Preventable Death - Learn the Factors to Better Your Odds

You may not be able to cheat death, but can you delay it?

We know that everyone dies but the timing may be modified by our lifestyle choices.  Learn what the research says can prevent premature death. https://bit.ly/4eNBj3C

Premature death is defined as a death that occurs before the average age of death in a particular population. It is a measure of unfulfilled life expectancy; in the United States it is death occurring before age 80. Up to half of all premature (or early) deaths in the United States are due to behavioral and other preventable factors—including modifiable habits such as tobacco use, poor diet, and lack of exercise. Four factors—poor diet, high blood pressure, obesity, and tobacco use—are identified as primary causes of early death.

In this Episode:

• 02:48 - Celebrating Supercentarian Mamie Kirkland (1908-2022)
• 04:11 - Recipe of the Week: Ginger Cemetery Cookies
• 05:54 - Preventable Deaths: How Changes Now Can Improve Your Chances
• 22:20 - Film Review: "Tuesday" - A Unique view of Death and How Facing it Changes Us
• 32:36 - Outro

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 2:48 Celebrating Supercentenarian Mamie Kirkland (1908-2022)
• 4:11 Recipe of the Week: Ginger Cemetery Cookies
• 5:54 Preventable Deaths: How Changes Now Can Improve Your Chances
• 22:20 Film Review: "Tuesday" - A Unique view of Death and How Facing it Changes Us
• 32:36 Outro

Transcript

Preventable-Death-Learn-the-Factors-to-Better-Your-Odds

This podcast does not provide medical or legal advice. Please listen to the complete disclosure at the end of the recording. Hello and welcome to Everyone Dies, the podcast where we talk about serious illness, dying, death, and bereavement.

I'm Marianne Matzo, nurse practitioner. I use my experience from working as a nurse for 46 years to help answer your questions about what happens at the end of life. And I'm Charlie Navarette, an actor in New York City and here to offer an every-person viewpoint to our podcast.

We are both here because we believe that the more you know, the better prepared you are to make difficult decisions in a crisis. Welcome to this week's show. Please relax, get yourself some pumpkin spice tea and a slice of apple pie, and thank you for spending the next hour with Charlie and me as we talk about what you can do now to prevent an early death.

Like the we see our shows offering entertainment, enlightenment, and education and divide that into three halves to address each of these goals. Our main topic is in the second half so feel free to forward to that ragtime free zone. In the first half, Charlie has our recipe of the week and continues his series reporting about super centurion obituaries.

This week he's talking about Mamie Kirkland who was born in 1908 and died at age 111 in 2020. In the second half I'm going to talk about things that you don't need to die from and that you have control over in terms of, well, I say control over. How much control do we have over anything? But a measure of control over whether or not you get a disease.

And in our third half, our podcast advisor Tom Hartman joins us with his review of the film Tuesday. How are you Charles? Well Marianne, first, a pop of the hat to former President Jimmy Carter. Oh, I've got my thing here, wait a minute.

Aren't you glad I don't put stuff away? Yes. Okay, so speaking of not a super centenarian, but a centenarian, former President Jimmy Carter. 100 years old today, Marianne.

He deserves a happy birthday song. Yes, he does. There we are.

Yes, 100 years old. Well, happy birthday President Carter. Absolutely.

In our first half, our super centenarian we are presenting this week is Mamie Kirkland who survived some of Mississippi's darkest history. She was seven in 1915 when she woke up to her father telling the family that a group of white men planned to lynch him and his friend. Her father and his friend slipped out in the night and then she and the rest of the family fled in the morning.

They left Mississippi but could not escape the racism that threatened their homes and lives. In 1917 in East St. Louis, Illinois, Ms. Kirkland watched white men burn down houses and shoot people in a neighborhood where black residents had recently moved in. When the family arrived in Alliance, Ohio years later, members of the Ku Klux Klan went to their home ready to burn a cross but an armed white neighbor chased off the aggressors.

When she was 15, Ms. Kirkland married and moved to Buffalo, New York where she sold Avon beauty products. Her son said who worked as a saleswoman evolved into door-to-door life coaching. The stories of her youth inspired the creation of a documentary as well as a legacy museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama.

