Generally, you not only live longer but you die with fewer complications. You can be sick for 20 years before you go or live in considerabel health until your last day. People with a healthy life style get sick too but they just have lower odds of getting terminally Ill.
You forgot about QoL. Yes, you only live like 3 years more, but you will keep your teeth for most of them, won’t suffer from something awful like diabetes, and will be significantly smarter and stronger.
You may be the world’s smartest man. I don’t even care about the 3 years. Hell they’re not guaranteed anyway. I just don’t want to be carted around and hooked up to machines for the 20 years or so I have left.
Had an uncle who loved to drink. When he retired he was basically hammered before dinner was served almost every day. Got diabetes and a damaged liver. Died a slow and horrible death. Got necrosis in both his legs, had them both amputated. It didn’t stop his body from wasting away.
Have another uncle who loved to drink a glass of wine regularly and eat lots of red meat. Has Parkinson’s now and is severely demented. I’m sure genetics played a factor but his lifestyle didn’t help. And the fungicides used in vineyards has been linked to Parkinson’s, in France the regions with many vineyards have higher rates of Parkinson’s compared to the rest of the country.
It’s already too late for my teeth. most are falling out already.
I don’t know what to say, get implants or something. I think humans were a mistake, and maybe something better will replace us.
Maybe scientists will accidentally make life that is smarter than us, healthier than us, and more ethical than us. I just hope this wretched species does not go on forever, because I don’t want anyone else to suffer like this after we are all gone.
since everyone else is already rightly pointing out the improved quality of life, I’ll emphasize that this includes mental health. When people with poor lifestyle habits quip, “I’m here for a good time, not a long time,” do you think the rest of us hear anything other than a veiled cry for help? You’re obviously not having a good time.
Healthy lifestyle habits are the best of both worlds. They feel better, allow you to have more joy, and give you more time to experience more of it, while aging and eventually dying far more gracefully.
I’ll never drink again, but there are some days still that I wish my mind could be as numb as it was while I was a raging alcoholic. That thought is usually replaced with remembering how shitty I always felt and how I didn’t give a fuck about anything. Life was a blur.
A mostly clear mind and recovering body is a very good thing. Daily stress is easily managed with regular exercise and chronic anxiety and depression is only a tiny fraction of what it once was. It’s a good life now.
I believe the lifestyle changes not only lengthened my life, but it also stretched out my perceived time as well.
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.
What’s the use of living to 70 in this world? I recently hit 30, and I’m just looking around…none of this world is actually for me, I can’t do anything other than work. Society automatically hates me now by default, I can no longer do things like join the army or be a firefighter, and I can’t even spend this life to make someone else’s better.
It didn’t have to be like this either, someone decided that some people should get proper schooling, healthcare, and a full life, and others should be gaslight into thinking whatever they do isn’t enough, and just exploited for labor until they die. And if they survive, society is like “congratulations! You can finally enjoy your life! Here’s all the free time you ever wanted…in your 60’s”. You get one last free trial of what a real life looks like, when you already burned out every dopamine having neuron you have, and you can’t even enjoy it anymore. THEN society decides to give you a break.
Then we get those same old people in-charge, and we wonder why they are trying to kill us all.
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.
The issue with that is that an accident might leave you in a state that’s alive but wheelchair-bound, bed-bound, blind or even fully vegetable. Vegetable might not be an issue because your consciousness is probably already gone, but it’s a huge strain on your loved ones. Being disabled might mean that you have a shit quality of life and now also have a hard time finding an easy/painless way to die.
Flashbacks to having to read Ethan Frome in highschool…
Granpa always wants excitement
He’ll try anything new
So he made some homemade bungie cords
He would’ve been eighty-two!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
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.
Yes luck certainly has something to do with it. But in my 50’s and 60’s I still see a majority of people having soda, sweets, alcoholl, fried food, not exercising on a regular basis and then being surprised that their health is not great.
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
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.
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…
TSPRAWYCD
When you are in your death bed you’ll ask yourself what you could have done for a few more good years
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
If you cannot change the course of history do not dwell, but if you can, think about it and act accordingly.
All my best wishes
Wrong. Quality of life is worth more than a few extra years of eating bugs
