How can someone age 54 die of "natural causes?"?

I think “natural causes” means heart attack or stroke (or something else like that, I think that’s all?).

Health related condition, as opposed to an accident, murder or suicide.

“Natural causes” just means a health-related death as opposed to accidental, murder, or suicide.

Edit: I swear I didn’t copy @BarnacleBill, but yeah—> what he said. :)

I have had several friends ( ages 28 to 53 ) die from natural causes – heart attacks, aneurysms and diabetes.

I think it is a euphemism that indicates that it’s none of our business what the person died of. It just says that it wasn’t a death from man made causes.

Granted, it seems young these days, but she could have been suffering from a disease condition that was not public knowledge.

She had a stroke a few months ago, but seemed to be on the mend and was going to perform again soon. Such a shame that her teenaged daughter found her. I hopes she wasn’t in much pain. I grew up with her music.

What they mean is that Slick Rick didn’t come back from the grave and pop a cap in her ass.

Heart attacks and strokes are awful, but they are natural. I don’t think anyone’s body just lets go of the soul without something going wrong.

She actually had a grand mal seizure recently, not a stroke.

Death by natural causes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

A death by natural causes, as recorded by coroners and on death certificates and associated documents, is one that is primarily attributed to natural agents: usually an illness or an internal malfunction of the body. For example, a person dying from complications from influenza, (an infection), or a heart attack (an internal body malfunction) would be listed as having died of natural causes. “Old age” is not a scientifically recognized cause of death; there is always a more direct cause although it may be unknown in certain cases and could be one of a number of aging-associated diseases.

In contrast, death caused by active intervention is called unnatural death. The “unnatural” causes are usually given as accident (“misadventure”), suicide, and homicide.[1] In some settings, other categories may be added. For example, a prison may track the deaths of inmates due to acute intoxication separately.

I lost a dear, dear friend just a few weeks after her 50th birthday. It was completely unexpected, she collapsed at home and died before the ambulence arrived. I miss her terribly. Sometimes the world just isn’t a fair place sweetheart, it just isn’t. Lesley was a beautiful, kind, sweet, generous, lovely person and the world is a much darker place without her smile to lighten it. You’re right honey, it isn’t right for anyone to die so young,
hugs xx

For a celebirty, they are probaby trying to indicate “not drugs.”

Are there any instances of people whose time was just up and who didn’t die of any sort of medically identifiable condition? Even people who die at an old age in their sleep do so because something stops working.

I have a friend who’s close friend at age 52 died in her sleep for no reason, she was healthy without any problems, the coroner said for no apparent reason her heart just stopped. There was not even anything on the toxicity screening test.

@Meego But that’s called “heart failure.” My point was that there is no such thing as your time being up and there being no medically identifiable cause of death. It’s not like some video game where the time limit reaches zero and we just give up.

@SavoirFaire It sounds like it would be called heart failure, but hey I am not a coroner and it was not ruled as heart failure. Wouldn’t they rule it heart failure as the cause of death if that was the cause of death? My husband died of pneumonia with complications that is what the coroner listed it as on his death certificate. This lady’s cause of death was listed as “unknown circumstances” not heart failure.

@Meego They would rule it heart failure only if they knew it was the cause of death. If they don’t know the cause of death, they list it as “unknown circumstances,” as happened in the case you mentioned. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t heart failure. And more importantly, “unknown circumstances” is not the same as “no circumstances.”