The link to her full obituary is in the show notes. Our recipe this week is ginger cemetery cookies. Food to Die For, a 2004 cookbook compiled by Jessica Bemis Ward, was part of an ongoing fundraising effort to keep up the Old City Cemetery in Lynchburg, Virginia where more than 20,000 people have been buried for the last two centuries.

When the ladies of Lynchburg started the ambitious project to restore the 26-acre cemetery, it was overgrown and unappreciated. Today it's a landmark where Civil War soldiers from 14 states are buried alongside enslaved black persons. This ginger cookie recipe submitted to the cookbook by Ann Richards has been served at so many cemetery fundraisers they're called cemetery cookies.

Even if you don't bake them for a funeral, their bright ginger flavor will please any crowd. Bon Appetit! Please go to our webpage for this week's recipe and additional resources for this program. Everyone Dies is offered at no cost but is not free to produce.

Please contribute what you can. Your tax-deductible gift will go directly to supporting our nonprofit journalism so that we can remain accessible to everyone. You can also donate at www.everyonedies.org. That's every, the number one, dies.org. Or at our site on Patreon, www.patreon.com, and search for Everyone Dies.

Marianne? Thank you, Charlie. Up to half of all premature or early deaths in the United States are due to behavioral or other preventable factors, including modifiable habits such as tobacco use, poor diet, and lack of exercise. Early deaths are defined as occurring before age 80.

Now other people have, or other researchers have, other definitions of this. I think an early death before 80 is a pretty ambitious goal for some, but depending on how you define it, and you can define it for yourself, is really dying because of our lifestyle choices, as opposed to like Jimmy Carter, you know, who has made apparently different lifestyle choices, or the other centenarians that we talked about who make other lifestyle choices. Four factors, poor diet, high blood pressure, obesity, and tobacco use, were identified as the primary cause of early death.

While deaths due to tobacco use have dropped over time, smoking remains the second leading cause of early death after poor diet. Diet alone accounted for 14% of early deaths overall, followed by tobacco use through obesity, each at about 12%. High levels of income inequality in the U.S. also play a role in early deaths, putting large numbers of people at risk of poor health outcomes because of high poverty rates, minimal education, and low levels of social mobility.

Pinning, pinpointing the causes of premature death can be difficult. States are responsible for compiling cause of death data based on information provided by doctors, medical examiners, and coroners. In some cases, the approximate cause of death is easily identified, like gun violence.

But for many deaths, such as those caused by heart disease, there may be multiple contributing factors. In these cases, researchers need to assess the relative risk of death associated with particular behaviors, such as diet and exercise. Now, smoking increases the risk of early death from cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung diseases, diabetes, and COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

This collectivity cuts the risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes, and poor diet, especially one low in fruit and vegetable intake and consuming too much saturated fat, is linked to coronary arteries disease, some cancers, and diabetes. So you can see, Charlie, how different behaviors can contribute to a wide range of diseases that can cause early death. Modifiable risk factors, meaning things that we have control over, are largely responsible for each of the leading causes of death.

So, specifically, heart disease risks include tobacco use, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, poor diet, overweight, and lack of physical activity. So, I think I've talked in the past, my dad died at age 53 from a major coronary artery event, and it was his third heart attack. There were things that he could have done after that first heart attack, which for many people is what they call a wake-up call.

They say, oh, I need to kind of look at what I'm doing and the choices I'm making if I don't want to have another heart attack. Or people can have that first heart attack and they can be like my dad and say, well, when your number's up, your number's up. You know, when you're gonna go, you're gonna go.

These were things that he said. He didn't believe that anything that he did had any control over when he was going to die. So, the behaviors that he had, you know, in terms of his tobacco use, his cholesterol, his diet, his being overweight, his lack of physical activity, resulted in an early or premature death at age 53.

Cancer risks include tobacco use, poor diet, lack of physical activity, being overweight, sun exposure, certain hormones, alcohol, some viruses and bacteria, ionizing radiation, and certain chemicals and other substances. Dying from chronic respiratory risk or having chronic respiratory disease risks include tobacco smoke, secondhand smoke exposure, other indoor pollutants, outdoor air pollutants, allergens, and exposure to occupational agents. Now, premature deaths from stroke, those risks include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, diabetes, overweight, previous stroke, tobacco use, alcohol use, and lack of physical activity.

