We had a guy come talk to us about this at work, a researcher. The way he explained it was that staying healthy let you have more years that feel good, getting old more slowly doesn’t necessarily mean you will live longer, but live without disease then get something that kills you fast.
So that if, for example, you live to 80, get old at 70, not 50, so that you don’t have to be old for 30 years. That’s the point of the whole longevity push and it is actually working, people are aging more slowly.
Staying healthy isn’t only about living longer, it’s about quality of life while alive.
You’ll understand when you get older.
Yes, that’s the important part that people often seem to forget. Being totally wrecked in your 40s or even earlier is not good.
Being totally wrecked in your 40s or even earlier is not good.
i concur: in my 40s, totally wrecked. i still consider myself extremely lucky. no ragrets
Same here. But I ate healthy all my life.
It was the drugs that were the problem.
Same here, but genes were the problem.
So, not healthy, then
genuine question: when someone says “i eat healthy,” do you always inject your own meaning of “i don’t use drugs or smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol or do anything else ‘unhealthy’” ?
in other words, to you “i eat healthy” = “i don’t do anything unhealthy”?
because that’s what you just did
The original post says “healthy,” not “eat healthy.”
Blubr blablih bralblu.
Yeah, I keep reminding people, especially young people about this.
What’s the use of living until you’re 70 if you spend the last ten years of life living in a body that is half dead?
I know one guy who worked in heavy industry retire at 65 and decided to just smoke, drink booze and eat junk on his couch for his retirement. He loved it for about two years. Then he had heart attack, diabetes, and early signs of dementia. He lingered for 8 more years living a miserable life before he died a slow death in hospice for about a year.
One my of neighbours is 80 years old and still at home … but for the past ten years, he’s been battling cancer, heart problems and almost semi regular infections of some kind. His entire life is just pain every day. He keeps ending up in the hospital for something … only to return a week or two later after having survived. He is just miserable all the time and the only way anyone can see him coming out of all this is to die.
I have another old friend who is 70, great heart, good weight, good bodily health … but she has Alzheimers … and she’s had signs of it for the past ten years. She’ll live for a while but what kind of life is it to not have your memory for the last ten years of your life?
Take care of yourself as much as possible now while you are young. Sure some of this is just genetics or luck but I’d rather try my best to have a decent quality of life later on than do things to guarantee I’ll be miserable at the end of my life.
Based on these stories, it sounds like the real gameplan is to just take up increasingly extreme sports in your 50s and hope you die in an accident so you don’t live long enough to get decrepit.
May I recommend BASE jumping? It is considered the most extreme sport.
How’d grampa die?
BASEd.
How about cave diving? Might be cool to combine the two.
TIL BASE is an acronym
Granpa always wants excitement
He’ll try anything new
So he made some homemade bungie cords
He would’ve been eighty-two!
My grandma lived to be 99. She was still coherent and out working in the garden until 95. It’s really amazing when you see this. She got up every morning and did her simple stretches and body weight exercises. Ate well but not crazy well.
My grandma on my mom’s side lived to be 85 but she had a bit of dementia at the end.
My grandpa on my dad’s side lived to be 85 too and his mind was great but his body wasn’t.
But every time I hear stories of people who lived long lives, you have to compare that to the number of people they outlived or those people from their generation who didn’t make it.
For every 99 year old, there were hundreds or even thousands that didn’t make it to that age. It’s really a very lucky thing to live that long … and even more like winning a lottery to live that long and have a bit of health and be in your right mind.
I think a lot of it also isn’t luck. Avoiding alchohol and tobacco, exercising every day, maintaining contact with family, etc.
Most definitely involves luck in many cases. My wife currently has pulmonary fibrosis, a life shortening disease that basically slowly erodes your lungs. We did our best to take care of ourselves, good food, not too much, not too little, vitamins, health conscience, exercise, keeping active, healthy mind, staying active, staying connected … and neither being too excessive or obsessive of taking care of ourselves either.
We have a doctor friend of ours who told us … it was just luck … we caught a bad flu a few years ago, just before the pandemic. I got over it, she never did and still hasn’t. She is healthy as anything otherwise but her lungs will give out in a year maybe two, possibly three but the end is coming and its horrible to think about.
We did everything right, we just didn’t get lucky.
Yeah - quality of life eating bullshit food to die at 77 instead of 76
Have you ever woke up and felt like garbage despite not doing anything diabolical the previous night (drinking etc)? And you wondered why you felt like shit?
The answer may surprise you
TSPRAWYCD
Drop soda. Treat it as a one time a week treat. Will change your life
Soda is poison pure and simple. I have it maybe once a year (occasional ginger ale on a plane). Don’t miss it, that stuff is nasty.
Replaced pop/soda with tea(specifically looseleaf) about 15 years ago. At first needed it sweetener(with honey) to enjoy. Now, no sweetener at all is best.
And there are so many awesome flavours.
Right now I have a fantastic vanilla and peppermint tea as my latest addition.
Yean once you start liking unsweetened iced tea, you can’t go back. I do like a shot or 2 of vanilla suryup lol
I love unsweet iced tea…but I find myself missing carbonated beverages…
When you are in your death bed you’ll ask yourself what you could have done for a few more good years
Wrong. Quality of life is worth more than a few extra years of eating bugs
What’s wrong with Michelin?
In bad health you can ask yourself what you could have done if you were in good health.
But you shouldn’t. No good comes from dwelling on what you cannot do.
Signed, A disabled person
