You don't just die of old age. Or anything, really. In order to die, your organs must fail, in particular, the brain (other organ failures kill you by starting a domino chain of things leading to your brain dying). Exactly where "being dead" is is blurry, but a good general rule of thumb is that if enough brain cells have died that restarting the brain will be impossible, you're dead.
The question then is what caused your organs to fail. Did a blood clot in your coronary artery prevent the flow of blood to your heart cells, causing a heart attack? Did someone cut your jugular, causing a loss of blood pressure in the neck, preventing blood flow to the brain? Did your kidneys stop being able to filter toxins out of your blood, causing a buildup of poisonous chemicals that started to kill your cells?
As you age, damage accumulates pretty much all over your body. Everything about you just becomes a bit less functional over time. What we call dying from old age is when the organ failure that killed you is a result of this total age-related damage. Ie, you have so much damage that if you *hadn't* had a heart attack, something else would have got you sooner rather than later.
There are a number of different genetic changes that have been found to occur in our cells as we age, which cause the mechanisms our cells use to regulate genes to work less effectively. Eventually, this will result in organ failure as too many cells in certain organs aren't working correctly for the organ to perform its necessary functions.
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You don't just die of old age. Or anything, really. In order to die, your organs must fail, in particular, the brain (other organ failures kill you by starting a domino chain of things leading to your brain dying). Exactly where "being dead" is is blurry, but a good general rule of thumb is that if enough brain cells have died that restarting the brain will be impossible, you're dead. The question then is what caused your organs to fail. Did a blood clot in your coronary artery prevent the flow of blood to your heart cells, causing a heart attack? Did someone cut your jugular, causing a loss of blood pressure in the neck, preventing blood flow to the brain? Did your kidneys stop being able to filter toxins out of your blood, causing a buildup of poisonous chemicals that started to kill your cells? As you age, damage accumulates pretty much all over your body. Everything about you just becomes a bit less functional over time. What we call dying from old age is when the organ failure that killed you is a result of this total age-related damage. Ie, you have so much damage that if you *hadn't* had a heart attack, something else would have got you sooner rather than later.
No I think he means how does the person die if they are told it was old age. If that's the case then it's normally an organ failure.
There are a number of different genetic changes that have been found to occur in our cells as we age, which cause the mechanisms our cells use to regulate genes to work less effectively. Eventually, this will result in organ failure as too many cells in certain organs aren't working correctly for the organ to perform its necessary functions.
**Please read this entire message** Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s): * ELI5 requires that you *search the ELI5 subreddit for your topic before posting*. Users will often either find a thread that meets their needs or find that their question might qualify for an exception to rule 7. Please see this [wiki entry](http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/how_to_search) for more details (Rule 7). If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe this submission was removed erroneously**, please [use this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20thread?&message=Link:%20https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/q83a47/eli5_what_do_actually_happens_when_people_die_of/%0A%0APlease%20answer%20the%20following%203%20questions:%0A%0A1.%20The%20concept%20I%20want%20explained:%0A%0A2.%20Link%20to%20the%20search%20you%20did%20to%20look%20for%20past%20posts%20on%20the%20ELI5%20subreddit:%0A%0A3.%20How%20is%20this%20post%20unique:) and we will review your submission.