Unintentional injury risks include lack of seatbelt use, lack of motorcycle helmet use, unsafe consumer products, drug and alcohol use, including prescription drug misuse, exposure to occupational hazards, and unsafe home and community environments. Now, we've done podcasts about physical activity, sleep, and diet, and if you want to modify your risks of premature death, we have podcasts about physical activity, sleep, and diet, and if you want to modify your risks from premature death related to making any changes in those areas, listen to those, look at our show notes for other resources, and you can make some changes there. This week, let's look at tobacco use in the United States and how smoking affects health.

Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the United States. Cigarette smoking harms nearly every organ of the body and causes many diseases, as I've just mentioned, but let's just run through the list again. The diseases are cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung disease, type 2 diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Secondhand smoke, which is breathing the smoke of someone else who's smoking, also causes stroke, lung cancer, and heart disease in adults. And growing up as a kid, I don't want to say everyone smoked, my mother didn't smoke, but when we had people over, aunts and uncles, and all us kids were all sitting around, secondhand smoke, I mean everybody was smoking. The house, you know, had, you know, looked like fog was blowing through it.

So yeah, we were exposed to secondhand smoke, but also that was before we knew even the term secondhand smoke. Children who are exposed to secondhand smoke are at an increased risk for sudden infant death syndrome, slowed lung growth, acute respiratory infections, respiratory symptoms, middle ear disease, and more frequent and severe asthma. About 28 million U.S. adults smoke cigarettes and 58 million non-smoking Americans are exposed to secondhand smoke.

Cigarette smoking causes more than 480,000 deaths each year in the U.S., including 41,000 deaths from secondhand smoke. For every American who dies because of smoking, at least 30 are living with serious smoking related illness, which is more than 16 million Americans. Inequalities related to tobacco use, secondhand smoke, exposure, and quitting exist across population groups.

For example, American Indian and Alaska Native people have the highest frequency of cigarette smoking compared to other racial and ethnic groups in the United States. In 2021, 21.5% of adult Medicaid enrollees currently smoke cigarettes compared to 8.6% of adults with private health insurance. Cigarette smoking costs the United States more than $600 billion in 2018, and these costs, where they come from, includes more than $240 billion in health care spending, nearly $185 billion in lost productivity from smoking related illnesses and health conditions, nearly $180 billion in lost productivity from smoking related premature death, $7 billion in lost productivity from premature death from secondhand smoke exposure.

Now, I'd be surprised if people who smoke didn't know that it would benefit their health to stop smoking. And it's not an easy thing to do, but continuing to smoke puts them on the fast road to death. I've had so many patients that I've treated for lung cancer who said they didn't think it would happen to them, or they didn't believe what they were being told about the connection between smoking and disease.

The reality is is that the connection is real, and you don't have to wait for a diagnosis of disease to make a change, but the choice is up to you. You'll find information about how to quit smoking in the resources section of this program, and I hope that maybe some of you will take what we're saying to heart and think about if you're afraid of dying, there are some things you can do to slow it down. Any thoughts, Charles? Well, when you were talking about, you know, taking matters into your hands, you know, things you can control, I just suddenly flashed back to my dad when we were little kids.

I mean, he was up to like about a couple of packs a day. That's a lot. Yeah, it really, really was.

And I just, I just, wow, I just, all these memories flashed back. With my mother, it was mostly she just did not like the smell of the smoke. And at some point, and we were little, little kids, you know, the doctor told my dad he needed to stop or he would die an early death.

And he did. My father was the type who could really stop something cold turkey. And the other thing is, I mean, most of his family, his parents, all his siblings died relatively young.

Early death was just in his family. And my dad took that to heart. And just when he stopped smoking, he, you know, started going to doctors regularly.

And even if a doctor just simply suggested cutting back a little on something, oh, no, my father went cold turkey. He, he was never a big drinker, but he always enjoyed a beer with dinner. It was.

And at some point, the doctor didn't say, Oh, you're drinking too much. But just simply, you know, you don't, you don't want to go, you know, get into a habit of maybe two or three drinks and explain to my dad about, you know, alcohol and everything, though it was beer. And my father stopped drinking just a bottle of beer, which had always given him pleasure.

