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What does my 80 year old father do to stay healthy?

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Re: What does my 80 year old father do to stay healthy?

#41

Post by nradov »

cma wrote: post #26
lqet wrote: post #10

Anecdotally, most of my family members who actively tried to stay healthy died relatively early (< 70 years). Those who didn't usually lived to be at least 85. My grandfather, who never did any type of sports, ate meat every day, who came home after worked and watched TV until bedtime and who drank 1-2 liters of cider per day after retirement died at 92 and was completely healthy up until a few hours before his death…

Exercise doesn't really improve lifespan in rats, beyond enough to not be completely sedentary.

Most of us are more concerned with improving healthspan rather than lifespan. And I think those rat studies are mostly useless. Lab rats live in nice safe flat cages where they don't have to worry about falling down the stairs and breaking a hip. Whereas sarcopenia is a huge risk for elderly humans.

Re: What does my 80 year old father do to stay healthy?

#42

Post by stryan »

lqet wrote: post #10

Anecdotally, most of my family members who actively tried to stay healthy died relatively early (< 70 years). Those who didn't usually lived to be at least 85. My grandfather, who never did any type of sports, ate meat every day, who came home after worked and watched TV until bedtime and who drank 1-2 liters of cider per day after retirement died at 92 and was completely healthy up until a few hours before his death…

> Anecdotally, most of my family members who actively tried to stay healthy died relatively early (I never tried to stay healthy until after I started having health problems (GI issues, mild concussion, etc). I wonder how many other people do the same and how that affects the statistics. Sort of like how "drink a glass of red wine a day" doesn't correlate to health but rather the money to have red wine handy and the circumstances to drink one and only one glass.

Re: What does my 80 year old father do to stay healthy?

#43

Post by tomca32 »

nradov wrote: post #39
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it really isn't. "Control your medication" might leave you dead if you are diabetic or leave you hearing voices if your meds control a psychiatric condition. In the same vein, you don't really get a choice in most cancers. Sure, you can do things like never smoke tobacco, but you might just be an 8-year-old with bone cancer. And lots of other afflictions and diseases are similar in this manner, much like you prob…

Most patients with type-2 diabetes can reduce or even eliminate their need for medication through lifestyle changes. https://www.virtahealth.com/research

Absolutely. The problem is that diabetes type 2 is a lifestyle induced condition. People (most not all) get type 2 because of unhealthy diet so sure you can eliminate the need for medication by eating healthy.

Insulin dependent diabetes is type 1. Eating healthy still helps but you will die without insulin injections no matter your diet

Re: What does my 80 year old father do to stay healthy?

#44

Post by paulpauper »

And this fall, in Africa, I got to see him in action again. Over 16 days of “go, go, go,” my dad, who’s now 80, always seemed to be at the head of the pack. On most days we started at 6 a.m., crisscrossing the dry Serengeti, or climbing rugged rainforest terrain for hours before returning to our home base, where we ate and drank late into the night. We climbed mountains, crossed rivers, and traversed deserts. Dad was right there the whole time, pushing us all to our limits.

This sounds like superior genes more so than lifestyle . Some people's bodies give out earlier in life...stuff like heart disease, stoke, cancer, hypertension which may or may not be related to lifestyle.

Re: What does my 80 year old father do to stay healthy?

#45

Post by eesmith »

awillen wrote: post #8
eesmith wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One data point isn't that useful. > At age 111, America's oldest veteran is still smoking cigars, drinking whiskey and loving life > Richard Overton smokes 12 cigars a day, eats grits for breakfast and spends his days on the front porch of his Austin home. https://www.dallasnews.com/arts-entertainment/2017/06/02/at-...

You're clearly wrong as it relates to the post you're responding to. This one data point is going to get him to engage in a behavior that's healthier than the one he otherwise would've been engaged in, which is clearly good. Thus, the data point is useful! Not everything his to be a double blind study showing significant effects to be useful.

> behavior that's healthier

You presume it's healthier.

Suppose that 99.99% of the 80+ year-olds who try this end up breaking their leg, getting a heart attack, etc., and this one data point is from the 0.01% which benefits.

