I’m torn: would I be better dead or not yet born? –

For this age is an Iron Age indeed –
Suffering never ceases for our breed:

By day, men toil; night worries them with care,
And the gods will give them troubles hard to bear.

— Hesiod's Works and Days

They don’t know ‘half’s more wholesome’ – or how well

Mallow sustains; how filling, asphodel.

— Hesiod's Works and Days

طلع حتى Hesiod قبل 2800 سنة يعرفه

خطية جان هم يركض وعشاه خبّاز

In 1968, a committee at Harvard Medical School proposed a definition that is still used today to mark the exact time of death. They identify the nonreversible loss of all brain function as being the point of death. This is characterized by loss of all electrical function and blood circulation in the brain. The logic behind this cutoff is simple: it assumes that all of the important aspects of a person—their thoughts, their memories, their personality, and their ability to control their body—is manifested in brain activity. When this is lost, the person has died.
After death, the body quickly succumbs to the forces of entropy.

The body cools over a day or two as leftover metabolic processes run their course without the proper controls. Muscles seize up in rigor mortis and then relax as all of the calcium and ATP are used up and equalized throughout the cell. Then the body quickly degrades into decay as all forms of regulation and protection are lost.

— The Machinery of Life, by David S. Goodsell

Brain death vs vegetative state vs coma vs locked-in

In the water-filled compartments of the cell, antioxidants like glutathione and vitamin C battle oxygen species one-on-one, detoxifying them if they find one.
Reactive forms of oxygen, however, are even more soluble inside membranes, so we have membrane-bound vitamin A and vitamin E to detoxify them. This function is so essential that our cells may have one molecule of vitamin E for every 100 lipid molecules!

You might think that it would be easy to slow the aging process simply by flooding your body with more antioxidants, like vitamins A, C, and E. Many studies have been performed to test this idea, and the results have unfortunately been negative. In cases where a person has a naturally damaged system with sub-optimal levels of antioxidants, supplements do show a significant effect, helping to reduce damage by reactive oxygen and slow aging. But for most of us, the normal level of antioxidants has been honed by evolution to provide us with the maximum possible protection, so supplements of antioxidants don’t seem to help much more.

Another course of action, however, has shown an amazing ability to slow aging. Many animals show greatly increased lifespans, sometimes doubling the time they live, when they are given very limited diets. The diet still includes all of the nutrients needed for normal growth and maintenance, but the number of calories is greatly reduced so that the animal barely survives. The reason that the diet works is still a matter of controversy, but one theory links it back to damage by reactive oxygen. With the calorie-restricted diet, the metabolism is slowed, less oxygen is used and fewer molecules of reactive oxygen leak from the respiratory enzymes.

— The Machinery of Life, by David S. Goodsell