But he was able, what is it called? Not it's called non-alcoholic beer. Yeah, yeah, that he enjoyed the, the taste of, of it. So he would, that he would have an occasion, like a non-alcoholic beer.

And really, I mean, he just died two years ago at 97. And he just, toward the end of his life, on occasion, he would have a regular beer. But not always, he, he, he just knew, he knew about, you know, you know, eating well, he would cut out different forms of food.

And even again, at toward the end of his life, when he would allow himself, you know, things that will, you know, maybe, you know, more sometimes like greasy food or something high in, I don't know, fast or something, in moderation. He wouldn't, he just really knew how to, that there was a limit, he could enjoy it a little bit. And that's it, you can't go overboard with it.

And actually, as I'm saying, as we we discussed this a couple of weeks ago, a couple of shows ago. Yeah, somewhere along the way, I started doing the same. I, I love me a good hamburger or a good steak.

But I don't do that all the time anymore. And I often don't sit down and have a big hamburger in one sitting, I like have half of it. Or just, you know, parts of a steak.

Well, see, that moderation in things like sugars and fats and steaks and barbecue, so far, there's evidence to say, that's the way to go. New evidence regarding smoking, though, is that even cutting down of smoking is really not enough. That your body is not made to have the tars and nicotines and things in your lungs.

And quitting helps your lungs to recover to a certain degree and clear them out to a certain degree. The damage, whatever damage we've done to our lungs by smoking is not going to go away. But they can heal to a certain degree.

And you're not going to cause any more damage. So of, of the modifiable risk factors that we're talking about, because, you know, we know that everyone's going to die, but our, our theme of this series is that you don't have to be in a hurry to do it. And you're really fast tracking yourself on that road by smoking.

Yeah. All right, then, in our third half, this week, Tom Hartman joins us with his review of the film, Tuesday. Tom is retired from working for nonprofit agencies.

He is our advisor regarding fundraising, reviews grant proposals, and provides consultation to Everyone Dies Management. Tuesday is available to rent from Amazon, YouTube, and Apple. And here's Tom.

Thanks for joining us, Tom. Well, thank you, Mary Ann. That's glad to be, I'm glad to be back.

Excellent. So what was your thought about this film? Oh, I tripped across this movie about a week ago. And I, one of the best things I've seen in a while, and I'm like dying to tell people about it.

Excellent. Let's hear it. Okay.

It's death in the form of a talking size shifting parrot comes for this severely disabled teenager, until her like crazy, immature mother, played by Julia Louis Dreyfus gets involved. This is a British movie that starts out as kind of a light tweet little comedy. And then about halfway through, it transforms itself into this otherworldly, deeply moving film with lovely images and powerful words.

It sort of warms you up and then confronts you with like gripping theological questions. What does death mean? What does other people's death mean? What does my death mean? What is the purpose of my life? Is there an afterlife? How do I live when my life's been destroyed? This is a first feature film by a young British woman named Dana Anousis-Pusek. She's written a screenplay with a very tight plot, interesting human characters who behave like normal people who speak smooth, elegant dialogue.

And she loads that up with beautiful image after beautiful image. I had hardly noticed Anna Meredith's score until they have this 10 minute scene with no dialogue that provides the movie's transition from light to deep. It gives the images this hypnotic power that perfectly prepared me for the remainder of the movie.

It only has about three main characters, a young girl, her mother and a home health care nurse. And these actresses are pitch perfect in moving from comedy to tragedy to dignified acceptance. Death is voiced by Arinzi Kene and his rich African voice can be both deeply soothing and terrifying.

And he can swing from one to the other in the space of like a sentence. You know, I like highly recommend everybody see this movie. And that's what I have to say.

Well, you know, I hadn't heard about this film at all, Tom, until you wrote about it. And of course, yeah, I had to watch it. And usually, you know, when death comes, it's the Grim Reaper, you know, it's the guy in the hood with, you know, the scythe.

And so for it to be a parrot. Yes, you know, I was sort of like, okay, what is this going to be? Is this like a version of the Seventh Seal, where death takes a holiday, where you get the Grim Reaper. But you know, in Jungian psychology, birds are what a representation of the soul.

