If the cause of death is some organ failure, what triggers at the celluar level?
In: Biology
The details vary a lot in each case. You often have a cascading failure where one issue triggers another issue. In older people you almost always find cancer and pneumonia as part of the reason they die. So you may for example have cancer which reduces the immune system which allows pneumonia to get a hold which fills the lungs with liquid which reduces the amount of oxygen in the blood which can lead to oxygen starvation in the heart muscles which reduces the capacity of the heart which further reduces the amount of oxygen in the blood until the heart stops and all cells in the body is now left without oxygen. The last part of this is true for every death, if the heart stops you can not get oxygen to your cells and unless you can restore blood flow with things like chest compressions you are dead.
That’s an interesting question. When someone passes away in their sleep, it’s often due to the body naturally shutting down as a result of aging or underlying health conditions. At the cellular level, the organs may stop functioning properly, leading to a lack of oxygen or blood flow to vital tissues. It’s a complex process, but our bodies have their own way of letting go when the time comes.
Ultimately we all die in exactly the same way, our heart stops beating. That’s it, nothing more than that. However, how we get to ‘the heart stops beating’ can be a very complex matter.
I imagine in the majority of cases they suffer some catastrophic, terminal event, such as a large stroke or heart attack, and that ends their life. They may or may not wake up during this…I’ve been to lots of elderly people who look like they’ve died peacefully in their sleep and others who had clearly woken and tried to get help, I remember one in particular frozen in rigor reaching for a bible on her bedside cabinet (I’m a paramedic).
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