Likely not - but that's why we have double blind studies.

Re: What does my 80 year old father do to stay healthy?

#46

Post by chasd00 »

gotrythis wrote: post #35

My father is 84. Never ate junk food, never smoked, never drank. He plays pickle ball four hours every day and kicks my ass when we play. Also plays volleyball and goes for long walks daily. In his 80's, he's in better shape and has a better life than I do at 51.

my father is the same way, he kills it in pickle ball and is a minor celebrity in Florida. He's always been at least somewhat active for as long as i can remember and probably in better health than i am.

Re: What does my 80 year old father do to stay healthy?

#47

Post by paulpauper »

avgDev wrote: post #15

This is survivorship bias at its finest. What his father is experiencing is luck mixed with good genetics. Plus, additional support of good diet and exercise. Yes, we all can control our diets and exercise. However, we cannot control the medication that we take, which carry side effects. We cannot control what is in our food, we cannot control the air we breath, we cannot control cancer and hundreds other diseases. T…

We cannot control what is in our food,

Of all the things you listed, I think this is controllable.

But I agree genes play a huge role. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger do no exercise and have famously bad diets, yet both are fully productive and healthy at 91.

Re: What does my 80 year old father do to stay healthy?

#48

Post by bee_rider »

mandeepj wrote: post #21
avgDev wrote: post #15

This is survivorship bias at its finest. What his father is experiencing is luck mixed with good genetics. Plus, additional support of good diet and exercise. Yes, we all can control our diets and exercise. However, we cannot control the medication that we take, which carry side effects. We cannot control what is in our food, we cannot control the air we breath, we cannot control cancer and hundreds other diseases. T…

> However, we cannot control the medication that we take, which carry side effects. >We cannot control what is in our food, we cannot control the air we breath, we cannot control cancer and hundreds other diseases. Seriously? The answer to all of the above - Yes, we can!

There are definitely some medications that can be avoided by healthy living and we should try to minimize our use of those. But there are others that are necessary due to unpredictable random health issues.

In my mental model, I'm trying to minimize the number of avoidable medications that I take, because you never know if they'll have some weird interaction with a truly necessary one. I'm not sure if this is actually the right way to think of it, but it seems to be working out OK so far.

Re: What does my 80 year old father do to stay healthy?

#49

Post by kbutler »

abdusco wrote: post #34
ejb999 wrote: post #33

My grandfather is 88, he has definitely slowed down quite a bit lately, but his recipe for a long-life was 2-3 packs of cigarettes a day, alcoholic for most of his adult life, rarely slept more than 4 hours a day and I never ever, saw him eat a vegetable or break a sweat from exercise in my entire life. I figure if I got just some of those genes, and since I never smoked, not an alcoholic and eat pretty well, I shoul…

> pallbearer (n): a person helping to carry or officially escorting a coffin at a funeral. TIL. As a non-native speaker, I've never seen it written and always heard it like "pole bearer", which kinda makes sense: horizontal poles under a coffin.

Eggcorn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn

In linguistics, an eggcorn is an alteration of a phrase through the mishearing or reinterpretation of one or more of its elements,[1] creating a new phrase having a different meaning from the original but which still makes sense and is plausible when used in the same context.

Re: What does my 80 year old father do to stay healthy?

#50

Post by hombre_fatal »

perth wrote: post #19
lqet wrote: post #10

Anecdotally, most of my family members who actively tried to stay healthy died relatively early (< 70 years). Those who didn't usually lived to be at least 85. My grandfather, who never did any type of sports, ate meat every day, who came home after worked and watched TV until bedtime and who drank 1-2 liters of cider per day after retirement died at 92 and was completely healthy up until a few hours before his death…

Funnily enough the “ate meat every day” part might be the key. Red meat boosts testosterone and testosterone plays a big role in mens health, especially as they age and experience the natural drop in testosterone levels.

Well, off-the-cuff guessing like this is why nutrition is plagued with superstitions.

You can easily look up what the oldest living populations eat.

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