So, you know, you would wait, you know, birds flying with, you know, the soul taking off. Or even the myth about my mom, I can remember my mother would say, like, the bird, you know, was outside the window. The wives tale was that death was coming to that house.

Did you ever hear that? Ah, a crow. Yeah. That, you know, when I went to Catholic school, that a bird would come to the window.

And that was like, you know, nuns would say, that's the Holy Spirit. And everybody say a prayer. Oh, we went to the same Catholic school.

I don't remember that. That's interesting. Yeah, but again, there, you know, that bird image with the Holy Spirit.

So like, you know, once I started to think about this a little bit more, it just became, it becomes deeper and deeper. And then when, not, we won't give any real hard things away, but when this young girl, this 15 year old girl meets death, you know, most people either try to bargain with death, or try to convince, you know, go away, don't take me, let me live. She's telling him a joke.

You know, I wasn't quite sure if she knew it was death at that point, or, you know, if she was so ready to go as a partner. Because that's one of the big themes of the movie, is this poor girl who, wheelchair bound, can't even bathe herself. She's like, ready to go.

And it's her mother that keeps clinging on. And the mother who tries to defeat death, tries to keep death away from her daughter. And as a mother of two daughters, I watched that.

And I thought, yeah, I would do at least what she did to try to keep death from my girls. You know, if I could control that, I could keep them away, you know. And it's, you know, while she's having that fight, she becomes more mature, and more grown up, and more in tune with her own daughter.

You know, it stops becoming all about her, and starts becoming about her daughter. And that's something I loved about it, too. When you have a, you know, usually you have these comic characters in movies, and like the message is, oh, if we were all just a little more like, you know, wacky Jim Carrey, life would be better.

But what I like is when you have a comic character who, like, grows up, and his life becomes better. And that's what happens with Julia Louis-Dreyfus. She changes.

And she changes in tremendous ways. And, you know, it is a story about death. And you have a story about death, and then it becomes a story about grief.

And that mother's character, and how she just, you know, immerses herself in that grief, which, you know, is normal, right? And it has to, you, because there's like, only the three characters, you really get that that daughter was her life. So she not only lost her daughter, she lost her friend, she lost, you know, her whole reason for living. Actually, that was a very, they present that very good that you like to get that, you know, it's not like, oh, my daughter, and I'm sad, sad, sad, but she's lost other things besides her daughter.

And, you know, and even the fact that how much she had to sell in order to pay for the daughter's illness and for what the daughter needs. And the mother says at some point that when you're a parent, that's what you do. And I thought to myself, yeah, you do a lot of things that you didn't ever think that you would.

But when it comes to your kids, that you do, you choose to do. Well, Tom, I appreciate you bringing this down to us. Well, you're welcome.

Did we tell people where they can find this? Yes. It's available to rent on Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and YouTube. And people who shop at Amazon like I do, you can even defer your delivery date and they give you digital credit.

So you can have, you can watch it for free if you use your digital credit. Oh, yeah. Well, then, yeah, definitely.

Amazon people should watch it because it's well worth the time. Absolutely. Well, Tom, thank you for that review.

It's been great talking to you again. All right, Marianne, and hopefully we'll be talking again soon. Bye-bye.

Thanks for your review, Tom. And that's it for this week's episode. Stay tuned for the continuing saga of Everyone Dies, and thank you for listening.

This is Charlie Navarette, and from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., you died when you refused to stand up for right. You died when you refused to stand up for truth. You died when you refused to stand up for justice.

And I'm Marianne Matzo, and we'll see you next week. Remember, friends don't let friends die young, and every day is a gift. This podcast does not provide medical advice.

All discussion on this podcast, such as treatments, dosages, outcomes, charts, patient profiles, advice, messages, and any other discussion are for informational purposes only and are not a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment. Always seek the advice of your primary care practitioner or other qualified health providers with any questions that you may have regarding your health. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard from this podcast.

If you think you may have a medical emergency, call your doctor or 911 immediately. Everyone Dies does not recommend or endorse any specific tests, practitioners, products, procedures, opinions, or other information that may be mentioned in this podcast. Reliance on any information provided in this podcast by persons appearing on this podcast at the invitation of Everyone Dies or by other members is solely at your own risk.