How Do Men Die in the Prime of their Lives?

My friends and I are reaching a milestone soon - a quarter century lived. Our own deaths are probably very far from our minds, and for good reason: about 2 percent of male deaths come from the 25-34 category. So while small, it is not insignificant and worth looking at.

According to the CDC in 2004 - the following are the top ten causes of death for males in the United States between the ages of 25-34.

1. Unintentional Injury - 34.8%
2. Suicide - 14.6%
3. Homicide - 13.3%
4. Heart Disease - 7.6%
5. Cancer - 6.2%
6. HIV Disease - 3.2%
7. Diabetes - 1.2 %
8. Stroke - 1.0%
9. Birth Defects - 0.8%
10. Chronic Liver Disease - 0.8%

Unsurprisingly, most of the deaths are not related to traditional disease: accidents (probably mostly automobile), suicide, and murder. This possibly suggests the need for better mental health counseling, which is an area I know very little about - including it's effectiveness and differences between nations.

What surprised me the most in these numbers is the rate of heart disease. Every year a couple of thousand in this young age group are dying of heart disease. I'm interested to know who these people are. Do they have some genetic defect that makes them especially vulnerable? Do they smoke a lot? Are they morbidly obese?

I'll break down the cancer rates in a later post, but younger males should look for cancer in the testis, the blood cancers (lymphoma), and skin cancer (melanoma).

When broadening to include females and between 25-44...

Causes of Death	Number of Deaths	Rate per 100,000
25-44 years All causes	148,904	177.8
1 Accidents and adverse effects	26,554	31.7
. . . Motor vehicle accidents	14,528	17.3
. . . All other accidents and adverse effects	12,026	14.4
2 Human immunodeficiency virus infection	22,795	27.2
3 Malignant neoplasms, including neoplasms of lymphatic and hematopoietic tissues	22,147	26.4
4 Diseases of heart	16,261	19.4
5 Suicide	12,536	15
6 Homicide and legal intervention	9,261	11.1
7 Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis	4,230	5.1
8 Cerebrovascular diseases	3,418	4.1
9 Diabetes mellitus	2,520	3
10 Pneumonia and influenza	1,972	2.4
. . . All other causes (Residual)	27,210	32.5

You can notice the homicide and suicide rates are down, while Cancer and HIV increase. However this data is a bit older (1996), so the HIV mortality rate has gone down in recent years.