Is It Genetics or Lifestyle?

[tijlover]

My grandmother died at 101. Never did she give me a lecture on what I should and should not eat. Having lived so many years on a farm, it was bacon, eggs, cheese, butter, red meat everyday.

My father died at 97, having smoked for 60 years (3-4 packs of Kools every day) and he developed Alzheimers at the end. Didn't die from lung cancer.

My mother died at 87, never smoked but breathed in Dad's smoke every day in a small two bedroom house in Minnesota with the windows closed a good part of the cold period. She died of liver cancer, not lung cancer.

I also have worked in a number of long-term health care facilities over the years. There's two women currently in my facility, one 99, other 100, and they eat anything and everything. There are those in their 80's, 90's still smoking out in the courtyard and eating anything and everything. Very little alternative for meals in nursing homes.

I have smoked for 40 years and when I had a chest xray done last year, my Doctor could hardly believe it how clear my lungs are. I do eat semi-healthy, but, generally, I disregard the effects of cholesterol in my cooking.

30% genes, 70% lifestyle. I'll have to think about that.

But, it's hard not to laugh sometimes, at these zealous health food/vitamin addicts,
who die at a young age from some unavoidable disease and their elderly grandparents or uncles and aunts coming to the funeral overweight and looking for a smoking section in the cemetery.

[LittleDolphin]

Gosh, TijLover, I cannot help but wonder if your Dad might have lived to be 120 if he hadn't smoked. You must have the world's best genes comprising your DNA...you're very fortunate, indeed.

One thought I have is that our oldsters didn't spend their entire lives, as some of us have, ingesting MSG, aspartame, high fructose corn syrup and the 1001 other additives and chemicals that are put into our foods these days...

[tijlover]

Originally Posted by LittleDolphin

Gosh, TijLover, I cannot help but wonder if your Dad might have lived to be 120 if he hadn't smoked. You must have the world's best genes comprising your DNA...you're very fortunate, indeed.

Fortunate? I'm close to 60 now and I don't think my everlasting curiosity about the everlasting afterflife can wait that long.

I had my palms read 5 different times in India once, and they were all but unanimous in their predictions, give a year or two. Sometime in my 82nd or 83rd years, everlasting happiness will arrive.

But I doubt whether I'll even want to live that long!