• Question: why do you die of old age an there is nothing wrong with you

    Asked by anon-186556 to Verity, Trystan, Raquel, Danny, Catherine on 13 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Danny Ward

      Danny Ward answered on 13 Nov 2018:

      When people die of old age usually it means they die by something else but they are of such an age where it is considered normal and a natural part of life. Often people may pass away in their sleep, this is often related to death from natural causes. Natural causes could be anything from a simple flu, to heart failure to something else entirely.

    • Photo: Verity Hill

      Verity Hill answered on 13 Nov 2018:

      As Danny says, most people do die of something, but when they are very old we don’t investigate that death because everybody has to die at some point. Often people’s organs just sort of stop working how they should, so things build up and go wrong.
      Something that happens as you age is that your cells die more, and they are replaced less. This is because cells can only divide a certain number of times. This is an adaptation to protect us from cancer, which happens when cells become immortal and can continue dividing. So as your cells divide less, they replace faulty cells less and your organs don’t work as well.

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