4 ms·

I think this would be more useful if compared early death statistics to news reporting. Everyone dies and everyone knows that everyone dies. I’m not really in

I think this would be more useful if compared early death statistics to news reporting. Everyone dies and everyone knows that everyone dies. I’m not really interested in how I’m going to die of old age, but what I have to worry about today to avoid an early death. I think there’s probably still a difference in media reporting and probability but i’m guessing younger people 20-30 are most likely to die from vehicle accidents, accidents, suicide and drugs? I’m not sure though and I don’t have any evidence.

kulahan 1y ago
Avoiding an early death is a lifelong commitment to health. Knowing what the greatest dangers are helps direct your actions in support of that.
bell-cot 1y ago
There's quite a bit available about that. Search for "Years of Life Lost" or "Years of Potential Life Lost". Or for a quick start - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_potential_life_lost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_potential_life_lost
rybosworld 1y ago
I get what you're saying but on the flipside, heart disease is primarily not age-related. Something like 80%-90% of cases are preventable through lifestyle choices. And it's the number one cause of death. Cancer at #2 is more age-related. But that too is fairly preventable. Roughly 50% of cancers are thought to be related to poor lifestyle choices. Point being - these are major causes of early death.
- bad_haircut72 1y ago
  I wonder what has a bigger impact on longevity, lifestyle choices or being a multi-millionaire with access to the best healthcare.
  - Jtsummers 1y ago
    Despite their wishes, most people won't become millionaires. The part you can control is your own lifestyle. For the average person, this means your lifestyle will have more impact on your longevity than wishful thinking about one day being a multi-millionaire who can hire doctors to fix the problems you created by being sedentary, eating poorly, and overindulging on alcohol or other substances.
  - viccis 1y ago
    Wonder which is more realistic, address the horribly unhealthy eating patterns that are drilled into US citizens as soon as they start eating school lunches (if not before), or make all of us multi-millionaires with access to the best healthcare.
    - hermannj314 1y ago
      If you're a news agency, promise your viewers that if they just get angry enough then that free healthcare will be coming soon and then show them an ad from McDonalds and Eli Lilly.
  - recursive 1y ago
    You should also weight those with how practically attainable they are.
  - HardCodedBias 1y ago
    Being a "multi-millionaire with access to the best healthcare" in the US means that you sit in the same queues as everyone else. The best you can do is concierge care, but that only expedites primary care everything in the US is about specialists.
    - lazide 1y ago
      Hahaha, huh? If you have access to the best healthcare you definitely don’t wait in the same queues. You have direct access to the specialists, often at the best teaching hospitals too. If you have Medicare, good luck.
- daft_pink 1y ago
  1. Death isn’t preventable. We will all die, so if you prevent one cause of death in old age, you will just die of another cause of death. Sure it might extend your life a little bit, but I feel it’s entirely rational to seek out information on causes of immediate death as more relevant than causes of long term death. The probability of living much older than 100 is virtually nil. Probably good to have information on both though. 2. It’s possible they are major causes of early death, but I can’t figure that out from the article and it would be nice if the article provided that information.
  - lazide 1y ago
    Would you rather die by heart attack, cancer, or misadventure? Chances are, one of the three is going to happen. The longer you live, the more the first two are likely. Death by misadventure is possible at any point however!
  - slg 1y ago
    Although we should remember that “old age” is long. Someone can die at 72 from heart disease and people might just call that dying of old age when that person could have easily lived another decade or two if they made different lifestyle choices. That would be more of an “early death” than a centenarian dying in a car accident. The suddenness is irrelevant.
  - BeetleB 1y ago
    > We will all die, so if you prevent one cause of death in old age, you will just die of another cause of death. I can tell you're quite young :-) Old age is pretty broad, and you really need to start worrying at some point in your 40s. Although death due to these is rare at that age, you'll likely end up knowing 1-3 people who will die of these at that age. And a lot more in the 50s. There's a huge difference between dying in your 60s (perhaps right before retirement), and dying in your 80s. Lumping all of these people into "old age" is likely a byproduct of the same biases that cause journalism to not report on it.
- ajross 1y ago
  > heart disease is primarily not age-related Uh... it absolutely is? Not sure what you're trying to say here. All progressive diseases, including heart disease (cancer too) are going to be "age related" simply because they take time to develop. And plaque-related heart disease, the big killer, takes a long time to develop. The statistics are really clear here. People under 30 simply don't die of congestive heart failure absent one of a handful of very rare disorders. It starts to show up in middle age and really takes off after 70. They are preventable, sure. They are "early" deaths in that the sufferer would die before something else got them. But they absolutely skew toward the elderly. Heavily.
