I hear from lots of people every day who are concerned about how their diet is affecting their health.

They need answers based on facts, in other words, from the peer-reviewed medical literature, and that is what I'm here for.

Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast.

I'm your host Dr. Michael Greger.

Today we explore the possibilities of how we might have control over our own

death, retaining dignity, privacy, pain relief, and we start with a close look at hospice.

We have all sorts of detailed stats about dying, but little about the experience of death.

For the minority who die under the care of palliative care teams, one's death could probably

be described as good, but there's a suspicion that for the majority who die in hospitals

or nursing homes,

the experience is bad.

And that's where most people die.

In spite of widespread preference to die at home

in almost all populations, most deaths occur in institutions.

And this doesn't just have consequences for the patient, but for the bereaved caregivers as well.

Patients with cancer who died in an intensive care unit or hospital

experience more physical and emotional distress

and worse quality of life at the end of life and their caregivers suffer five times the odds of

post-traumatic stress disorder and nearly nine times the odds of

severe prolonged disabling grief.

When researchers have looked into the care of dying patients in hospitals,

it hasn't been pretty.

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