We can say that the term “die of old age” is certainly confusing and arouses one’s curiosity as to what the actual cause of death is. Defining exactly what the term “die of old age” means, which came back to the agenda with the death of Queen Elizabeth II, may seem simple, but it is extremely difficult. hard.
Dying of old age is a rather vague definition as a cause of death. Technically, there is no such thing as dying of old age. However, it is a term generally used to generalize the causes when a person’s death occurs and must depend on a number of causes and factors.
In the UK, the term “die of old age” and this way of explaining the cause of death has a long history. In the 19th century, this definition was used to describe people who died suddenly or were “found dead.”
What conditions does “die of old age” depend on?
Today, there are strict rules and limited conditions that determine when you can put this term on a UK death certificate. For example, the doctor must have observed a deterioration in the patient’s health, dealt with the person himself for a long time, was not aware of another disease that caused the death, and there should be no reason to report the death to the coroner.
Often there are other reasons you can put on the certificate that better describes the cause of death. For example, the leading causes of death in England and Wales in 2021 were COVID-19, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also says that the leading causes of death in Americans aged 65 and over are heart disease, cancer and COVID-19.
As a person ages, some common problems can affect them more, such as a weakened immune system and the inability of cells to renew themselves as easily as before. Therefore, some diseases that a younger, healthy person can overcome with relative ease can cause death in an older person. For example, if an elderly person is “feeling exhausted” and then goes to the hospital for a checkup, he or she may catch pneumonia from that environment and eventually cause death. But at the end of the day, the cause of death is not old age; is a disease. And it cannot be said that this person “died of old age” because he did not comply with the above conditions.
Still, deaths from age-related causes are becoming more common every day. Since 1800, global life expectancy has increased, and due to the advancement of medicine, residents in some parts of the world are living more than twice as long as our ancestors. But life expectancy began to decline in 2020-2021, to its lowest levels since 1996, the CDC reported. This decline appears to be largely tied to the COVID-19 outbreak.
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