  - rybosworld 1y ago
    Not really - that's like saying that dying from smoking is primarily age-related, just because the damage you're doing takes time to accrue. https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/news/2023/numbers-know-healthy-heart https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/news/2023/numbers-know-healthy-hea...
    - ajross 1y ago
      Dying from smoking is age related! How many lung cancer deaths are there in 20-something chain smokers? Honestly I think you're interpreting "age related" differently than the upthread discussion. The point is to renormalize a cause of death to something like "lost years of life". So if you have a preventable death (from smoking, say) that kills people with on average 10 years of life left, that should be less notable than one (maybe homicide) that kills people with 60 years to go on average.
      - rybosworld 1y ago
        I looked up the definition of age-related and it's true that I'm misusing that term. My original comment was in reference to the OP's comment: > I’m not really interested in how I’m going to die of old age, but what I have to worry about today to avoid an early death. My point was just that heart disease is primarily not caused by natural aging (the 80% of cases).
- tptacek 1y ago
  Fatal heart disease is in fact primarily age related.
  - cogman10 1y ago
    Age and health feed into a ton of the top killers. Diet and exercise reduces the risks of a lot of health related deaths. It really is simple math for most people. Reduce your calories, limit your salt, and eat more vegetables.
    - tptacek 1y ago
      Stipulate that, and fatal heart disease is still in fact primarily age related.
      - cogman10 1y ago
        Right. But what age it happens at can (often) be shifted. Same for stroke, kidney disease, diabetes, cancer. Those all usually hit older ages and have an age-related component, the risk of them at any age group is reduced by diet and exercise. Those two things can be true. Of course there are outliers in each.
        tptacek 1y ago
        The claim was "heart disease is not primarily age related". This is a thread about causes of death. If we interpret that claim as "fatal heart disease is not primarily age related", it's straightforwardly false.
        cogman10 1y ago
        And I did not dispute your claim, I added to it. Age is the primary factor and health is generally the secondary factor. Both contribute.
        hombre_fatal 1y ago
        Though age also indexes the area under the curve of lifetime exposure to the risks, so it becomes a trivial claim to say that it's age related since it's one of the two axes. If you have a heart attack at age 50 but with lifestyle intervention (or PCSK9 loss-of-function genetics) you instead would have had it at age 90, then "primarily age-related" is an insufficient claim in this thread.
- insane_dreamer 1y ago
  > heart disease is primarily not age-related not true. it is age related dying at 85 from heart disease isn't the result of lifestyle choices, but dying at 50 from heart disease most likely is
Theodores 1y ago
Most lives can be summarised with a birth certificate and a death certificate. For most people, everything that happens between birth and death is not newsworthy by any stretch of the imagination. I count myself in this demographic and this does not mean I live a totally dull and boring life! You could spend your whole life as the pillar of the community with time for everyone and without an enemy in the world, to live a whole 100 years. Along the way you might have made hundreds of friends and given so much to the world. However, you aren't going to make the news. Meanwhile, a five year old that gets to meet an nasty brutal end could be in the paper for weeks, with the whole town turning out for the funeral and the whole nation taking note. The five year old would not have lived long enough to 'achieve' anything beyond potty training, yet many words could be written about them. This is just how the world works. The thing is though, there has been much progress in recent decades on what works for longevity. It is not complicated, you just have to eat mostly plants, get about mostly with your own feet, say hello to people, stay away from the toxic chemicals and keep the old grey cells busy. Accident and communicable disease permitting, you should be able to live longer than your ancestors ever did, with a better 'healthspan'. If you look at the adverts that pay for the news, everything is working against you. They want to get you to be car dependent and wasting lots of money on highly processed food that slowly gets you. Even by watching the news, you are spending time that could be spent in the company of actual human beings. If the news was to report on what people do die from, as in the non-communicable diseases that go with car dependency and a high-fat diet devoid of fibre, then they would not be 'advertiser friendly'.
some_random 1y ago
What's an early death though? A 98 year old dying of prostate cancer probably isn't, and a 19 year old dying of heart failure probably is, but what about a 55 year old lifetime smoker dying of lung cancer? If a terminally ill 80 year old chooses to end their own life, is that an early death?

