Apparently this is what Sinead O’Connor died of, it’s just been announced. But how is a 56 year old just dying in any way natural in this day and age?
In: Biology
Usually it’s a cardiac event.
Old people sleep a lot. Sick people sleep a lot. So when an old person goes to sleep because they’re not feeling well, it’s usually chalked up to them just being old.
Often times, the thing that kills them is the thing that is making them not feel well. So they go lay down, fall asleep, get worse while they’re asleep, and then they’re often found deceased when they don’t wake up from their nap / in the morning. Increased fatigue is a hallmark sign of cardiac involvement. How do you fix fatigue? With a nap.
Most of the Dead On Arrival’s we made (EMS) were between the hours it 9am-noon. When people are usually awake, but today, they weren’t.
Natural causes is a coroner’s term, not a medical term. Often listed on the death certificate. In the absence of a single, known cause, it’s usually ruled as natural causes. As long as it isn’t suspicious, criminal, or otherwise “weird,” the coroner isn’t going to put in for an autopsy. They’ll rule it natural causes and release the body to the funeral home.
The death certificate is a legal document. It has to be reasonably accurate. Especially when a crime or accident occurs. Imagine a homicide but the death certificate states natural causes. Now the defense has a leg to stand on stating that the victim did not die as a result of their clients actions. That’s a problem.
Most medical deaths aren’t going to court. So “natural causes” is good enough.
Insurance also plays a part. Life insurance may have certain stipulations in which a certain cause of death may not be covered. Some policy’s don’t cover suicides within X months of taking out the policy. Some policy’s only cover certain causes of death (a scuba diving accident being covered by specific scuba diving insurance). Some policies exclude certain causes of death (aviation accidents not covered for pilots).
ELI5: When you’re not feeling well, you say you’re sick. You don’t always know exactly why you’re sick, just that you’re sick. You could go to the doctor to figure it out but that costs time and money, and it’s not usually going to change much. Sometimes it does when you need medicine, but that’s a special occasion. When you go to the doctor and figure out what you’re sick with and to get medicine; now you’re not just sick, you have strep.
We don’t always know why people die. We could figure it out, but it takes extra time and money. Most of the time, finding out exactly what it is doesn’t change anything. Sometimes it’s a special occasion and we need to know why they died. When that happens, it’s no longer just natural causes. It’s something else.
Usually it’s heart failure, but you’re not going to know for sure unless you do an autopsy. But who wants to go to the trouble of performing an autopsy on a 90 year old? It’s a 99% chance it was heart failure. But quite frankly we just don’t care enough to go to the effort to confirm it when someone is old.
As you get older your body starts to fail. When your heart fails, that it, game over.
“Natural causes” is a catch-all term that means no external or obvious acute event caused the death. It’s not common for death certificates where I am to say “natural causes,” they will say one or more things that are more specific like the immediate cause of death (like heart failure, pneumonia) and any contributing factors (like chronic diseases or hypertension).
British cop here. If she died at home and was unexpected, there would have been a post mortem. There is only NO post mortem if it was expected. Natural causes likely means due to disease or, as some people state, not drugs/suicide/homicide.
“how is a 56 year old just dying in any way natural in this day and age?”
Easy:
* take drugs that damage your heart/liver/kidneys, causing them to fail eventually [sometimes years after use]
* ignore symptoms of illness for days/years/decades
* become so depressed you literally don’t want to live [affects eating, self-care, etc]
* suffer from a congenital condition [see all of the above]
I’m not saying Sinead O’Connor did or had any or all of these, but these are the fastest ways to die young.
F’instance: I had a headache for a week, on the top of my head. I told a co-worker about it and just for kicks she took my blood pressure. It was so high I went directly to the hospital.
Live n learn!
It basically just means that there were no indications/evidence/circumstances that warrant a police investigation of his death.
56 is well below average. However, average is exactly what it says: it is the average, when you add up all of the deaths that come younger and all of the deaths that come older and then divide it back out by how many people there are.
Average doesn’t mean that everyone comes into the world with a body that is likely to make it that many years.
I’m not sure how old you are, but I was in my late 20s when my peers’ parents started dying of natural causes. I was in my 30s when some of my peers started to experience lifethreatening health conditions like cancer, stroke, and heart disease. These all begin to become common causes of death when people reach their 50s–yes, many of us will make to our 70s and beyond, but many of us WON’T. You get the average by adding all of the deaths up, and many of them will fall earlier than the average. That’s how averages work.
My dad did it this morning. For a year he just got weaker. Increasing pain, weight loss, loss of hearing, and confusion. More sleep, decreased appetite. Incontinence, hospice, and death.
it can mean a lot of things but basically there’s a manner of death and a cause of death. Manner of death can be suicide homicide , accident natural or unknown and cause of death can be the specific cause so “natural , heart failure” would be one thing but “homicide , heart failure” would be another.
Natural is basically a way of saying “no further investigation is needed”
I am not saying this is how she died, but…
Imagine an addict, years of drugs and booze, that just wears down their body, so it’s as worn out and broken down as a 95 year old.
One day a part of that body fails to keep up. The heart pumps a bit too slow, the liver stops processing, whatever. A chain of events happens and the whole system just winds down and collapses.
It’s not a suicide, it’s not a murder. It’s *sort of* from a bad lifestyle, but it’s not even an overdose or alcohol poisoning. It’s just that a body that’s not longer capable of functioning stops functioning.
Sure – there’s probably *some* root cause in the moment, maybe technically a heart attack, or kidney failure or whatever. But at that point, it’s just that the entire system is brittle and about to fall over, and it finally failed.
Imagine a bridge made of bricks. One brick falls out, no problem. Then another, and another, and another. One day you just lose too many, and that bridge collapses. Would you say “the cause was clearly brick 23,453 being removed?” Or would you just say the bridge finally collapsed due to ongoing natural deterioration?
That’s more or less natural causes. Sure, *something* caused it, but it was just something that was naturally bound to happen at some point soon, regardless of external factors.
Latest Answers