You Don’t Actually Die From Old Age Here’s What Really Happens

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]How do you actually die from old age?

[00:00:02]Surprise, you don't actually die from old age. But let me explain what happens to your body. This might actually surprise you, but no one actually dies from old age. You know, on a death certificate, it doesn't say old age.

[00:00:14]There is always some reason why the person has died. So, let's talk about how our body operates and how as we age, things change and how we actually die.

[00:00:26]Even if we are 95 and seemingly healthy, what are we actually dying from? It's not old age. Our bodies are amazing, right? The second we are born, first off, we survive birth. Okay, someone's giving birth and as a baby, we are surviving it. Our bodies know how to do that. Our bodies know what to do once we are out of the birth canal. And like here we are, Earth. Our bodies naturally start living outside our mother's womb and we start growing. And our body is this miraculous thing that is like constantly growing. and then also making changes and fixes and doing things to help us survive. And when we're young or younger, our body is amazing at repairing cells, at fighting off infections, at keeping all of our organs working well and working together, our heart, our lungs, our kidney, our liver.

[00:01:14]And then over time, if we are lucky enough, seriously, if we're lucky enough to be aging, those things start not working as well, not staying as balanced. Maybe one starts becoming more affected, right? Our kidneys are not functioning as well. When our kidneys are not functioning as well, that causes issues with all the other organs. So, as we age, that starts slowly happening.

[00:01:40]And for some people, right, genetically, they have inherited something where their kidneys aren't great. There's more issues and it causes their heart and lungs to have more issues. There are some people who everything's aging pretty pretty well in their in their mid80s, right? But still, just because of time in age, no matter how healthy you are, those organs, I wouldn't even say are failing, but they're just not working as well together. They're not as balanced. So it starts affecting the whole body. This is what we call aging at a cellular level. Okay? Things are not being repaired as easily. Things are not dividing as efficiently. And over time this accumulates to damage. And then if you get old enough, no matter how healthy you are, things can start failing. So when we say someone dies from old age and I can say this from experience all my grandma, my other grandma and my grandpa all died in their mid 90s and all of them could have been considered dying just because of old age but that's not really true. One grandma died from is congestive heart failure ultimately. My grandpa died from other cardiac issues and my other grandma died from some kind of lung disease. Right?

[00:03:01]So all of these things they probably had in their 80s and then their body just eventually eventually eventually eventually eventually couldn't keep it up, right? Their body got old enough that this disease eventually caused them to die. But what it looked like was very peaceful, very gradual. They were just sleeping all the time. They were not eating as much. They weren't moving as much. And then eventually they died. And it was from heart disease. But it looked more like what you would typically say like, "Oh, they just were so old they eventually died in their bed from old age, which is a beautiful thing. I would love that." But technically, it was cardiac stuff. So, what actually causes death in people who are, you know, very old in their 80s or 90s? What's written on the death certificate? Number one is usually heart failure. Heart failure of some kind. Their heart eventually failed, right? It probably was just getting weaker and weaker and things weren't working as well. So you just see them, what it would look like is you see them again just sleeping more, eating less, sleeping more, eating less, becoming more frail, right? They may get some tests early on which show their hearts getting quote unquote weaker. So usually what's written there is heart failure. The second thing we see a lot, which I'm sure a lot of you might have experience with, is infections. So two things that happen, they're a little different, but I see it all the time.

[00:04:21]Infections or falls. So infections because the person is elderly and their body is not fighting off infections as well. That is why the flu can cause an elderly person to die because their body is not well enough to fight this off. So it can affect them so much that they end up dying from the infection. So what could be on their death certificate would be like pneumonia. So someone died from pneumonia. Did they? Yes, maybe that was the ultimate reason why they died, but technically it was likely because they were elderly and their body was not functioning as well and not fighting off infection as well. Falls are a big thing, too. You see someone who is 85, you know, their body's not working as well because they're 85, but they're still up and walking, doing their thing, and then they have one fall, right? One fall. They break their hip or they break their arm, which makes them immobile. And then when you're immobile and elderly, you have a lot of complications. Sometimes you get blood clots. Sometimes you get pneumonia cuz you're laying around a lot or you get some kind of UTI, some kind of infection, which can lead to getting into your blood, which could lead to sepsis. And because you're older, your body can't take all of that. Next thing you know, your pretty healthy 85-year-old grandma is now in the hospital and then she gets some kind of infection in the hospital because she fell and then she dies and you're like, "What the heck?" So on the death certificate would likely be infection, but it was caused usually by some kind of fall. Number three that I see a lot has organ failure. So some kind of organ failure. The kidneys start failing, which causes everything else to be affected. The liver, for whatever reason, if it starts failing, I see this less, but it's all kind of interconnected, right? So if one starts failing, it causes the rest to fail. And eventually this person is too old. All the interventions that we would normally do wouldn't really work. So they die.