kulahan 1y ago

Avoiding an early death is a lifelong commitment to health. Knowing what the greatest dangers are helps direct your actions in support of that.

bell-cot 1y ago

There's quite a bit available about that. Search for "Years of Life Lost" or "Years of Potential Life Lost". Or for a quick start - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_potential_life_lost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Years_of_potential_life_lost

rybosworld 1y ago

I get what you're saying but on the flipside, heart disease is primarily not age-related. Something like 80%-90% of cases are preventable through lifestyle choices. And it's the number one cause of death. Cancer at #2 is more age-related. But that too is fairly preventable. Roughly 50% of cancers are thought to be related to poor lifestyle choices. Point being - these are major causes of early death.

bad_haircut72 1y ago
I wonder what has a bigger impact on longevity, lifestyle choices or being a multi-millionaire with access to the best healthcare.
- Jtsummers 1y ago
  Despite their wishes, most people won't become millionaires. The part you can control is your own lifestyle. For the average person, this means your lifestyle will have more impact on your longevity than wishful thinking about one day being a multi-millionaire who can hire doctors to fix the problems you created by being sedentary, eating poorly, and overindulging on alcohol or other substances.
- viccis 1y ago
  Wonder which is more realistic, address the horribly unhealthy eating patterns that are drilled into US citizens as soon as they start eating school lunches (if not before), or make all of us multi-millionaires with access to the best healthcare.
  - hermannj314 1y ago
    If you're a news agency, promise your viewers that if they just get angry enough then that free healthcare will be coming soon and then show them an ad from McDonalds and Eli Lilly.
- recursive 1y ago
  You should also weight those with how practically attainable they are.
- HardCodedBias 1y ago
  Being a "multi-millionaire with access to the best healthcare" in the US means that you sit in the same queues as everyone else. The best you can do is concierge care, but that only expedites primary care everything in the US is about specialists.
  - lazide 1y ago
    Hahaha, huh? If you have access to the best healthcare you definitely don’t wait in the same queues. You have direct access to the specialists, often at the best teaching hospitals too. If you have Medicare, good luck.
daft_pink 1y ago
1. Death isn’t preventable. We will all die, so if you prevent one cause of death in old age, you will just die of another cause of death. Sure it might extend your life a little bit, but I feel it’s entirely rational to seek out information on causes of immediate death as more relevant than causes of long term death. The probability of living much older than 100 is virtually nil. Probably good to have information on both though. 2. It’s possible they are major causes of early death, but I can’t figure that out from the article and it would be nice if the article provided that information.
- lazide 1y ago
  Would you rather die by heart attack, cancer, or misadventure? Chances are, one of the three is going to happen. The longer you live, the more the first two are likely. Death by misadventure is possible at any point however!
- slg 1y ago
  Although we should remember that “old age” is long. Someone can die at 72 from heart disease and people might just call that dying of old age when that person could have easily lived another decade or two if they made different lifestyle choices. That would be more of an “early death” than a centenarian dying in a car accident. The suddenness is irrelevant.
- BeetleB 1y ago
  > We will all die, so if you prevent one cause of death in old age, you will just die of another cause of death. I can tell you're quite young :-) Old age is pretty broad, and you really need to start worrying at some point in your 40s. Although death due to these is rare at that age, you'll likely end up knowing 1-3 people who will die of these at that age. And a lot more in the 50s. There's a huge difference between dying in your 60s (perhaps right before retirement), and dying in your 80s. Lumping all of these people into "old age" is likely a byproduct of the same biases that cause journalism to not report on it.
ajross 1y ago
> heart disease is primarily not age-related Uh... it absolutely is? Not sure what you're trying to say here. All progressive diseases, including heart disease (cancer too) are going to be "age related" simply because they take time to develop. And plaque-related heart disease, the big killer, takes a long time to develop. The statistics are really clear here. People under 30 simply don't die of congestive heart failure absent one of a handful of very rare disorders. It starts to show up in middle age and really takes off after 70. They are preventable, sure. They are "early" deaths in that the sufferer would die before something else got them. But they absolutely skew toward the elderly. Heavily.
- rybosworld 1y ago
  Not really - that's like saying that dying from smoking is primarily age-related, just because the damage you're doing takes time to accrue. https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/news/2023/numbers-know-healthy-heart https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/news/2023/numbers-know-healthy-hea...
  - ajross 1y ago
    Dying from smoking is age related! How many lung cancer deaths are there in 20-something chain smokers? Honestly I think you're interpreting "age related" differently than the upthread discussion. The point is to renormalize a cause of death to something like "lost years of life". So if you have a preventable death (from smoking, say) that kills people with on average 10 years of life left, that should be less notable than one (maybe homicide) that kills people with 60 years to go on average.
    - rybosworld 1y ago
      I looked up the definition of age-related and it's true that I'm misusing that term. My original comment was in reference to the OP's comment: > I’m not really interested in how I’m going to die of old age, but what I have to worry about today to avoid an early death. My point was just that heart disease is primarily not caused by natural aging (the 80% of cases).
tptacek 1y ago
Fatal heart disease is in fact primarily age related.
- cogman10 1y ago
  Age and health feed into a ton of the top killers. Diet and exercise reduces the risks of a lot of health related deaths. It really is simple math for most people. Reduce your calories, limit your salt, and eat more vegetables.
  - tptacek 1y ago
    Stipulate that, and fatal heart disease is still in fact primarily age related.
    - cogman10 1y ago
      Right. But what age it happens at can (often) be shifted. Same for stroke, kidney disease, diabetes, cancer. Those all usually hit older ages and have an age-related component, the risk of them at any age group is reduced by diet and exercise. Those two things can be true. Of course there are outliers in each.
      - tptacek 1y ago
        The claim was "heart disease is not primarily age related". This is a thread about causes of death. If we interpret that claim as "fatal heart disease is not primarily age related", it's straightforwardly false.
        cogman10 1y ago
        And I did not dispute your claim, I added to it. Age is the primary factor and health is generally the secondary factor. Both contribute.
        hombre_fatal 1y ago
        Though age also indexes the area under the curve of lifetime exposure to the risks, so it becomes a trivial claim to say that it's age related since it's one of the two axes. If you have a heart attack at age 50 but with lifestyle intervention (or PCSK9 loss-of-function genetics) you instead would have had it at age 90, then "primarily age-related" is an insufficient claim in this thread.
insane_dreamer 1y ago
> heart disease is primarily not age-related not true. it is age related dying at 85 from heart disease isn't the result of lifestyle choices, but dying at 50 from heart disease most likely is

