nicotine replacement, support programmes and coping techniques have all been shown to increase your chances of success. Involvement of family members is critical; if someone else is smoking in your household it is not going to make it any easier. aging-management.com recommends you talk it over with your GP, support agency and family, plan a date and use nicotine replacement therapy. Remember, keep going even if you suffer a set back. The rewards are worth it.

Obesity.
Obesity is set to become the next great health epidemic for developed, and increasingly, developing countries. Rates of obesity have sky-rocketed in the US and other western countries. Most of the problems with being overweight are due to 3 factors:

Metabolic syndrome.
Arthritis.
Depression.

The metabolic syndrome is thought to be primarily due to an abnormal resistance to insulin. As a result type II diabetes, high blood pressure, inflammation, high blood lipids and cholesterol etc occur which accelerates the risks of heart disease, strokes, cancers and the rate of aging.