The cause of death is an official determination of conditions resulting in a human’s death, which may be recorded on a death certificate.
The cause of death is determined by a medical examiner.
The manner of death: natural, accident, suicide, and homicide.
Aging is not a scientifically recognized cause of death.
It is estimated that of the roughly 150,000 people who die each day across the globe, about two thirds, 100,000 per day, die of age-related causes.
In industrialized nations the proportion is higher and reaches 90%.
The flight or fight response to fear or stress increases heart rate through stress hormones, and can cause cardiovascular problems:
observed increase in the death rate due to cardiac arrest after experiencing acutely stressful events such as terrorism, military attacks, and natural disasters, muggings and other frightening events which caused no traumatic physical harm.
The proximal medical cause of death in these cases is likely to be recorded as cardiac failure or vagal inhibition.
Number of deaths for leading causes of death (2021)
Below are the top 10 causes of death, which accounted for 75.4% of all deaths.
- Heart disease: 695,547
- Cancer: 605,213
- COVID-19: 416,893
- Accidents: 224,935
- Stroke: 162,890
- Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 142,342
- Alzheimer’s disease: 119,399
- Diabetes: 103,294
- Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis: 56,585
- Kidney disease: 53,500
A large proportion of health outcomes and early mortality can be attributed to factors other than communicable or non-communicable disease.
Older data (2013) concluded, more than half the men who die before the age of 50 die due to murder (19%), traffic accidents (18%), and other accidents (16%).
For women, the percentages are different: 53% of women who die before the age of 50 die due to disease, whereas 38% die due to accidents, homicide, and suicide.
Diseases of despair include drug overdoses, alcoholic liver disease and suicide.
Poor nutrition and physical inactivity account for about 400,000 deaths annually in the U.S.
The term longevity is sometimes meant to refer only to especially long-lived members of a population, whereas life expectancy is always defined statistically as the average number of years remaining at a given age.
Injuries are the most common cause of death among children, adolescents, and young adults between one and 24 years of age in the US.
Injuries are responsible for more deaths among children and adolescents then all of the courses combined.
For more than 60 years motor vehicle accidents was the leading cause of injury related death among young people, however since 2017 firearm related injuries have become the most common cause of death from injury: increased firearm deaths with a reduction in death from motor vehicle crashes.
The leading causes of death among Black Americans and White Americans are diseases of the heart, whereas those among Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans are malignant neoplasms.