Theodores 1y ago

Most lives can be summarised with a birth certificate and a death certificate. For most people, everything that happens between birth and death is not newsworthy by any stretch of the imagination. I count myself in this demographic and this does not mean I live a totally dull and boring life! You could spend your whole life as the pillar of the community with time for everyone and without an enemy in the world, to live a whole 100 years. Along the way you might have made hundreds of friends and given so much to the world. However, you aren't going to make the news. Meanwhile, a five year old that gets to meet an nasty brutal end could be in the paper for weeks, with the whole town turning out for the funeral and the whole nation taking note. The five year old would not have lived long enough to 'achieve' anything beyond potty training, yet many words could be written about them. This is just how the world works. The thing is though, there has been much progress in recent decades on what works for longevity. It is not complicated, you just have to eat mostly plants, get about mostly with your own feet, say hello to people, stay away from the toxic chemicals and keep the old grey cells busy. Accident and communicable disease permitting, you should be able to live longer than your ancestors ever did, with a better 'healthspan'. If you look at the adverts that pay for the news, everything is working against you. They want to get you to be car dependent and wasting lots of money on highly processed food that slowly gets you. Even by watching the news, you are spending time that could be spent in the company of actual human beings. If the news was to report on what people do die from, as in the non-communicable diseases that go with car dependency and a high-fat diet devoid of fibre, then they would not be 'advertiser friendly'.

some_random 1y ago

What's an early death though? A 98 year old dying of prostate cancer probably isn't, and a 19 year old dying of heart failure probably is, but what about a 55 year old lifetime smoker dying of lung cancer? If a terminally ill 80 year old chooses to end their own life, is that an early death?