Why is it that people have a higher deathrate in the week immediately following their birthday celebration? Do people really have control over when they will expire due to natural causes??
By what mechanism are these people causing, or preventing, their own deaths? Could we extend the life of an elderly person simply by tampering with his or her calander??
Thanks.
I think that your premise is incorrect. Do you have a cite for that?
Haj
I predict that about 1 in 52 persons dies within a week of their birthday.
Quite a high number indeed!
There’s TONS of evidence that people are able to postpone their deaths to celebrate another birthday, another Harvest Moon Festival, or to avoid inheritance taxation-
http://popindex.princeton.edu/browse/v58/n2/e.html
“The findings show that there is a greater tendency for persons to die within thirty days after the date of birth than before. More specifically, there was a statistically significant pattern of increased mortality for those who were never married and for ill-defined causes of death.”
http://www.vifp.monash.edu.au/raicog/birthday.html
“There is a lot of variation from day to day, but there is some indication that a death-dip does occur in natural deaths.”
http://www.noetic.org/Ions/publications/review_archives/frontiers_of_research/frontieirs_17_29.htm
"The study shows that deaths among the test group of 1,288 Chinese dips by 35.1 percent in the week before the Harvest Moon Festival and peaks by the same amount (34.6 percent) in the week after. The dip/ peak mortality pattern does not appear in various non-Chinese control groups.
http://econpapers.hhs.se/paper/nbrnberwo/8158.htm
“*We find some evidence that there is a small death elasticity, although we cannot rule out that what we have uncovered is ex post doctoring of the reported date of death. However, the fact that we find that postponement, rather than acceleration, of death is more likely to occur suggests that this phenomenon is at last partly a real (albeit timing) response to taxation. *”
So how do they do it?
Thanks.
Surreal, I have heard about this phenomenon, too. It is my WAG that people who are close to death struggle and fight for life through each day. They continue this daily struggle so that they can hold out for an anticipated event (for my mom, it was my wedding, 14 years ago. She died a few weeks later). After said event is over, they stop fighting, and just let themselves die. This is not to say that you could go on fighting indefinitely; you’d lose eventually.
Because the presents weren’t good enough.
I know my Great Grandmother wanted to live until she was 90. She died on her 90th birthday. She probably would have been very upset to know the newspaper got her age wrong in the obituary.
There was my grandfather, while it didn’t coincide with his birthday, within a month of his death he had a chance to visit with many people from his past, including an army reunion. He lived long enough to see his first great grandchild. Looking at this videos, it appeared to be the happiest I’d seen him in a long time. He died when everything in his life seemed in order and he didn’t have any regrets. Granted, he didn’t spend much time struggling with health. I think he knew he was going to find out something really bad at the doctors that day. Maybe this fear caused his heart attack, I don’t know. All I know is he had one of the fullest lives of anyone I have known. I guess this paragraph didn’t really relate to the OP, but maybe in some way it did.
Diabetics sneaking a piece of cake with ice cream.
…achievement…?? I dont think its anything genetically encoded. I just think at that date a lot of the old or sick people just dont have the will to live anymore. They dont think they can live another year and just “lay down and die”. That may happen a month before or after their birthday. messing with their minds might buy you a short time but basically, i think they know its time to go and they have committed to it physicaly.
Surreal: You know better than to post a statement like that without a Cite!
“Gobbler’s Knob”, No Shit? :eek:
'Tis a an interesting question though…
I’ve known people to die shortly after acheiving some project that took years - building an airplane, restoring an antique car, etc. - I don’t know if there is statistical evidence to back up this hunch, but there should be.
Those living in places where the weather is nasty during winter:
Watch mortality rates for those 80+ just after the first thaw - my parents belived that old folks would hold on until spring.
That’s just common courtesy – it’s much easier to dig after the ground thaws.
My cousin got good and bad news all in the same week: he and his wife were expecting their first baby… and he had terminal cancer. They gave him 4-6 months to live. He managed to wait until his little boy was born. An ambulance rushed the baby from the hospital where he was born to the hospital where his father was dying. Bobby passed away three days later. While hanging on an extra two months doesn’t sound like much, there was something very important he was waiting for. Once he knew his baby was OK, it was like he had permission to go. I can’t explain it, but it does happen.
Other than your cite about significant Chinese variations, I don’t find any of the studies to be of extraordinary signifcance. They appear to be merely small statistical abberations, which may/may not be due to people trying to die in a certain time frame.
How the Chinese do it, I don’t have a clue.
I don’t have a cite, but it is a well-established fact in actuarial tables. The difference is not huge, but there is a clear statistical significance in comparing the number of people who die in the few weeks following a major birthday (like 90th) to those who die in the few weeks preceding said birthday.