[00:06:07]and it seems like they're dying from old age, but it's likely from one of their organs failing just because of time and age. And this last one, I'm sure, is going to hit a nerve for a lot of people because very generalized and and is very a gray area. They die from frailty or failure to thrive. What the heck does that mean? Right? And and it is written on some death certificates. This is what happens when someone is elderly usually and usually they've had some things go on. Maybe their spouse dies and then they have a fall and then they've had an infection. Then they got the flu and they got dehydrated or something, right?

[00:06:45]They they've had a bad year. You'd usually hear they've had a bad year.

[00:06:49]They've been in and out of the hospital because they were in the hospital for two weeks. They got a bed sore. Then they got then they got weak. So they stopped walking. we took them a month to to to walk again. There's just a lot of things, right? And over time, this affects them. They might become a little more depressed. They might not really want to be eating and then they're sleeping more. One, because they're getting older. Two, they could be depressed. You know, their life has changed a lot. They lost their life partner and now they've been in and out of the hospital and they're just over it. They're just tired, right? And they can't explain to you why. You're going, "Mom, you got to eat. You got to eat.

[00:07:26]you're you know you're you're you're weak because you're not eating. She's kind of like I don't have any interest and I don't want to. I'm trying but I can't. And it's just this kind of downward spiral until they die. And that's hard for people that's hard for people to understand like man if she just could have or she just would have or if they wouldn't have fallen or if I would have been there. And really I I do think it is a part of life sometimes when someone's at an upper age there's a lot of change. It's hard to change.

[00:07:55]their body is not as resilient and it's just one way the body can kind of start going downhill and then once it's going downhill there's like this momentum right and then it causes them to die but that area is gray and confusing and for the people who are with their loved ones watching them they feel I think an over responsibility of like I wish I could have if only I would have and that's not necessarily fair for them this is what happens a lot And a lot of the reason why it's happening is because the person is elderly. What I will say from a hospice point of view, let's say all of my grandparents were on hospice. By the time they got on hospice, they were one of those patients who was like very vague as to why they were on service, right? All all the hospice company knows is like here's a 95year-old person with some cardiac issues, not really eating and sleeping all the time. Okay, the terminal diagnosis is the cardiac stuff.

[00:08:50]Okay, but really it's all of the things.

[00:08:52]They're 95. They have some cardiac issues. They've lost 30 pounds in three months because of whatever reason.

[00:09:00]They're older. Their body's kind of shutting down. They're sleeping more.

[00:09:02]So, they're appropriate for hospice.

[00:09:04]Okay. My whole point to saying this is those are the patients that usually have very peaceful deaths. Those are the patients that I see not really needing a lot of medication for symptoms because their body is like our bodies are built to do this. Our bodies are built to die.

[00:09:21]their body is queuing in like, "Hey, this is we're getting towards the end.

[00:09:24]We are on this journey. We're going to turn off that hunger and thirst mechanism. We're going to make them sleep all the time and we're going to start shutting down." Yeah. I mean, these are the patients that I see not need any medications at the end of life.

[00:09:37]Now, I'm not one to like ride that home like no medications is great. I mean, people need medications. Why? Yes, give it to them. Or if you think they need to relax a little more, go ahead. It's not going to hurt them, right? But these are the typical patients that I see that have a very gradual, very gentle, very regulated and peaceful end of life. So that's where this whole like I just want to be in bed and die of old age. Like when I think about my grandparents, it is like they were in bed and they just died of old age. Now because I'm a nurse, I know better. I know they didn't die just of old age. They died because their bodies were shutting down and a certain one of their organs failed.

[00:10:15]Usually the heart, at least in my grandparents. So that's why they died.

[00:10:18]But they were in bed, they were old, and it was peaceful.

[00:10:23]I'm into that. So old age is not an actual medical cause of death, but it is a very real experience as many of you guys, I'm sure, have experience with your loved ones. So the gradual winding down of a body that has lived a long time and understanding how and why that is happening can take a lot of fear and a lot of the scariness out of the end of life.